On 12/Aug/20 19:10, adamv0025@netconsultings.com wrote:
Fair enough, but you actually haven't answered my question about why you think that VNFs such as vTMS can not be implemented in a horizontal scaling model? In my opinion any NF virtual or physical can be horizontally scaled.
The limitation is the VM i/o with the metal. Trying to shift 100Gbps of DoS traffic across smaller VNF's running on Intel CPU's is going to require quite a sizeable investment, and plenty of gymnastics in how you route traffic to and through them, vs. taking that cash and spending on just one or two purpose-built platforms that aren't scrubbing traffic in general-purpose CPU's. Needless to say, the ratio between the dirty traffic entering the system and the clean traffic coming out is often not 1:1, from a licensing standpoint. It's not unlike when we ran the numbers to see whether a VM running CSR1000v on a server connected to a dumb, cheap Layer 2 switch was cheaper than just buying an ASR920. The ASR920, even with the full license, was cheaper. Server + VMware license fees + considerations for NIC throughput just made it massively costly at scale.
Right, and of these 3 you mentioned, what is it that you'd say operators are waiting for to get standardized, in order for them to start implementing network services orchestration?
You miss my point. The existence of these data models doesn't mean that operators cannot automate without them. There are plenty of operators automating their procedures with, and without those open-based models. My point was if we are spending a lot of time trying to agree on these data models, so that Cisco can sell me their NSO, Juniper their Contrail, Ciena their Blue Planet, NEC their ProgrammableFlow or Nokia their Nuage - while several operators are deciding what automation means to them without trying to be boxed in these off-the-shelf solutions that promise vendor-agonstic integration - we may just blow another 10 years.
Agreed, all I'm trying to understand is what makes you claim things like: progress is slow, or there's a lack of standardization, or operators need to wait till things get standardized in order to start doing network service orchestration... I'm asking cause I just don't see that. My personal experience is quite different to what you're claiming.
Yes the landscape is quite diverse ranging from fire and forget CLI scrapers (Puppet, Chef, Ansible, SaltStack) through open network service orchestration frameworks all the way to a range of commercial products for network service orchestration, but the point is options are there and one can start today, no need to wait for anything to get standardized or things to settle.
Don't get me wrong - if NSO, Blue Planet, Nuage and all the rest are good for you, go for it. My concern is most engineers and commercial teams are confused about the best way forward because the industry keeps going back and forth on what the appropriate answer is, or worse, could be, or even more scary, is likely to be. In the end, either nothing is done, or costly mistakes happen. Only a handful of folk have the time, energy and skills to dig into the minutiae and follow the technical community on defining solutions at a very low level. Everybody else just wants to know if it will work and how much it will cost. Meanwhile, homegrown automation solutions that do not follow any standard continue to be seen as a "stop-gap", not realizing that, perhaps, what works for me now is what works for me, period. I'm not saying operators aren't automating. I'm saying my automating is not your automating. As long as we are both happy with the solutions we have settled on for automating, despite them not being the same or following a similar standard, what's wrong with that? There are other pressing matters that need our attention. Mark.