In the context of the NFV Plugtests Programme, ETSI's Centre for Testing and Interoperability organised the NFV&MEC IOP Plugtests 2021 event from 1 to 15 October 2021. The event was held remotely.
Overview
The NFV&MEC IOP Plugtests 2021 offered NFV and MEC solution providers and open source projects an opportunity to meet and assess the level of interoperability of their NFV and MEC solutions.
The event offered a wide range of multi-vendor Test Sessions for NFV, MEC and MEC-in-NFV Interoperability, including cloud native, and 5G scenarios.
During the preparation phase, participants were invited to self-assess the conformance of their implementations to NFV and MEC API Specifications.
Participation was free of charge and was open to organisations working on the following NFV and MEC solutions:
- Virtual, Physical and Containerized Network Functions
- Management and Orchestration solutions: NFVO, VNFM
- Network Function Virtualisation Infrastructure and Virtual Infrastructure Managers
- Hardware solutions
- MEC Platforms, Platform Managers and Orchestrators (MEO, MEA, MEPM, MEPM-V)
- MEC Applications
- Operations and Business Support Systems: OSS, BSS, Slice Managers
- Test Tools and simulators implementing NFV or MEC APIs.
Organisations interested in actively participating or providing support to the Test Sessions were invited to join the ETSI NFV Plugtests Programme by registering to the NFV&MEC IOP Plugtests 2021. Operators, Research and Academia were also invited to join as observers and contribute to the Test Plans.
The NFV Plugtests Programme was powered by the Hub for Interoperability and Validation at ETSI (HIVE) which interconnects participants’ labs and local test infrastructure at ETSI.
The NFV Plugtests Programme enjoys a diverse community of over 65 organisations active in the NFV and MEC ecosystems, including vendors, operators, academia and supporting open source communities such as ETSI OSM, OpenStack, StarlingX, Kubernetes and AdvantEdge.
The NFV Plugtests Programme activities offer a unique opportunity to exchange, collaborate and make significant progress in NFV and MEC implementations and standards.
ETSI Plugtests are supported by the European Commission and the European Free Trade Association.
Follow the NFV&MEC Plugtests on Twitter with #NFVplugtests, #MECplugtests.
The NFV&MEC IOP Plugtests 2021 offered different types of Test Sessions including:
- NFV Interoperability and API Conformance
- MEC and MEC-in-NFV Interoperability and API Conformance
The Test Plans was based on NFV-TST007, NFV-TST010, NFV-SOL016, MEC017, MEC-DEC025 and MEC-DEC032. The details and concrete scope were discussed and agreed with participants, ISGs NFV and MEC and participating open source communities.
NFV Interoperability sessions focused on manual and automated testing of aspects such as:
- Onboarding, instantiation, termination of Virtualized and Containerized Network Functions
- Life cycle management, network service updates, scaling
- Fault and Performance Management, VNF monitoring and closed-loop operations
The MEC Interoperability session focused on testing MEC functionalities, possibly in NFV deployments, such as:
- Onboarding and instantiation of MEC Applications via the MEC application lifecycle API, MEC Application Support API and MEC Service Management API, MEC UE application interface;
- Local traffic steering capabilities;
- MEC Services availability and consumption based on MEC APIs, with a focus on:
o MEC Radio Network Information API
o MEC Location API
In addition, the API Conformance Test Sessions allowed participants to self-assess the level of conformance of their implementations with NFV and MEC API Specifications such as:
- NFV-SOL002, NFV-SOL003, NFV-SOL005, NFV-SOL009, NFV-SOL011 and NFV-SOL012
- MEC010-2, MEC011, MEC012, MEC013, MEC021, MEC029
- MEC014, MEC015, MEC016
API Conformance testing was based on NFV-TST010 and MEC-DEC032 Specifications and Robot Test Suites.
Participation to the NFV&MEC IOP Plugtests 2021 required to join the ETSI NFV Plugtests Programme and the signature of its non-disclosure agreement (NDA).
- Event registration was mandatory for online representatives and could only be confirmed once the NDA is signed.
The remote event from 1 to 15 October 2021, was preceded by a remote integration and pre-testing phase. Access to the remote test infrastructure was only provided once the NDA was signed. Participation to regular preparatory conf-calls and pre-testing sessions were mandatory.
Participation to ETSI NFV&MEC Plugtests activities is free of charge.
Registration deadline was 15th of July 2021. Participating organisations wishing to add collegues to their team were kindly requested to contact the Plugtests team at plugtests@etsi.org.
This activity is supported by the European Commission and the European Free Trade Association.
Follow the NFV&MEC Remote API Plugtests 2021 on Twitter with #NFVplugtests and #MECplugtests.
NFV&MEC IOP Plugtests 2021
The open conference call was held on Monday 5th of July.
Please find the link to the minutes here.
