Insights from SONATA: Implementing and integrating a microservice-based NFV service platform with a DevOps methodology
Thomas Soenen, Steven Van Rossem, Wouter Tavernier, Felipe Vicens, Dario Valocchi, Panos Trakadas, Panagiotis Karkazis, George K. Xilouris, Philip L. Eardley, Stavros Kolometsos, Michail‐Alexandros Kourtis, Daniel Guija, Shuaib Siddiqui, Peer Hasselmeyer, José Bonnet, Diego R. Lopez · 2018
In pursuit of a flexible, resource efficient and high- performant 5G infrastructure, many operators, vendors and research consortia are currently developing, testing and integrating their NFV platform with associated management and orchestration (MANO) functionality. The SONATA NFV platform follows a micro-service design, which involves a tight coupling between an SDK, monitoring and MANO functionality, targeting a secure and stable software foundation. This experience paper gives a thorough overview on the encountered challenges, insights and resulting learnings when implementing and integrating the SONATA Service Platform using a continuous integration and delivery DevOps methodology. This is the result of a strong cooperation between prominent equipment vendors, network operators, software companies and universities, providing a set of constructive recommendations in hope of catalysing the development and deployment of NFV platforms.