Cisco Elastic Services Controller

Transcription

1 Data Sheet Cisco Elastic Services Controller Business success is increasingly dictated by agility: the ability to respond quickly to change, bring new services to market quickly, and do all of this within an environment that is simple and inexpensive to operate. The Cisco Elastic Services Controller (ESC) promotes agility, flexibility, and programmability in network functions virtualization (NFV) environments and offers comprehensive automated lifecycle management capabilities. By design, Cisco ESC is built as an open and modular system. It provides a single point of control to manage all aspects of NFV lifecycle for virtual network functions (VNFs) in a dynamic environment. Drawing on industry standards and open APIs, you can control the full lifecycle of all of your virtualized resources, whether using Cisco or third-party VNFs, allowing you to choose best-inclass industry solutions. Cisco ESC in combination with Cisco Network Services Orchestrator (NSO) enabled by Tail-f will manage complete VNFs, as well as the entire network service lifecycle. The Cisco ESC is a primary product in the Cisco NFV orchestration portfolio, which provides an advanced lifecycle management platform for NFV. It gives you everything you need to instantiate, monitor, and elastically scale VNFs in an automated fashion. In short, it makes the promise of NFV end-to-end automation, agility, and simplicity a reality in your business. Cisco ESC provides advanced VNF lifecycle management capabilities through an open, standards-based platform that conforms to the ETSI NFV management and orchestration (MANO) reference architecture (Figure 1). By conforming to industry NFV standards and exposing well-defined APIs, it can interoperate with any standardsbased NFV orchestration system. Figure 1. Cisco ESC Conformance to ETSI NFV MANO Reference Architecture 2016 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 1 of 7

2 Cisco ESC performs dynamic provisioning and scaling of individual or groups of VNFs within a multitenant data center environment. ESC can create tenants, flavors, and networks in OpenStack, as the constructs are required for VNF provisioning. ESC can orchestrate VNFs within a virtual infrastructure domain, for example, in the OpenStack controller or VMware vcenter domain. (See Figure 2.) Figure 2. Cisco Service Orchestration Portfolio Cisco NSO communicates with Cisco ESC using the open NETCONF protocol and YANG-based data models. Cisco ESC manages VNFs at a device level, and NSO manages the service lifecycle. Together, they make it a complete orchestration solution that spans across both physical and virtual infrastructure. (See Table 1 and Figure 3.) Table 1. ESC Features and Benefits Feature Integration with Cisco NSO Agentless and open Virtual infrastructure management (VIM) independent VNF lifecycle management (create VNF, day-zero configuration, license management, read and delete VNF) Virtual machine and service, monitoring and actions: VNF autohealing, autoscale, recovery, and service elasticity Programmability, northbound programmatic interface (NETCONF/YANG, REST API) Customization for VNF operations Transaction resume and rollback Coupled VNF management (virtual machine affinity/antiaffinity, startup order, and management of virtual machine interdependency) Service advertisement Benefits Support for full service and VNF lifecycle Eliminates agent barrier and overheads; supports any vendor, any application, any VNF out of the box Abstract virtualization layer complexities for VNF deployments Faster time to customer and time to market for services Higher service availability, service scalability, and optimal resource consumption Defined policies to manage service lifecycle and trigger actions and notifications Integration to orchestration systems for full automation Flexibility to allow for service-specific differentiation Reduce manual fallout Support for full automation of complex deployments Integration to overall OSS and orchestration for full automation 2016 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 2 of 7

3 Figure 3. Cisco ESC NFV Lifecycle Management The main functional blocks of Cisco ESC are: VNF provisioning and configuration: Create, read, and delete VNF as a single virtual machine or a group of virtual machines. On creating a VNF, Cisco ESC provisions virtual machines with day-zero configurations (management IP, gateway, smart-licensing parameters, and any other VNF-supported bootstrap configurations). Monitoring engine: Virtual machine resource, state, or service monitoring using SNMP, ICMP, and custom monitoring KPIs. Rules engine: Intelligent rules engine to trigger actions based on monitoring thresholds. Allows predefined sets or custom actions, as well as simple and complex actions (a sequence of actions triggered for single event). Service Agility Your business processes are designed not around instantiating virtual machines, but around delivering services, which might involve multiple virtual machines working together or implemented in a specific way. For example, in some cases, you might need to implement a single virtual machine, for example, a Cisco Cloud Services Router (CSR) 1000V, for a specific application. In others, the service might involve a group of virtual machines that have interdependencies. You might be deploying multiple virtual machines that need to be on the same host. Or you might need to spin up a group of linked virtual machines in a particular order to create a composite virtual service. In a typical virtualized environment, instantiating multiple interdependent virtual machines involves complex, manual processes, which means it can take days or even weeks to bring up a new service. Cisco ESC can provide lifecycle management capabilities for single virtual machines or groups of multiple virtual machines. So whether a new service involves a single virtual machine or a group of composite VNFs operating together or in sequence, it automates the entire process, so you can deliver the new service within minutes Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 3 of 7

4 Agentless VNF Management and Monitoring Although the mode that uses an agent is the most common solution available in the market, it might not be suitable for NFV deployment in most environments. The need to integrate an agent mandatorily inside a multivendor VNF to make it deployable in an NFV solution has many challenges: Time to market: Every VNF must undergo the agent integration first before it is ready for deployment, and this integration might take a considerable amount of time. VNF revalidation and/or recertification: It is quite likely that integration of the agent inside the VNF might affect its performance and stability, and it might have to be revalidated and recertified again by the associated vendors. Potential ownership problems in case of issues: Situations might arise in which a VNF might come from Vendor A, while the orchestrator and the agent are given by Vendor B. If there is a problem after the integration of the agent inside the VNF, there might be a potential ownership and accountability issue between the two associated vendors. This poses a serious business risk of operationalizing this model. Scalability of the model: Integration of agents into many different VNFs coming from a wide array of vendors might face a scalability challenge unless those VNFs haven t already gone through the integration before. To address these challenges, the Cisco ESC solution supports a model of VNF deployment that requires absolutely no agent. This is a major advantage of the solution, because it helps service providers build a solution to address all limitations mentioned earlier. With the agentless mode of operations, the Cisco ESC can monitor VNF utilization or can use other protocols such as SNMP or even custom scripts if it has to monitor something more specific that standard virtual machine KPI characteristics. Cisco ESC Functions Summary Open and agentless VNF management (any vendor, any application, any VNF) VNF lifecycle management (create, read, and delete) VNF day-zero configurations Virtual machine and service monitoring, elasticity VNF autohealing, recovery, and redeployment VNF license management End-to-end customization support for VNF operations Transaction resume and rollback Coupled VNF management (virtual machine affinity/antiaffinity, startup order, and virtual machine interdependency) Service advertisement Service Recovery and Redeployment Policies ESC uses a policy-driven framework to perform actions based on the lifecycle stages in a deployment. A deployment consists of several stages through its lifecycle. Each lifecycle stage (LCS) is associated with a condition. The condition in turn can be associated with predefined or custom actions. The recovery and redeployment workflows in ESC are policy driven. When VNFs are deployed, the recovery and redeployment policies are specified in the deployment data model. These policies are based on the lifecycle stages of the virtual machine or VNF and have associated actions. When a deployment data model is created, you can specify the following policies: Recovery policy: The recovery policy is for the virtual machine lifecycle that is for the recovery of a single virtual machine. Based on the predefined actions, the virtual machine is rebooted, or redeployed. Redeployment policy: The redeployment policy is for the entire deployment lifecycle that is for all the virtual machine groups within a deployment. Based on a set of predefined and custom actions, the virtual machines are recovered in the deployment Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 4 of 7

5 If the virtual machine recovery fails after the maximum attempts, ESC has predefined actions such as disabling the host, undeploying all virtual machines from the old host, and redeploying to a new host. Multivendor VNF Support Cisco ESC capabilities are entirely independent of the underlying device. Whether the service encompasses a Cisco CSR, Cisco virtualized firewall, mobility virtual packet core, network service appliance from a third-party vendor, or combination of VNFs in a service chain, you can use the same tools to automate and accelerate deployment, provisioning, and scaling. Virtualization Infrastructure Requirements Table 2 shows tested VIM and Hypervisor environments. ESC uses standard OpenStack APIs and will work in other OpenStack environments supporting standard APIs as well. Table 2. Supported VIM and Hypervisor environments OpenStack (Redhat) Kilo, Liberty releases with ESC 2.2 Hypervisor: KVM VMware vcenter 5.5 or 6.0 (English only) Hypervisor: vsphere 5.5 or 6.0 with VMware ESXi (English only) Cisco ESC Resource Requirements and Feature Support Table 3 shows the virtual resource requirements for Cisco Elastic Services Controller. Table 3. Processor Memory Hard drive Virtual Resource Requirements for ESC 4 virtual CPUs (vcpus) 8 GB 30 GB Table 4 shows requirements for new VNF support, monitoring mechanisms, available interfaces etc. Table 4. ESC Feature Details Feature Multitenancy High availability VNF affinity/antiaffinity Virtual machine initial configuration New VNF support VNF monitoring Northbound interfaces Other user interfaces Support, Details VNF requirements: OpenStack: 1. QCOW2 image format 2. OpenStack config drive support VMware: 1. OVA image 2. OVF properties for day-0 configurations ICMP ping, SNMP, and custom monitoring NETCONF API, REST API CLI, GUI 2016 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 5 of 7

6 Ordering Information Cisco ESC is orderable and shipping. Cisco Elastic Services Controller is licensed per managed virtual machine instance. ESC SKUs are available in small, medium, large, and extra large form factors. Based on VNF scale in the environment, multiple quantities can be procured of any type of SKU. For additional product numbers, including the Cisco Orchestration bundle offerings, contact your local Cisco account representative. To place an order and download software, visit the Cisco Ordering home page. Cisco ESC Licensing Information Table 5 shows licensing information. Table 5. Licensing Information Part Number L-ESC-VNF-S-LIC50P L-ESC-VNF-M-LIC50P L-ESC-VNF-L-LIC25P L-ESC-VNF-XL-LIC2P L-ESC-VNF-A-LIC25P Product Description Perpetual, Cisco ESC right to manage quantity 50 small (1 vcpu) virtual machines Perpetual, Cisco ESC right to manage quantity 50 medium (<4 vcpus) virtual machines Perpetual, Cisco ESC right to manage quantity 25 large (4 to 7 vcpus) virtual machines Perpetual, Cisco ESC right to manage quantity 2 extra large (8 or more vcpus) virtual machines Perpetual, Cisco ESC right to manage quantity 25 of any size (mix) virtual machines Warranty Information Cisco ESC has a 90-day limited software warranty. For more information about the Cisco ESC warranty, see Cisco Service and Support Cisco Software Support Service (SWSS) offers complete coverage that keeps your software applications running smoothly and protects your investment with a powerful combination of services. Assistance includes software updates and upgrades, 24-hour technical support, and access to Cisco online troubleshooting tools. What you get: Application software major upgrades and updates Global access to experts in the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) Self-help through online support communities, resources, and tools Cisco and Partner Services Cisco Services and certified partners can help you adopt the Cisco ESC and NSO, integrated to your particular requirements. A primary advantage of the Cisco NSO is its quick customization phase. If you are used to lengthy and costly OSS projects, you will see the difference. Cisco and our partners can also train you to do the customizations yourself Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 6 of 7

7 Cisco Capital Financing to Help You Achieve Your Objectives Cisco Capital financing can help you acquire the technology you need to achieve your objectives and stay competitive. We can help you reduce CapEx, accelerate your growth, and optimize your investment dollars and ROI. Cisco Capital financing gives you flexibility in acquiring hardware, software, services, and complementary third-party equipment. And there s just one predictable payment. Cisco Capital is available in more than 100 countries. Learn more. Printed in USA C / Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 7 of 7