Sustainable implementation-level workflow for automating NFV operation
Tatsuji Miyamoto, Masanori Miyazawa, Michiaki Hayashi · 2017
Network function virtualization is expected to enhance automated operation such as service deployment and fault recovery. As an effort to achieve automated operation for NFV, the ZOOM project has been launched by TM Forum. However, standardization of the business process framework (eTOM) is still limited to the abstracted process level, and an implementation-level process needs to be created by each organization considering vendor-specific implementations of control and management. As a result, implementation-level operation tasks are diverging and the cost of process maintenance is increasing accordingly. On the other hand, NFV MANO standardized by ETSI is expected to reduce implementation variations of control and management. From the above background, the harmonization of both standard models eTOM and ETSI to achieve a telecom operation map that can drive an automated onboarding NFV infrastructure should be considered. The contribution of this paper is to show how NFV MANO standards can derive a versatile implementation-level eTOM workflow by abstracting resources and functions of NFV. The paper describes the challenges of defining eTOM through mapping of MANO operations and eTOM processes.