© 2014 Colt Technology Services Group Limited. All rights reserved.

Overcoming the Challenges of Operational Change •Heavy Reading 6th November 2014

Simon Farrell

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2

Agenda

About Colt

Progress towards NFV & SDN

Evolution of OSS in Colt

Summary

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2

3

4

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Colt – The Information Delivery Platform

• 47,659km EU Fibre

network / 37,500

transatlantic

• 23 countries / 42

metros / 195

connected cities

• 20 Colt owned data

centres / 20,350

connected buildings

• 500+ NNIs /

customers in 83

countries

• MEF / ONF / NFV

Member

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Colt vision: IT & Network Integration

The integration of the network and IT platforms from

the service, technology, system and process point of

view to offer innovative services, reduce

provisioning time, automate end-to-end

orchestration and offer truly combined network and

compute services.

Network

automation,

virtualisation,

elasticity and

rapid innovation

Modular Carrier

Ethernet

Integrated

Networks

Next Gen Data

Centre Fabric

SDN/NFV

SDN/NFV

SDN/NFV

will be the

glue that

binds the

elements

together

Key

elements of

Colt’s IT &

Networking

Strategy

Investment programme

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5

Colt’s SDN/NFV Infrastructure Development

DC Fabric &

Network

virtualisation

(CCN)

DC Fabric

• OpenFlow DC Fabric evaluation (2012, not mature enough)

DC Network virtualisation & Architecture:

• SDN Overlay: L2-L4 DC Network Virtualisation & DC Architecture

Live

Feb’14

L3 CPE router virtualisation (PE based): NLI Project

• virtualisation of the L3 CPE functionality (Internet access / IPVPN)

NFV: Formal Evaluation & PoC in 2014

• vL3CPE / vDC Appliances (FW/LB) / vControl Plane (BGP RR)

Network

Functions

Virtualisation

(NFV)

Live

Nov’12

WAN SDN Network (Optical/Ethernet/IP):

• Modular MSP (Integrated L2/L3 WAN Network)

• End to end WAN network abstraction & full automation in a multi-

vendor, multi-layer environment

• Flexible connectivity, i.e., ability to dynamically / on-demand change the

connectivity attributes of the service (BW, QoS profile, etc).

WAN SDN

Live

Nov’13

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vL3CPE (Internet Access / IPVPN) – Definition

Customer

MSP /

L2 CPE

M-MSP

Gen 4 DC

Compute

Storage Physical

Compute /

Appliance

IP/MPLS

(Internet/IPVPN)

Spine

Leaf

L3CPE

• Traditional Managed L3 services (Internet Access and IPVPN ) delivered with dedicated L3 CPE router

• vL3CPE means removing the L3 CPE router and delivering the functionality as Virtual network Functions

vCPE vCPE

vCPE

vCPE

vCPE

vCPE

vCPE

PRE-NFV

NFV

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OSS Centralisation

• Traditionally, Colt emphasis in OSS has been on convergence

• We centralise inventory to automate design/assign activity

• We centralise fulfilment to minimise the impact of introducing new vendors to do old tasks – We centralise translation from service

to resource configuration because the vendor landscape is uneven and full of dumb legacy devices that don’t understand customer service

• We want to centralise monitoring so we can perform cross-domain root cause analysis and understand complex dependencies

I

nve

nto

ry Design

Assign

Fulfil

Services

Devices

Links

Activate

Monitor

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Evolution

• Colt has taken a different approach with our Modular MSP network

• We have pushed a lot of the intelligence underlying design/assign down into a “Smart EMS” – BluePlanet from Cyan – We give it service parameters like endpoints and bandwidth and it

automatically routes & provisions an Ethernet circuit

– It acts as an SDN controller for the M-MSP Ethernet domain

• We expect the Smart EMS to hide vendor specifics from our upper level OSS

• We have delegated ownership of inventory to this Smart EMS – But take periodic extracts for capacity & asset management purposes

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Can this approach scale?

• This approach works for Ethernet within a single M-MSP domain with 2 or 3 vendors, but IP services introduce more vendors and we do not yet have an SDN controller that encapsulates the device adapters, inventory & logic for this environment

• We may never get to that point

• So we have to orchestrate service design/assign and activation across multiple domains

• Today Colt does this in a lumpy, evolved-not-designed way

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Inventory-centric view of OSS

Inventory

Smart EMS Semi-smart

EMS

Dumb proxy

EMS

Service-level

activation Detailed device

configuration

Services, device

info & topology

for Assure Systems

Design/Assign

Order

details

Activation Level of inventory

detail required

Monitoring

Partial

device

configuration

Device

Alarms &

Metrics

Correlation

& RCA

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An Opportunity

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NFV Orchestration

• NFV is designed from the start for multi-vendor VNFs

• Orchestrators must impose a consistent topology and “device” model on the domain

• Its dynamic nature means the orchestrator has to also encapsulate Design/Assign rules to handle scaling and migration of VNFs

• So we can expect a truly service – level interface to a successful NFV Orchestrator

- One that hides the complexity and device-specifics of inventory and

topology from other systems

- It’s a multi-vendor Smart EMS

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Inventory-centric evolution of OSS

Inventory

Smart EMS Semi-smart

EMS

NFV

Orchestrator

Service-level

activation Service-level

activation

Services, device

info & topology

for Assure Systems

Design/Assign

Order

details

Activation Level of inventory

detail required

Monitoring

Partial

device

configuration

Device

Alarms &

Metrics

Correlation

& RCA

VNFM VNFM VIM

VNF VNF VNF

Shrinks over time

Service

alarms

from NV

Correlation

& RCA

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NFV Service Assurance

• Service assurance systems need to correlate “service” alarms across domains, not “device” alarms within a domain. The latter should be the responsibility of the Orchestrator.

• The Orchestrator needs to provide troubleshooting tools & insight into SDN Overlay, VNF and VI domains as well, but not necessarily in an automated way

• Service performance monitoring is an end-to-end responsibility and should not depend on the service chain. For Colt, it is enough to measure end-to-end performance and provide per-domain tools to drill down on problem services

• VNF managers & VIMs need per-device monitoring of course

• Operators need to be informed of failure, but the virtual environment should auto-remediate

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Operational Impact

• Intuitively, we would expect short term pain and then long term gain from:

• Reduction in service assurance tasks - Because NFV should surface fewer device alarms/incidents

• Improved incident resolution times - Because a single pane of glass will improve time to diagnose & resolve

- Because the environment will permit rapid VNF component restarts / migrations

•Pressures acting in the opposite direction:

• Increased complexity of the environment means more incidents will hit Level 2 & 3 support staff - The users of the single pane of glass will need to be multi-skilled

- Orchestrator vendors must provide tools to validate the service chain

• Unlike IT services, restarting a VM is not an acceptable resolution!

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Ultimate goals

EMSs for virtual and physical functions must:

• present an API to the orchestrator

• expose inventory & topology to the orchestrator

The orchestrator must:

• maintain its own topology and device model across all managed domains

• encapsulate Design/Assign rules for all managed domains

• encapsulate alarm filtering & correlation between managed domains

• Present a service-level northbound API

The ultimate value to Colt is to extend the orchestrator beyond “ordinary NFV”

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Ultimate goals

•EMSs for virtual and physical functions must:

• present an API to the orchestrator

• expose inventory & topology to the orchestrator

The orchestrator must:

• maintain its own topology and device model across all managed domains

• encapsulate Design/Assign rules for all managed domains

• encapsulate alarm filtering & correlation between managed domains

• Present a service-level northbound API

The ultimate value to Colt is to extend the orchestrator

beyond “ordinary NFV”

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Target view OSS

Inventory

NFV Orchestrator

Service-level

activation

Services, device

info & topology

for Assure Systems

Design/Assign

Order

details

Activation

Monitoring

Device

Alarms &

Metrics

Correlation

& RCA

VNFM VNFM

VNF VNF VNF

Minimal

Service

alarms

Correlation

& RCA

Smart EMS Semi-smart

EMS

VIM

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Summary

NFV increases operational complexity

To be successful, NFVO must encapsulate:

• Service & resource inventory

• Dynamic topology

• Automated design/assign

• Alarm correlation & filtering

• Root Cause Analysis

If it is successful, we can extend NFVO to SDN and even to physical devices

€64m question: are Service Providers ready to delegate this much control?

© 2014 Colt Technology Services Group Limited. All rights reserved.

Thank you

simon.farrell@colt.net www.colt.net