OPEN BATON Architecture

Open Baton includes a consistent set of features enabling the deployment of VNFs on top of NFV Infrastructures, following the ETSI MANO specification.

  • A Network Function Virtualisation Orchestrator (NFVO)completely designed and implemented following the ETSI MANO specification.
    Read more here
  • A Generic Virtual Network Function Manager (VNFM) and Generic Element Management System (EMS) able to manage the lifecycle of VNFs based on their descriptors.
    Read more here
  • A Juju VNFM Adapter in order to deploy Juju Charms or Open Baton VNF Packages using the Juju VNFM.
    Read more here
  • A driver mechanism supporting different type of VIMs without having to re-write anything in the orchestration logic.
    Read more here
  • A powerful event engine based on a pub/sub mechanism for the dispatching of the lifecycle events execution.
    Read more here
  • An Autoscaling Engine which can be used for automatic runtime management of the scaling operation operations of your VNFs.
    Read more here
  • A Fault Management System which can be used for automatic runtime management of faults which may occur at any level.
    Read more here
  • A network slicing engine which can be used to ensure a specific QoS for your NS.
    Read more here
  • A monitoring plugin integrating Zabbix as monitoring system.
    Read more here
  • A Marketplace useful for downloading VNFs compatible with the Open Baton NFVO and VNFMs.
    Read more here
  • A set of libraries (in Java, Go, and Python) which could be used for building your own VNFM adapter and VIM driver.
    Read more here

Generic VNFM and Generic EMS

The Generic VNFM provides a generic mechanism for managing VNFs. It is tightly coupled with the Open Baton EMS deployed as an agent in the instantiated VNF Components. The Generic VNFM can execute the following operations:

  • Request to the NFVO the allocation of specific resources for the virtual network instance (using a granting mechanism, read more here)
  • Can request from the NFVO the instantiation, modification, starting and stopping of the virtual services (or directly to the VIM)
  • Instructs the generic Open Baton EMS to save and to execute specific configuration scripts within the virtual machine instances
  • The Generic VNFM can be easily extended to support the management of third party VNFs




Openstack as Main PoP

Open Baton integrates via Plugins to different VIM. By default an OpenStack plugin is provided for:

  • Creating virtual networks based on the requirements provided in the VNFDs
  • Managing virtual machines images
  • Creating virtual machines used for hosting the VNFCs
  • The Generic VNFM can be easily extended to support the management of third party VNFs

    • The quota information provided by the VIM are used for reserving the resources required by each network service



Supporting External VNFMs

Albeit, Open Baton offers a generic VNFM which can be used for different scenarios, it provides also a set of mechanisms which enable the support of external VNFMs. This can be done in the following ways:

  • Publish/Subscribe mechanism using a message queue based on AMQP
  • REST APIs


Dashboard

Open Baton includes a user-user friendly dashboard which enables the management of the complete environment including:

  • The control of the infrastructure enabling the easy understanding and modification of the dynamic registered NFV PoPs
  • The management of the deployed network services – their creation and the overview of the deployed services