VMware Telco Cloud Automation uses the Virtual Infrastructure Managers (VIMs) as an endpoint for VNF deployments. This section describes the considerations for using Telco Cloud Automation and a VIM for ETSI-based VNF deployments and lifecycle management.

When integrating Cloud Director and Telco Cloud Automation, complete the following steps before instantiating any VNFs.

  • Install and configure a dedicated Telco Cloud Automation Control Plane (TCA-CP) node to communicate with Cloud Director. After configuring the TCA-CP node, it can be added as a Virtual Infrastructure account within Telco Cloud Automation.

    • Use a system administrator account to configure the TCA-CP node with Cloud Director.

    • Use the administrator account from the Cloud Director Organization to add the virtual infrastructure accounts.

  • Deploy and configure RabbitMQ to enable Cloud Director to communicate inventory to the TCA-CP node.

  • Add a Virtual Infrastructure Account into Telco Cloud Automation, using the Telco Cloud Automation Control Plane - Cloud Director endpoint.

    • Use the Organizational Administrator credentials when adding a Cloud Director endpoint.

  • Add compute profiles to the Cloud Director Virtual Infrastructure account.

    Note:

    The Virtual Infrastructure account links to the specific Organization, whereas the compute profile links to the individual OrgVDCs within an Organization.

Cloud Director and RabbitMQ

This section describes the requirements for creating Cloud Director Virtual Infrastructure (VI) and integrations between VMware Cloud Director, RabbitMQ (AMPQ), and VMware Telco Cloud Automation.

  • RabbitMQ is a message broker supporting the Advanced Message Queueing Protocol (AMQP). Different software components can connect to Rabbit MQ and transfer messages to specific queues. Other software components can then take those messages off the queue for processing.

  • If Telco Cloud Automation is used to instantiate VNFs to Cloud Director, Cloud Director posts notification messages to RabbitMQ. The messages include notifications of inventory, inventory changes, events, and so on.

Cloud Director must be configured under the Administration -> Extensibility tab to send messages to the RabbitMQ deployment. Non-Blocking AMQP notifications must be configured to enable Telco Cloud Automation to receive messages from Cloud Director.

Deploying VNFs with Telco Cloud Automation and Cloud Director

When instantiating Cloud Director and Telco Cloud automation for VNFs, a Network Function can be instantiated in various ways.

  • Using templates on the vCenter Server

  • From a Cloud Director catalog using individual vAPP templates

  • From a Cloud Director catalog as a VNF

When using the vAPP model, each VDU created in the NF designer is instantiated as an individual VM/vAPP. This creates vAPP sprawl within Cloud Director.

Using the VNF Model, each VDU is created as a VM within a single vAPP. When the VNF is scaled out, more VMs are created for the component scaled within the same vAPP.

Note:

In this model, the Name value (not image name) as configured in the VDU is used to reference the vAPP in the vCD Catalog. Within the vAPP template inside the Cloud Director catalog, the VM name must equal the name (not the image name) as specified for each VDU within the CSAR.

When designing a VNF through Telco Cloud Automation and when specifying the Virtualization Deployment Units (VDUs), VNF configurations can have additional components that are managed by VMware Telco Cloud Automation. These additional components include:

  • Internal Connection Points: Depending on the Telco Cloud configuration, internal connection points are created as isolated OrgVDC networks within Cloud Director.

  • External Connection Points: The External connection points allow a VNF to connect to an existing external network within Cloud Director and server as the traffic ingress interface.

  • Additional OVF properties

  • Scaling Policies (Scaling Aspects and Instantation levels): Scaling policies in ETSI control the scaling of VDUs. Scaling can be defined in different steps. When using Aspects, more control over the scaling of individual elements of the NF can be achieved.

Table 1. Recommendations for Cloud Director Integration

Design Recommendation

Design Justification

Design Implication

Create a highly available RabbitMQ deployment.

Required for integration of Cloud Director and Telco Cloud Automation

Requires additional resources and expertise to deploy and configure RabbitMQ

Deploy the RabbitMQ Management plug-in.

Allows UI access to RabbitMQ for troubleshooting

None

Deploy a TCA-CP node for each unique Cloud Director deployment.

Allows TCA to deploy VNFs to Cloud Director OrgvDCs

Use tagging and RBAC for each VI and compute profile.

Enables extension of the Cloud Directory tenancy constructs into TCA RBAC.

Requires appropriate RBAC planning in TCA