Cloud EAS Lifecycle Management Asynchronous Tracking
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Solution Overview
Problem
The existing provisioning management services for lifecycle management (LCM) of edge application servers (EAS) in cloud environments face challenges such as synchronous operations that require prolonged waiting times for VNF instantiation and lack of failure indication, especially due to resource constraints in virtualized environments.
Innovation Solution
The introduction of an Information Object Class (IOC) for LCM Process, which includes a requestId to track the status of LCM operations, allowing asynchronous reporting of progress and results, and modifications to EASRequirements and EASFunction IOCs to include a requestId for correlation and notification of instantiation successes or failures.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of time
If synchronous operations are used for VNF instantiation, then operation simplicity is maintained, but waiting time increases and productivity decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The system dynamically switches from synchronous to asynchronous operation mode based on the instantiation process state. The LCM process allows the system to continue executing subsequent operations without waiting for VNF instantiation to complete, while still providing status tracking mechanisms for operations that require monitoring.
Solution Approach 2:
The VNF instantiation process is segmented into independent stages that can be executed and tracked separately. The LCM process breaks down the overall instantiation into manageable segments, allowing the system to proceed with other tasks while individual instantiation operations complete in the background.
2Reliability
If resource constraints in virtualized environments are considered, then system reliability improves, but information about operation status is lost
Solution Approach 1:
The LCM process implements feedback mechanisms that provide status information about VNF instantiation operations. The system monitors and reports back on the state of asynchronous operations, ensuring that resource constraints are respected while maintaining visibility into operation outcomes through status tracking and notification mechanisms.
Data Source
AI summary
An apparatus and system are provided to provide the progress and result of lifecycle management (LCM) processes of an edge application server (EAS) virtual network function (VNF) in a cloud. The lifecycle management process information is included in the Network Resource Models (NRMs). An identifier to identify the management service (MnS) consumer initiating the LCM process is included in an EASFunction Information Object Class (IOC), which represents properties of the EAS VNF, and another IOC, which represents requirements to deploy the EAS VNF. The IOC containing the LCM process information permits the consumer to correlate the LCM result with the LCM request. LCM solutions are presented to deploy and terminate EAS VNFs in the cloud using the LCM process information to report the progress and result of the LCM process.