Introduction

OPNFV is an integration effort that takes outputs from several open source communities to build a NFV platform. This task of integration leads to providing different kinds of output to its users.

First of all there is of course the target software platform, which is a integrated solution of a set of components/building blocks of the ETSI ISG NFV reference architecture. In the Brahmaputra release, this is limited to the NFVI and VIM blocks. OPNFV users will be able to deploy their VNFs there using some MANO solution. The target software platform is integrated from a set of other open source components, of which the biggest ones are OpenStack and SDN controllers. There are multiple combinations possible and a subset is provided and tested by the Brahmaputra release. These subsets are called here scenarios.

Besides the target software platform, OPNFV provides a set of tools that helps the user deploy this target software platform on a set of servers. These tools are called installers. Brahmaputra provides multiple options here. Naturally the different installers have different capabilities, that is they support deployment of different scenarios.

The installers allow users to deploy OPNFV target software platform on a bare metal environment or a set of virtual machines. In both cases, some hosts (bare metal or virtual) will act as controller nodes, while other hosts will be the compute nodes hosting the VNFs. The installers use a separate server to control the deployment process. This server is called “jump server” and is installed with the installer’s software at the beginning of a deployment. The jump server also can be bare metal or virtual.

This configuration - jump servers and a set of typically 5 nodes to run the target software platform - is also described as part of an OPNFV release. This allows the users to build their own labs accordingly and deploy OPNFV easily. A lab compliant to this description sometimes is called “Pharos-compliant” after the OPNFV project providing the lab description.

Another major part of the OPNFV release is a testing framework and test cases. This test framework allows users to verify their deployment of the OPNFV target software platform. It will execute and test major functions of the platform relevant to NFV applications (VNFs) so the user can be confident that VNFs can successfully run.

Of course, the OPNFV releases come with the necessary documentation, describing target software platform, deployment tools, tests, etc. in their architecture and usage. The most important documents here are configuration guides and user guides that help to set up a OPNFV deployment and use it.

The OPNFV project takes major effort to provide lab environments to the community. The OPNFV community labs of course need to be Pharos-compliant. They are used for OPNFV development tasks and release creation, but should also provide users with the opportunity to run their own OPNFV tests. OPNFV community labs are not part of a OPNFV release.

We should also mention that OPNFV works on requirements of open source projects used in OPNFV to make these projects better suitable for NFV telco carrier use cases. These requirements are described in requirement documents and also forwarded to the “upstream” projects in the format required by these projects. These requirement documents are not bound to OPNFV releases.

OPNFV bundles the target software, installers, documentation, test cases and lab description to releases and provides documentation describing the scope and features provided.

This overview document introduces these components and scenarios on a high level and points you to more detailed documentation.

Also community labs are independent of releases. Only the lab description is included in the release and describes the requirements of a lab to successfully run Brahmaputra deployments.