Modular NFV Automation Through Event-Driven State Coordination
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional systems for deploying and maintaining network function virtualization (NFV) are either monolithic or tightly coupled, making them difficult to extend, maintain, and vulnerable to lock-in, with state management complicating resilience.
Innovation Solution
A modular NFV framework that decomposes NFV design, deployment, and maintenance into independent control modules communicating through a highly available key-value state store, allowing stateless operation and API-free coordination.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Device complexity
If conventional systems are implemented as monolithic software entities, then system integration is simplified, but the system becomes hard to extend and maintain
Solution Approach 1:
The system is divided into independent, loosely-coupled modules that communicate through standardized interfaces. Each module can be developed, deployed, and maintained separately, enabling extensibility while maintaining manageable integration complexity through standardization.
2Ease of operation
If conventional systems use tightly coupled modules communicating via pairwise APIs, then module coordination is achieved, but the system becomes hard to extend or modify
Solution Approach 1:
A universal event-driven interface is implemented that allows any module to publish events and for any module to subscribe to relevant events. This universal interface replaces multiple pairwise APIs, enabling easy coordination while allowing modules to be added or modified without changing existing module connections.
3Adaptability or versatility
If conventional systems replace a module with another vendor's module, then system functionality is maintained, but every module using the replaced module must also be replaced
Solution Approach 1:
The event-driven architecture acts as an intermediary layer between modules. Modules communicate through standardized event subscriptions rather than direct point-to-point connections. This intermediary interface layer allows any module from any vendor to be replaced as long as it adheres to the standard event interface, preventing lock-in without requiring system-wide replacements.
4Ease of operation
If modules hold system state internally, then module autonomy is maintained, but system resilience is complicated
Solution Approach 1:
System state is extracted from individual modules and centralized in an external key-value store. Modules remain autonomous in their decision-making but rely on the external store for persistent state. This extraction simplifies resilience because the centralized state can be backed up, recovered, and shared across multiple module instances without requiring complex inter-module state synchronization.
Data Source
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AI summary
A method for automating network function virtualization (NFV) using a modular NFV framework involves subscribing, by a control module of a network, to a key of a state store of the network. The state store includes stored data objects and unique keys. Each of the stored data objects is associated with one of the unique keys. The key is one of the unique keys. A notification is received at the control module from the state store. The notification is associated with the key. The control module reads a data object, associated with the key, from the stored data objects in the state store in response to the notification, and the control module modifies a network traffic flow of the network through two or more software network functions of the network based on the data object.