The platform components are grouped into Edge Management Domain and Edge Compute Domain. While the management domain is used to host the management components for edge sites, the resource domain is used to host the NSX Edge VMs and VNFs.
Telco Edge Management Domain
An Edge data center is mapped to an edge site. Edge sites (or Edge data centers) are grouped into regions and have a corresponding instance of Resource vCenter Server deployed in the Core data center to manage the Edge Compute Domains.
The number of edge sites within a region is limited by the configuration maximums of the management components for that region. When the maximum limit is reached, a new management instance of the components is deployed to accommodate the growth.
The sizing of an edge site depends on factors influenced by the inter-dependencies between management components and their configuration limits. The number of supported edge sites varies depending on the sizing of each site. All the edge sites need not be sized equally but are sized based on their respective workload requirements.
Telco Edge Compute Domain
Logically an edge site is a separate vSphere cluster with hosts connecting to and managed by the vCenter Server that is a part of the Edge Management Domain for the corresponding region.
An Edge site follows the collapsed edge/resource pod design used in the vCloud NFV reference architecture. This design entails a minimum of three servers (four recommended if using vSAN) to provide pooled compute resources to both the VNF workloads deployed at the site and to the NSX Edge nodes.
The edge storage may be provided by any supported shared storage solution. This reference architecture uses vSAN as the storage provider. Each server should have local disks for vSAN caching and capacity tiers. An All-Flash vSAN is recommended for reliability and performance.
Each physical host should have a minimum of four physical NICs connected to a pair of ToR switches configured for redundancy. The ToR switches connect to an external WAN Edge physical router to transport packets for Internet breakout and backhaul to the Core site.
