Model-driven process enactment for NFV systems with MAPLE

Abstract

The Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) advent is making way for the rapid deployment of network services (NS) for telecoms. Automation of network service management is one of the main challenges currently faced by the NFV community. Explicitly defining a process for the design, deployment, and management of network services and automating it is therefore highly desirable and beneficial for NFV systems. The use of model-driven orchestration means has been advocated in this context. As part of this effort to support automated process execution, we propose a process enactment approach with NFV systems as the target application domain. Our process enactment approach is megamodel-based. An integrated process modelling and enactment environment, MAPLE, has been built into Papyrus for this purpose. Process modelling is carried out with UML activity diagrams. The enactment environment transforms the process model to a model transformation chain, and then orchestrates it with the use of megamodels. In this paper we present our approach and environment MAPLE, its recent extension with new features as well as application to an enriched case study consisting of NS design and onboarding process.Keywords Process Enactment · Megamodelling · Papyrus · Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) IntroductionAutomating the end-to-end management of network services (NS), in other words, enacting the workflow or process for network service management without manual intervention is highly desirable in the telecommunications domain and remains a major challenge for network operators and service providers [11,38]. Network Function Virtualization (NFV) builds on cloud computing and has the ultimate goal of automating provisioning and management of network services -an essential feature for 5G systems. The European Telecom Standards Institute (ETSI) has recently launched a zero-touch network and service management group. As stated in [23], the challenges of 5G will trigger the need for a radical change in the way networks and services are managed and orchestrated.We believe the application of model-driven engineering (MDE) methods and tools is essential to further such developments in the NFV domain [8,31]. MDE advocates the use of models as first class citizens in the engineering process. The models are manipulated via transformations which form the backbone for automation in MDE. ETSI has recently released an information model for NFV [22]. Leveraging these models can substantially benefit the NFV systems by reducing their development and management efforts. Moreover, explicit modelling of the process not only allows for the automation of the NS management process but also paves the way for streamlining and optimization. Such a process model (PM) can potentially be mapped to model transformation chains hence enabling NS management and orchestration via model-driven process enactment [7,20,46]. Previously, we have proposed a model-based process for NS design and deployment [41]. The proposed workflow is compliant with the NFV reference f...

Impact of NFV resources distribution on inter-subnetwork latency

“…Other authors are exploring the possibilities for improvements of the services built upon SDN and NFV using software applications and frameworks [28], [29].…”

“…NFV architecture from a point of software and system modeling is overviewed by M. Sadaf et al [28]. They use MAPLE, an integrated process modelling and enactment environment with traceability information generation and analysis support built into Eclipse Papyrus to review the automation of network service management in NFV and to define an automated process for the design, deployment, and management of network services.…”

A Model Traceability Framework for Network Service Management

“…Prior to this work, a high-level model-based process for NS design, deployment and management [62], and a model-based approach for the design of network services [61] have been proposed. Furthermore, an approach has been proposed to model and enact process models (PM) and has been applied in the NFV domain particularly to the NS design process [59,60]. This approach has been concretized in a tool, MAPLE (MAGIC Process Modelling and Enactment Environment), which uses MDE methods to enact process models.…”

“…MAPLE (MAGIC Process Modelling and Enactment Environment)[60] is an integrated environment for process modelling and enactment. Process modelling is supported with UML Activity Diagrams in Eclipse Papyrus.…”