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EP-3948536-B1 - TECHNIQUE FOR SIMPLIFYING MANAGEMENT OF A SERVICE IN A CLOUD COMPUTING ENVIRONMENT

EP3948536B1EP 3948536 B1EP3948536 B1EP 3948536B1EP-3948536-B1

Inventors

  • SANTOS, Mateus
  • ESTEVE ROTHENBERG, CHRISTIAN
  • GOMES DA SILVA, Pedro Henrique
  • PEREZ, Danny
  • VIDAL, Allan

Dates

Publication Date
20260506
Application Date
20190402

Claims (15)

  1. A method for simplifying management of a service on a network infrastructure in a cloud computing environment, the method being performed by an aggregation component (702) and comprising: generating (S502), for a service to be managed on the network infrastructure and based on a representation of resources available in the network infrastructure, an aggregated representation of the resources available in the network infrastructure, wherein aggregated resources in the aggregated representation are computed to comply with one or more capacity-related requirements of the service to be managed; and providing (S504) the aggregated representation to an orchestration component (704) for management of the service, characterised in that the aggregated representation is generated specifically for the service based on the one or more capacity-related requirements of the service derived from a deployment descriptor of the service.
  2. The method of claim 1, wherein the resources in the representation comprise nodes and links of the network infrastructure each providing a particular capacity.
  3. The method of claim 2, wherein generating (S502) the aggregated representation of the resources includes: determining whether at least one of node aggregation and link aggregation is required for the aggregated resources to comply with the one or more capacity-related requirements of the service.
  4. The method of claim 3, wherein: - when it is determined that node aggregation is required, generating (S502) the aggregated representation of the resources includes: aggregating vertices of cloud sites according to pools of node requirements of the service; annotating the aggregated vertices by the sum of the corresponding node resource capacities; and discarding edges from merged vertices; and/or - when it is determined that link aggregation is required, generating (S502) the aggregated representation of the resources includes: -aggregating vertices of cloud sites according to pools of node requirements of the service; annotating the aggregated vertices by the sum of the corresponding node resource capacities; and discarding edges from merged vertices.
  5. The method of claim 3 or 4, wherein determining whether node aggregation is required includes: determining a reference value of available node capacities in the network infrastructure, wherein the reference value is indicative of actual hardware capabilities of cloud sites; calculating a total of required node capacities from the one or more capacity-related requirements of the service; and determining whether node aggregation is required based on a comparison of the total of required node capacities with the reference value of available node capacities, wherein the reference value of available node capacities is determined as one of a sum of available node capacities and an average of available node capacities per site in the cloud computing environment.
  6. The method of any one of claims 3 to 5, wherein determining whether link aggregation is required includes: determining a reference value of available link capacities in the network infrastructure; calculating a total of required link capacities from the one or more capacity-related requirements of the service; and determining whether link aggregation is required based on a comparison of the total of required link capacities with the reference value of available link capacities.
  7. The method of any one of claims 1 to 6, wherein the deployment descriptor of the service is obtained from a service catalog (706) available in the cloud computing environment.
  8. The method of any one of claims 1 to 7, wherein, when the service corresponds to a network service to be managed on the network infrastructure, the one or more capacity-related requirements of the service are derived from a network service descriptor of the network service; and/or wherein, when the service corresponds to a virtualized network function to be managed on the network infrastructure, the one or more capacity-related requirements of the service are derived from a virtualized network function descriptor of the virtualized network function.
  9. The method of any one of claims 1 to 8, wherein node-related requirements among the one or more capacity-related requirements of the service are derived from at least one definition of a virtual deployment unit in the deployment descriptor; and/or wherein link-related requirements among the one or more capacity-related requirements of the service are derived from at least one definition of a virtual link in the deployment descriptor.
  10. The method of any one of claims 1 to 9, wherein: (i) the aggregation component (702) is executed as a component of the orchestration component (704), wherein the orchestration component (704) is a central orchestration component being centrally responsible for management of services on the network infrastructure in the cloud computing environment; or (ii) the aggregation component (702) is executed in a distributed manner on at least one of a central orchestration component (704) being centrally responsible for management of services on the network infrastructure in the cloud computing environment and one or more local orchestration components (710) each being locally responsible for management of services on a local network infrastructure of a site of the cloud computing environment.
  11. A method for simplifying management of a service on a network infrastructure in a cloud computing environment, the method being performed by an orchestration component (704) and comprising: obtaining (S802), from an aggregation component (702), an aggregated representation of resources available in the network infrastructure, the aggregated representation being generated for a service to be managed on the network infrastructure and based on a representation of resources available in the network infrastructure, wherein aggregated resources in the aggregated representation comply with one or more capacity-related requirements of the service to be managed, and triggering (S804) management of the service based on the aggregated representation. characterised in that the aggregated representation is generated specifically for the service based on the one or more capacity-related requirements of the service derived from a deployment descriptor of the service.
  12. The method of claim 11, wherein triggering (S804) management of the service based on the aggregated representation includes: calculating a placement of the service on the network infrastructure based on the aggregated representation of the resources; and triggering management of the service based on the calculated placement.
  13. A computer program product comprising program code portions for performing the method of any one of claims 1 to 12 when the computer program product is executed on one or more computing devices.
  14. A computing unit (400) configured to execute an aggregation component (702) for simplifying management of a service on a network infrastructure in a cloud computing environment, the computing unit (400) comprising at least one processor (402) and at least one memory (404), the at least one memory (404) containing instructions executable by the at least one processor (402) such that the aggregation component (702) is operable to perform the method of any one of claims 1 to 10.
  15. A computing unit (410) configured to execute an orchestration component (704) for simplifying management of a service on a network infrastructure in a cloud computing environment, the computing unit (410) comprising at least one processor (412) and at least one memory (414), the at least one memory (414) containing instructions executable by the at least one processor (412) such that the orchestration component (704) is operable to perform the method of claim 11 or 12.

Description

Technical Field The present disclosure generally relates to the field of cloud computing. In particular, a technique for simplifying management of a service on a network infrastructure in a cloud computing environment is presented. The technique may be embodied in methods, computer programs, apparatuses and systems. Background In distributed cloud environments, including edge computing and more centralized approaches, cloud sites may be geographically distributed and interconnected through a wide area network (WAN). Figure 1 shows an exemplary cloud computing environment comprising a plurality of interconnected cloud sites, wherein a central orchestrator may establish communication with local orchestrators placed at the individual sites. Figure 2 schematically illustrates a more detailed view of a site and shows that cloud sites may essentially comprise cloud nodes as well as connections between cloud nodes. Cloud sites may become candidate hosting targets for virtualized network functions (VNFs) and services. Orchestrators (either central or local orchestrators) may receive deployment descriptions of VNFs (or subsets thereof) and/or services to execute the actual deployment or instantiation thereof. VNFs and services may be deployed upon instructions from the central orchestrator, or locally using a local orchestrator without communication with the central orchestrator via the WAN. Open source projects employing local and central orchestrators include the Akraino Edge Stack project and the Open Networking Automation Platform (ONAP) project, for example. VNFs may be chained with other VNFs and/or physical network functions (PNFs) to realize a network service. A deployment description or service description may define deployment requirements and the operational behavior of the VNFs and services. Examples are the VNF descriptor (VNFD) and the network service descriptor (NSD) which are described in ETSI GS NFV-SOL 001, such as in ETSI GS NFV-SOL 001 V2.5.1 (2018-12), for example. VNFDs and NSDs may include constructs to model VNFs such as those defined in ETSI GS NFV 003 (e.g., ETSI GS NFV 003 V1.4.1 (2018-08)) including constructs, such as the virtualization deployment unit (VDU) which may be mapped to a virtual machine (VM) or a container, for example, and the virtual link (VL) which may be used to connect two or more entities, such as VNFs or VNF components (VNFCs), for example. As said, VNFs and services may be deployed or instantiated on infrastructure resources of cloud sites. Such infrastructure resources are typically represented in the form of a network inventory. Exemplary network inventories are illustrated in Figure 3 where cloud nodes (or "compute nodes") of the network infrastructure are associated with particular capacities, such as random access memory (RAM) and hard disk capacities, for example. While the left side of the figure shows an exemplary inventory of physical compute nodes, the right side of the figure illustrates that a network inventory may also include virtualized infrastructure resources, such as VMs, for example. A network inventory may generally correspond to a (e.g., real-time) representation (or "view") of available resources in a network infrastructure, which may include hardware resources (e.g., compute, storage), software resources (e.g., VNFs) and the connection/link resources therebetween. Building a network inventory may form a fundamental step of any VNF or service deployment and may generally be required to solve the placement problem, i.e., to decide where to (e.g., best) instantiate VNF or service components on the available infrastructure. The size of a network inventory may be very large in distributed cloud and edge computing scenarios, however. As a result, the placement problem may become less tractable due to the inherent scalability and multi-dimensional nature of the optimization problem to be solved and it may therefore be difficult for engines (e.g., placement engines) to process the large amount of data from the inventory to deploy a VNF or service (or to perform more general network management tasks, such as rearranging or scaling VNFs or workloads, for example) in a short amount of time. US 2012/0226789 A1 discloses a cloud computing system comprising a plurality of data centers, each data center comprising a plurality of pods each of which comprises network, compute, storage and service node devices. At a designated device of a data center, data center level capabilities summary data is generated that summarizes the capabilities of the data center. Messages advertising the data center level capabilities summary data is sent from a designated device of each data center to a designated device at a provider edge network level of the computing system. At the designated device at the provider edge network level, provider edge network level capabilities summary data is generated that summarizes capabilities of compute, storage and network devices for each da