The following design principles communicate a summary of the details represented in the core and analytics reference architecture.
Flexible Deployment Options
vCloud NFV OpenStack Edition can be deployed to support either a Three-Pod (Management, Resource, and Edge Pods) or a Two-Pod (Management and combined Resource and Edge Pods) configuration. The Three-Pod architecture provides the highest flexibility and performance, because Edge Nodes are dedicated to perform packet forwarding in and out of the virtual domain. CSPs can use the Two-Pod architecture for smaller starting deployments, where it is acceptable to combine the resource and Edge functionality in the same hosts.
Advanced Networking
To provide multitenant capabilities to distributed routing functions in the networking stack, vCloud NFV OpenStack Edition uses NSX-T Data Center to deploy multiple tiers of distributed routing through Tier-0 and Tier-1 gateways. Providers can use Tier-0 gateways, whereas tenants can use Tier-1 gateways. Network virtualization capabilities that are enabled through Geneve encapsulation provide a flexible capability in line with industry standards. In addition, NSX-T Data Center performance enhancements for the N-VDS and NSX Edge Nodes offer advanced network capabilities.
Workload Acceleration
vCloud NFV Open Stack Edition includes several features to support workloads that require high performance. These features are delivered with the newly available N-VDS with Enhanced Data Path Mode that can be used for high-performance workloads. In addition, North-South traffic forwarding between logical and physical domains can benefit from bare metal NSX Edge Nodes. This high-performance capability is available through the Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) based enhancements that come with NSX-T Data Center. Including optimizations through poll mode drivers, CPU affinity and optimization and buffer management, DPDK provides support for workloads requiring acceleration.
Hybrid Execution Environment
With the ability to support network functions delivered through VMs or containers, vCloud NFV Open Stack Edition provides a highly flexible environment for deployments that require VMs and containers. With Kubernetes, customers can deploy, manage, and scale container-based workloads and networking functions. The reference architecture for deployment of Kubernetes with vCloud NFV can be found in VMware vCloud NFV Cloud Native Reference Architecture.
Integrated Operational Intelligence
By using a framework that continuously collects data from local and distributed agents, vCloud NFV OpenStack Edition also provides the capability to correlate, analyze, and enable day 2 operations. In addition, this analytical intelligence can be used with existing assurance engines for closed-loop remediation.
