1 of 13

Wim Henderickx�Nokia

Nephio: �A new approach for automating Telco Workloads

February 3, 2024 | Brussels

2 of 13

The Telco landscape

CU-UP

CU-CP

RU

MEC

Observability & Analytics

Function Monitoring

SLO Monitoring

Analytics

Logging

CNF

MEC

vDU

Service Policy Management

Service Mesh

Cluster Mgmt

Config Mgmt

Telco Remote Edge

100,000+ sites

Telco Pre-agg

1,000s sites

Cloud

AMF

Public Cloud Region

10s sites

SMF

UPF

MEC

Telco Agg

100s sites

3 of 13

  • High Performance
  • Mission critical
  • Closed systems
  • Different culture/mindset
  • Organizational dependencies
  • Roles and responsibility challenges
  • …

App

Infra

Black Box

HW

SW (Cloud Native)

Thightly coupled

4 of 13

Introducing Nephio

5 of 13

KRM

  • API centric
  • Declarative control
    • desired state
    • observed state
  • Standard metadata (indexing)
  • Extendable (CRD)
  • Event driven (Watch)
  • Resource Semantics and lifecycle
  • Eventual consistency
  • Huge eco-system

https://github.com/kubernetes/design-proposals-archive/blob/main/architecture/resource-management.md

​

6 of 13

Configuration as Data

  • A new approach to configuration management
    • Represent config in a well-defined, structured data model (KRM!)
    • Configuration lives in versioned storage, separate from the live state
    • Tools operate on the config - do not intermingle code and configuration
    • Clients interact with config via APIs, not directly on storage
  • Machine manageable configurations
  • Enables iterative, multi-actor mutation and validation
  • Automated changes, bulk operations, and human-initiated modifications co-exist peacefully
  • Automatic system validation of configuration before applying to live state
  • Reusable, well-tested functions operate on configuration rather than embedding code inside the configuration

kpt/porch�config-sync

7 of 13

apiVersion: req.nephio.org/v1alpha1

kind: DataNetwork

metadata:

name: internet

annotations:

config.kubernetes.io/local-config: "true"

prefix: 10.0.0.0/8

spec:

networkInstance:

name: vpc-internet

pools:

- name: pool1

prefixLength: 8

​

Package Example

apiVersion: req.nephio.org/v1alpha1

kind: Interface

metadata:

name: n3

annotations:

config.kubernetes.io/local-config: "true"

spec:

networkInstance:

name: vpc-ran

cniType: sriov

attachementType: vlan

apiVersion: req.nephio.org/v1alpha1

kind: Interface

metadata:

name: n4

annotations:

config.kubernetes.io/local-config: "true"

spec:

networkInstance:

name: vpc-internal

cniType: sriov

attachementType: vlan

apiVersion: infra.nephio.org/v1alpha1

kind: ClusterContext

metadata:

name: cluster-context

annotations:

config.kubernetes.io/local-config: "true"

spec:

cniConfig:

cniType: macvlan

masterInterface: eth1

siteCode: edge1

​

apiVersion: kpt.dev/v1

kind: Kptfile

metadata:

name: pkg-upf

annotations:

config.kubernetes.io/local-config: "true"

info:

description: upf package example

Pipeline:

  • fn-A
  • fn-B

Blueprint Package

KptFile (Package + pipeline�- functions/controllers)

apiVersion: k8s.cni.cncf.io/v1

kind: NetworkAttachmentDefinition

metadata:

creationTimestamp: null

name: n4

apiVersion: k8s.cni.cncf.io/v1

kind: NetworkAttachmentDefinition

metadata:

creationTimestamp: null

name: n4

Deployment Manifests

apiVersion: nf.nephio.org/v1alpha1

kind: UPFDeployment

metadata:

name: upf

spec:

networkInstance:

name: vpc-internal

interface:

  • n3: 10.0.0.1
  • N4: 192.168.0.1

​

8 of 13

Analogy

Node

Node

Node

Cluster

PoD(s)

Cluster

Cluster

Cluster

Geographically distributed

NF(s)

Controller(s)

Controller(s)

Function(s)

Deployment, Daemonset, StatefulSet

Package Variant Set

Repo

Repo

9 of 13

High Level architecture

Workload cluster

Workload cluster

Management cluster

Repositories�Cloud Source Repo

Repositories�Git or OCI

Controllers�Functions

Porch API�kpt-as-a-service

KRM

Package

KRM

KRM

Workload cluster

KRM

Injection

KRM

KRM

KRM

Specialization

Workload cluster

Workload cluster

Workload cluster

Deployment

Fanout

Blueprint

runtimes

runtimes

10 of 13

  • A set of independent actors to reach a certain outcome together
  • Actors have roles in the choreography
  • Lots of analogy to a �controller
    • lifecycle handling
    • parent resource
    • child resources
    • adjacent resources

interface�fn

dnn

fn

nad

fn

nf-deploy

fn

ipam

controller

vlan�controller

ipam

backend

vlan

backend

Conditional dance/choreography

11 of 13

​

- User Story 1: Deploy 5G core network functions (free5gc)

- User Story 2: Upgrade user plane capacity

    • Upgrade the resources (vertical scaling) of an existing UPF
    • Deploy a new edge cluster and deploy UPF (horizontal scaling)

- User Story 3: Upgrade control plane capacity

    • Upgrade the resources (vertical scaling) of an existing SMF

- Provision all free5gc NFs 

- Provision workload clusters and join them to Nephio management 

- UI viewers and editors for PackageVariant(Set) resources

- Provision Networking

- Make a call via UERANSIM

��

Nephio R1 User stories

12 of 13

Nephio R2 and beyond

Release Deliverables

  • Features
    • Multi Vendor Support
    • OAI Core
    • OAI RAN
    • Topology Controller
    • Integration with new release of Porch
  • Technical debt
  • Documentation
  • Installer

Exploration (Spikes and POCs)

  • Nephio SDK
  • HELM support
  • Observability
  • Service Assurance
  • Policy Engine
  • NF2Infra

​

​

​

13 of 13

Join us

Project Resources