Approach
The 5GASP DevOps experimentation and certification readiness lifecycle
To accomplish our objectives, we propose the development of an experimentation and “certification-ready” environment based on the knowledge gathered by partners in previous successful projects such as 5GinFIRE and currently running projects such as 5GMOBIX, 5G EVE and 5GVINNI.
The 5GASP approach defines the following functionalities and services, mostly designed and developed in WP2, WP3, WP5 and WP6:
- Network Application onboarding and Experiment Management UI: The Experimenter facing services, in terms of a centralized Network Applications experimentation portal, that allows to manage tenant’s Network Applications, trigger and monitor the experimentation lifecycle.
- 5GASP Experimentation APIs service: The backend service services that exposes standardized OpenAPIs for providing programmatic access to the lifecycle and to the internal 5G Network Application catalogue. This catalogue will contain various Network Applications versions and candidate Network Applications for publishing.
- Network Application model transformation service: This service will automatically translate and enhance the 5G Network Application archive model and embedded entities for the target facility NFV Orchestrator, depending on the defined model (YANG or TOSCA).
- Issue Management: A generic service, that notifies all the related stakeholders (Network Application tenants, facility and platform owners) for any issues during the operation and testing lifecycle.
- Central Logging: A central logging service which gathers timestamped information from various services across the platform providing means of issue traceability.
- 5GASP Service Orchestrator: A service orchestrator for supporting deployment decisions to facilities, solving inter-dependencies and co-ordination between the various services.
- MANO Client API (SOL005) service: A service that interfaces the operation and experimentation services with the NFV orchestrators of the facilities. The service will implement the ETSI NFV SOL005 interface found in compliant NFVOs.
- 5GASP facilities: The 5GASP facilities, tailored to support the specificities of 5G Network Applications and acting as their hosts for testing. Each facility will host the following services:
- Testcase Execution Engine: An engine capable of performing automated test, based on defined test scripts, against the installed Network Application in the facility.
- Monitoring repository per facility: A monitoring service in the facility, providing telemetry data from various resources of the facility (e.g. the NFVI, the NFVO, the 5G System, etc).
- CI/CD service: A service based on Open source solutions which will support CI/CD pipelines and coordinate the execution of test by properly interacting with the Service Orchestrator and the Test Execution Engine of each facility.
- 5GASP Network Application Store: The 5GASP open marketplace which will contain validated and tested 5G Network Applications for every specified vertical.
The following Figure illustrates the 5GASP approach on DevOps experimentation and certification readiness Lifecyle.
The experimentation and certification-readiness Lifecyle is envisaged and will be realized by the following interactions:
- The Network Application developer (5GASP tenant), via the Network Application onboarding and Experiment Management UI Onboards the Network Application under test to the Network Application Catalogue in 5GASP Experimentation APIs service.
- A Network Application Model enhancement follows by the Network Application model transformation service.
- The Network Application CI/CD main testing pipeline is triggered to the CI/CD service.
- A Service Choreography follows between the CI/CD service and Network Application Service Orchestrator to properly manage the deployment to target facilities.
- The Service Orchestrator resolves dependencies and Onboard Network Applications to target facilities NFVO repositories
- The Onboarding & Lifecycle Management towards the facilities is realized via the MANO Client API (SOL005) service.
- The CI/CD service from information exchanged with the Service Orchestrator execute tests via the facility’s Testcase Execution Engine.
- During testing Monitoring takes place.
- After testing execution, Testcases results from facility are available.
- Testcases results are made available to CI/CD service for assessment.
- CI/CD service makes available Testcases results to 5GASP Experimentation Service so 5GASP tenants are aware for the testing results and assessment.
- If the Network Application is passed successfully the full lifecycle and all the defined testing pipelines is Publish to 5GASP Network Application Store.
The 5GASP Network Application Store/Network Application Community
To support both business and development, a platform which includes two complementary portals named Network Application Store and Network Application Community will be developed. The Network Application Store will support business around Network Applications, Network Functions, and Network Services. It will provide a public registry of SMEs and their reusable products: 5G Network Applications, Network Functions, and Network Services. Any useful information and documentation for SMEs will be available at this portal as well. The Network Application Community will support developers of Network Applications, Network Functions, and Network Services. It will provide developers’ forum, technical documentation, user guides, and other related information for developers, operators, verticals, etc