Sophia Antipolis, 29 January 2024

The ETSI Industry Specification Group for Network Functions Virtualization (ISG NFV) has just published its specifications of version 4.5.1 (except for NFV006, which is to be published separately). In this version, container-related functionalities have been completed (such as the support for container cluster management), and new features have been added, both in stage 2 and stage 3 (such as flexible VNF deployment, certificate management and fault management model). Version 4.5.1 is the final for NFV Release 4 and version 4.6.1 is only maintenance.

The enhancements of the architecture enable the NFV framework to support Certificate Management Function (CMF) and Intent Management (IM). Certificate Management strengthens the security of both communication between VNFs and communication between NFV-MANOs internally, and enables certificate verification in multi-vendor environment. Intent Management helps NFV-MANO to support intent based management interfaces between the NFVO and its consumers.

In addition, stage 2 version 4.5.1 specifications include support to Fault Management model to unify alarms type, interface between CIS Cluster Management (CCM) and Virtualised Infrastructure Manager (VIM), and the new Flexible VNF deployment feature.

The stage 3 specifications related to the support for containerized workloads have been enhanced e.g.: to strengthen security and to provide guidance via MANO procedures. The new stage 3 CIS Cluster Management (CCM) specification, enhancement of existing interfaces to support Certificate Management, and new Flexible VNF deployment feature are part of this version.

A subset of other specifications:

ETSI GS NFV-IFA 045 specifies an information model for alarms associated to the objects that are managed by NFV-MANO. It provides related use cases, illustrating also the correlation of fault information and the use of the information in fault management processes.

ETSI GS NFV-IFA 050 specifies intent management service interface, including interface requirements, service requirements, operations and their associated information model.

ETSI GS NFV-IFA 052 specifies interfaces and information elements exchanged between the CCM and VIM to support the provisioning and management of infrastructure resources for CIS clusters.

ETSI GS NFV-SOL 020 profiles the reference Kubernetes® Cluster API as NFV protocol and data model solution for Container Infrastructure Service Cluster Management. Furthermore, ETSI GS NFV-SOL 020 provides an analysis of the open-source solutions based on the CCM service interface requirements, such as Terraform, Kubespray, Crossplane and OpenStack Tacker.

The NFV Release 4 has been completed with:

• ETSI GS NFV-IFA 026 and ETSI GS NFV-IFA 033, enhanced with functional requirements and specification of certificate management
• ETSI GS NFV-SOL 016 which provide enhancements to the NFV-MANO procedures
• The re-publication of ETSI GS NFV-SOL 010 with the support of the VNF snapshot package.