Published: June 29th, 2016

The ongoing partnership between CENGN and OPNFV is resulting in many exciting projects
dealing with the most innovative Network Function Virtualization technologies including
Pharos, JOID, and StorPerf.

CENGN And OPNFV Build Important Partnership

Canada’s Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks (CENGN) and OPNFV share many common goals, including expertise in operating flexible open source test platforms to validate network function virtualization (NFV) and software defined network (SDN) products and services. CENGN joined OPNFV in 2015 as the first associate member, which has led to CENGN’s participation in Pharos, JOID, and StorPerf.

CENGN Pharos Community Lab

Pharos is a NFV testing infrastructure of community labs around the world. These labs are designed for hosting continuous integration, deployment, and testing of the OPNFV platform. The diversity of perspectives across developers, users and vendors participating in these labs is critical to the success of the OPNFV platform. Using Kontron SYMKLOUD converged infrastructure platforms, CENGN and OPNFV have built and are hosting Canada’s first Pharos community test lab at CENGN in Ottawa, Ontario.

The Pharos lab will run different cloud environments and offer performance measurement capabilities as well as functional NFV testing.  Moreover, the lab will be used to ensure OPNFV applicability across architectures, environments and vendors, as well as create robust and interoperable technology releases.

CENGN Hosts OPNFV Interns

CENGN is the first to take advantage of the OPNFV internship program. By utilizing student talent on the Pharos project, we have added additional resources and provided students with valuable industry experience in NFV technologies.

Our Main Objective

CENGN’s main objective for OPNFV is to help develop network function virtualization infrastructure (NFVi) solutions that are fit for deployment. By contributing to OPNFV’s goals  for NFVi deployment, CENGN cements itself as a leader in next generation networks as well as provides the necessary support for bleeding edge innovation and proof of concepts (PoCs) in NFV technology.

“CENGN was the first associate member of OPNFV and we look forward to further contributing to OPNFV and its objectives. Building on our expertise, CENGN will investigate new features, functions and deployable OPNFV releases that can be integrated into our industry-led Proof-of-Concept projects.” – Ritch Dusome, President & CEO, CENGN

PHAROS LABS in the Next Generation Network Landscape

•   The Pharos Project includes 11 existing member company labs spanning North America, Europe and Asia
•   The Linux Foundation hosts an OPNFV infrastructure lab used primarily for continuous integration (CI), build and release deployment/testing
•   Pharos was instrumental for deployment and testing of both OPNFV’s Arno and Brahmaputra releases.

PHAROS Project Goals:

• Facilitate collaborative testing across scenarios that conform to a baseline OPNFV specification (compute, network and storage   requirements)
• Provide developers with substantial resources for early testing within realistic NFV environments via an open, consistent,   repeatable test domain
• Help ensure OPNFV applicability across architectures, environments and vendors through a collection of diverse labs and a broad range of hardware
• Help create more robust, interoperable releases

CENGN Pharos Lab

Lab Infrastructure:

• First POD is built with Kontron SYMKLOUD MS2910 Platform
• Openstack configuration: HA with 3 Control Nodes + 2 Compute Nodes • SSH-based access to CENGN environment + Jumpserver for Pharos POD (Installer, Jenkins slave etc)

First Project:

• Brahmaputra Release NFVi deployment with JOID (Juju OPNFV Infrastructure Deployer)
• Verification using  Project FUNCTEST scripts

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About the Author

CENGN, Canada’s Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks, drives technology innovation and industry growth through our testbed, technical expertise, talent development, and partner ecosystem. Through our projects, CENGN enables small and medium Canadian Enterprises to test and validate promising technologies, removing barriers to product commercialization and accelerating market growth.

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