Trinath Somanchi, NXP, Prasad Gorja, NXP Tacker is an OpenStack community project complementing the VNFM and NFVO modules of ETSI NFV E2E architecture. Moving forward, making VNFs as first class citizens in the NFV world, more capabilities are to be added to VNFM like enhanced service assurance, Network service level VNF forwarding graph and multisite VNF management. Tacker is now advancing with new features while aligning with ETSI NFV E2E architecture to provide best in class services for telcos. This session gives a idea about new features proposed into Pike release.

2. OpenStack Tacker
Moving into Pike
Prasad Gorja
Trinath Somanchi

3. Session Outline
• Introduction.
• Features - Today.
• Pike release – In progress.
• Get involved.
• Q&A.

4. Introduction
Tacker – Official OpenStack
project for NFV Orchestration
and VNF Management using
standards based architectures.
Current version: 0.7.0
Release - Ocata
Operation Support Systems
Business Support Systems
Compute Storage Network
Virtualization Layer
Compute
Virtualization
Storage
Virtualization
Network
Virtualization
Vi-Ha
EMS - 1 EMS - 2 EMS - n
VNF - 1 VNF - 2 VNF - n
Orchestrator
Orchestrat
or
Orchestrat
or
VNF
Manager(s)
Virtualized
Infrastructure
Manager(s)
Vn-Nf
Service, VNF, Infrastructure
Description
Os-Ma
Se-Ma
Ve-Vnfm
Or-Vnfm
Or-Vi
Vi-Vnfm
Nf-Vi
NFVI

5. Project Overview
• Started on NFV Orchestration early 2015
• Announced in OpenStack Vancouver Summit – May, 2015
• First release in Kilo with basic VNF life-cycle management
• Second release in Liberty with Monitoring Framework
• Accepted into OpenStack Big-Tent in March, 2016
• Part of official OpenStack Mitaka.
• Closely work with OPNFV and standards bodies like ETSI NFV and
OASIS TOSCA

6. Tacker Stackalytics - Pike
Contribution by companies

7. Features
• VNF Catalog ○ repository of VNF descriptors (VNFDs) in a database
• VNF Instantiation and Termination using Heat ○ TOSCA to Heat translation in Tacker
• VNF Configuration injection during instantiation, update and restart.
• Loadable VNF specific mgmt-driver.
• Loadable per-VNF Health Monitoring.
• Self Healing according to VNFD policy
• VNF Forwarding graph with Neutron networking-sfc driver.
• Alarm based monitoring driver using Celiometer.
• VNF auto scaling (alarm monitor based) and manual scaling.
• Support for shell scripts in TOSCA templates to install VNFCs.
• Network Service Descriptor support in Tacker to provide a end-to-end TOSCA based
network service.
• Support VNF create with direct VNFD template input via CLI/API without onboarding
VNFD.
Reference: https://www.slideshare.net/OPNFV/summit-16-openstack-tacker-open-platform-for-nfv-orchestration

8. On going work - Pike
• Scalable VIM monitoring using Mistral.
• Scalable VNF monitoring using Mistral.
• Persistent block storage in Tacker TOSCA.
• Securing VIM credentials using Barbican.
• OpenStack client support.
… and more to come

9. Scalable VNF monitoring using Mistral
• Tacker server will generate a VNF monitoring workflow and execute it if there is
a VNF configured with monitor policies. The workflow and execution will be
removed once the monitored target VDU is removed.
• Monitor actions cannot access tacker database directly, so we introduce a
conductor server to do database access for the mistral actions.
• Mistral does not stop long-live running action even if the workflow execution is
deleted. So when the workflow is removed, the VNFM plugin will kill the mistral
action via MSG queue.

10. Scalable VIM monitoring using Mistral
• Tacker server will generate a VIM reachability workflow and execute it if there is
a VNF configured with monitor policies. The workflow and execution will be
removed once the monitored VIM is removed.
• Monitor actions cannot access tacker database directly, so we introduce a
conductor server to do database access for the mistral actions.
• Mistral does not stop long-live running action even if the workflow execution is
deleted. Conductor based checking must be deployed to check the status.

11. Persistent block storage in Tacker TOSCA
• A New feature for Tacker. There is no storage related attributes in TOSCA
templates.
• HEAT support Block Storage.
• Instance boot from image with a new created volume attached.
• Instance boot for Volume.

12. Securing VIM credentials using Barbican
• VIM registration in Tacker requires VIM credentials to be stored in the
database.
• Keystone Fernet keys are used to encrypt the passwords before storing to DB.
• Tacker across the nodes need a centralized solution to store the keys.
• OpenStack Barbican to store the cryptographic keys.

13. OpenStack client support
• All OpenStack projects are moving for one client – OpenStack Client
(OSC).
• All the individual commands are moved as plugins.
• Tacker Client moved to a one OpenStack Client tent.

14. Get Involved
Meet Tacker ?
IRC: #tacker
Weekly meetings: #openstack-meeting 0430 UTC.
Mailing list: [openstack][tacker]
Resources
Tacker wiki - https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Tacker
Tacker Documentation - http://docs.openstack.org/developer/tacker/
Tacker Blueprints / Specs - http://specs.openstack.org/openstack/tacker-specs/