Mirantis, a provider of an OpenStack distribution, today at the OpenStack Summit 2018 conference announced an effort to certify compatibility of Virtual Network Function (VNF) software running on network function virtualization (NFV) platforms based on the open source software it curates.
VNF are instances of virtual appliances meant to replace physical network appliances. Each VNF needs to be certified to run on an NFV platform based on an implementation of one hypervisor or another. The problem is that not only are VNFs not portable between NFV platforms, each service provider that deploys an NFV platform has their own unique storage and networking underlays.
Mirantis is now promising to individually certify VNFs for every NFV platform built using the software it provides, which includes the NFV platform being rolled out by AT&T. The goal is to make it simpler to build a larger ecosystem of VNFs to run on those NFV platforms to accelerate overall adoption, says Boris Renski, chief marketing officer for Mirantis.
Channel partners and services providers alike have been eagerly awaiting a broad scale transition to software-defined networking enabled by NFV platforms. But service providers have been slow to deploy NFV platforms and then certify compatibility for the VNFs that would theoretically be deployed on them. Today there are plenty of services for testing VNF compatibility, but few of those tests can be relied on when it comes time to deploy a VNF in a production environment.
“There’s only some basic testing in labs being provided,” says Renski.
In the meantime, channel partners may have to wait a little longer before VNF/NFV platforms reinvent how networking and security services are delivered. Service providers such as AT&T have promised that a new era of open networking services will soon be upon us. But for now, there remains a lot of practical issues that still need to get addressed before channel partners will be able to, at scale, profit on those promises.
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