Monitoring Network Function Virtualization Infrastructure (NFVI) with Zenoss

 

Network Function Virtualization allows telecommunications and network companies to offer their business services on a virtualized IT infrastructure. Monitoring the underlying Network Function Virtualization Infrastructure (NFVI) is essential for ensuring the availability of all business services and providing efficient performance for such services. Zenoss can be used to monitor NFVI using APIs and Zenpacks built for the NFVI layer.

 

Network Function Virtualization Architecture

The following figure shows the high-level block diagram of the Network Function Virtualization commonly deployed across Telecommunications and Networking Companies.

  • VNF – A software implementation of any network function that can be mapped to NFVI
  • NFVI – The NFV infrastructure is a combination of software and hardware elements that enables virtualization. NFVI is scalable and can span across multiple locations
  • MANO – Management and Orchestration framework for controlling the managing NFVI and VNF layers

Network Function Virtualization Infrastructure (NFVI)

NFVI usually consists of the following components:

  • VIM - Virtual Infrastructure Manager is the management software for virtualizing the underlying physical infrastructure and creating virtual compute, virtual storage and virtual network components as needed for the deployment
  • Physical Hardware - Virtual Infrastructure Manager is the management software for virtualizing the underlying physical infrastructure and creating virtual compute, virtual storage and virtual network components as needed for the deployment
  • Virtual Infrastructure Components -

Role of RedHat OpenStack (RHOSP) in NFVI

OpenStack technology is commonly used as the technology platform for creating the virtual infrastructure in NFVI. OpenStack has a complete library of services that can be launched on top of the NFVI to create networking infrastructure.

Following are some examples of Services available on OpenStack

  • Nova – for virtual compute server
  • Neutron – for virtual networking
  • Cinder – for block storage
  • Volumes – for storage and disk volumes

Zenoss Monitoring for NFVI

Zenoss monitoring tool can be used to monitoring the Network Function Virtualization Infrastructure based on the RedHat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP). This can be achieved using a combination of Monitoring APIs in OpenStack and Zenoss plugins (or Zenpacks) developed for OpenStack.

Altnix has implemented the monitoring of OpenStack using the Zenoss monitoring tool. With this approach, it is now possible to monitor NFVI using Zenoss monitoring tool.

Services from Altnix

Altnix provides complete consulting, implementation, and maintenance services for Zenoss based monitoring of NFVI.