Ericsson Cloud Execution Environment is designed to meet telecom grade needs, e.g.

on security, high availability, high throughput with low latency, trusted tenant
isolation and more. These requirements are met by the following key features:

Highly secure VIM through pre-hardening and benchmarked with CIC-CAT Level 2 –
exceeding 80% success rate
Compute Monitoring High Availability (CMHA)
Controller and northbound API high availability with triplicated planes
High throughput with low latency through OVS/DPDK, SR-IOV, and PF-PT (Physical
Function Pass Through)
Fully automated VIM deployment
O&M interfaces supporting SNMP trap, 3GPP PM reports (xml), In Service Performance
API
Tenant network management through Cloud SDN

The NFV-MANO architectural framework identifies the following NFV-MANO functional

blocks:
• Virtualised Infrastructure Manager (VIM).
• NFV Orchestrator (NFVO).
• VNF Manager (VNFM).
NFV-MANO architectural framework identifies the following data repositories:
• NS Catalogue.
• VNF Catalogue.
• NFV Instances repository.
• NFVI Resources repository.
The NFV-MANO architectural framework identifies the following functional blocks
that share reference points with
NFV-MANO:
• Element Management (EM).
• Virtualised Network Function (VNF).
• Operation System Support (OSS) and Business System Support functions (BSS).
• NFV Infrastructure (NFVI).
The NFV-MANO architectural framework identifies the following main reference
points:
• Os-Ma-nfvo, a reference point between OSS/BSS and NFVO.
• Ve-Vnfm-em, a reference point between EM and VNFM.
• Ve-Vnfm-vnf, a reference point between VNF and VNFM.
• Nf-Vi, a reference point between NFVI and VIM.
• Or-Vnfm, a reference point between NFVO and VNFM.
• Or-Vi, a reference point between NFVO and VIM.
• Vi-Vnfm, a reference point between VIM and VNFM.

The deployment and operational behaviour of each VNF is captured in a template

called Virtualised Network Function
Descriptor (VNFD) that is stored in the VNF catalogue.

NS Catalogue
The NS Catalogue represents the repository of all of the on-boarded Network
Services, supporting the creation and
management of the NS deployment templates (Network Service Descriptor (NSD),
Virtual Link Descriptor (VLD), and
VNF Forwarding Graph Descriptor (VNFFGD) via interface operations exposed by the
NFVO. Clause 6 describes in
detail the type of information elements captured in the mentioned descriptors.

VNF Catalogue
The VNF Catalogue represents the repository of all of the on-boarded VNF Packages,
supporting the creation and
management of the VNF Package (VNF Descriptor (VNFD), software images, manifest
files, etc.) via interface
operations exposed by the NFVO. Both NFVO and VNFM can query the VNF Catalogue for
finding and retrieving a
VNFD, to support different operations (e.g. validation, checking instantiation
feasibility). Clause 6 describes in detail
the type of information elements captured in the VNFD.

NFV Instances repository

The NFV Instances repository holds information of all VNF instances and Network
Service instances. Each VNF
instance is represented by a VNF record, and each NS instance is represented by an
NS record. Those records are
updated during the lifecycle of the respective instances, reflecting changes
resulting from execution of NS lifecycle
management operations and/or VNF lifecycle management operations. This supports
NFVO's and VNFM's
responsibilities in maintaining the integrity and visibility of the NS instances,
respectively VNF instances, and the
relationship between them. Clause 6 describes in detail the type of information
elements captured in the NS record and
VNF record.

NFVI Resources repository

The NFVI Resources repository holds information about available/reserved/allocated
NFVI resources as abstracted by
the VIM across operator's Infrastructure Domains, thus supporting information
useful for resources reservation,
allocation and monitoring purposes. As such, the NFVI Resources repository plays an
important role in supporting
NFVO's Resource Orchestration and governance role, by allowing NFVI
reserved/allocated resources to be tracked
against the NS and VNF instances associated with those resources (e.g. number of
VMs used by a certain VNF instance
at any time during its lifecycle).

Element management (EM)

The Element Management is responsible for FCAPS management functionality for a VNF.
This includes:
• Configuration for the network functions provided by the VNF.
• Fault management for the network functions provided by the VNF.
• Accounting for the usage of VNF functions.
• Collecting performance measurement results for the functions provided by the VNF.
• Security management for the VNF functions.
The EM may be aware of virtualisation and collaborate with the VNF Manager to
perform those functions that require
exchanges of information regarding the NFVI Resources associated with the VNF.