Communications service providers (CSPs) are modernizing their networks to improve business results, reduce costs and deliver better services to their subscribers. The telecom cloud can have a lot to offer for this transition, but the complexity of deploying telecom cloud infrastructure has to be resolved.
Rakuten Symphony has addressed these inherent complexity challenges through the unique architectural and automation features of its Rakuten Cloud-Native Platform and Cloud-Native Orchestrator designed to simplify delivery and life cycle management of complex telecom networks.
Rakuten Cloud software is designed to run on Intel architecture-based servers, providing an open platform for simplifying the deployment of telecom network functions from multiple vendors, which has the inherent problem of potentially introducing even more complexity into the integration process. To put this issue to rest, Rakuten Symphony joined forces with its longtime partner Dell Technologies to validate its software through a Telecom Blueprint for Rakuten Cloud for a variety of telecom use cases, a complete hardware and software qualification test for Dell Technologies’ PowerEdge servers targeted for telecom infrastructure.
The blueprint will help guide companies that want to take advantage of Rakuten Cloud-Native Platform (CNP) to power their transformation in Core and Open Radio Access Networks (RAN).
Managing a large telecom cloud or sprawling edge compute environment requires automation, orchestration and operational simplification, and Rakuten CNP delivers.
The Rakuten Cloud-Native Platform is a horizontal cloud platform that supports both Containerized Network Functions (CNFs) and Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs). Rakuten CNP simplifies network function deployment, provides a software-defined storage capability to support both stateful and stateless network functions, and has built-in networking enhancements for telecom-class networking. The Rakuten CNP replaces the hours of manual coding and verification with an intuitive and declarative interface that abstracts users from the underlying complexity.
Rakuten Symphony added an Application Workflow manager that automates network functions’ lifecycle starting with a single click or API-driven onboarding of network functions.
The Application Workflow Manager also offers advanced workload placement, ensuring that network functions have access to services they need including NUMA awareness, CPU pinning, HugePages and policy-based affinity / anti-affinity policies.
With these capabilities, complete network services pipelines can be onboarded seamlessly and in minutes. Other parts of the network function lifecycle management are also automated, increasing service deployment agility and further reducing the potential for errors as well as supporting the ongoing reliability, resiliency and stability of the telecom cloud.
Many network functions are stateful including advanced analytics, edge cloud, Open RAN and other services. Rakuten CNP includes Rakuten Cloud-Native Storage (CNS) which creates an extensible high-performance storage service that offers block, file and object services on top of any attached storage to the cluster. Rakuten CNS makes this local storage available to workloads running on central data center and at the edge nodes.
Rakuten CNS delivers advanced network function awareness, high availability, data resiliency, and security that enables customers to migrate their stateful workloads to Rakuten Cloud and transform their core and stateful edge deployments. Rakuten CNS also has a full slate of storage and data management features including snapshots, clones, replication, backup, data rebalancing, tiering, thin provisioning, encryption and compression.
Network functions depend on carrier-grade networking for high throughput with low latency and low jitter. Rakuten CNP supports a wide range of networking interfaces and services. These include per-pod multi-IP network support; SR-IOV underlay networks for high throughput, low jitter and redundancy; Open vSwitch (OVS) underlays; Calico overlays; IPv4 / IPv6 dual stack; persistent IP addresses across starts, stops, heals and migrations; and a built-in load balancer.
Rakuten CNP is ideal for CSPs looking to deploy Open RAN, 5G core, private 5G, edge cloud, and enterprise applications in a secure, multi-tenant and roles-based environment.
The Telecom Blueprint for Rakuten Cloud validation testing took place in the Dell Technologies Open Telecom Ecosystem Lab (OTEL). The OTEL is an amazing resource with a mission to “accelerate and simplify the creation of an open and modern telecom ecosystem as we validate complex end-to-end technical solutions at speed.” The OTEL allows Dell and Dell Technologies Telecom Certified partners to facilitate global collaboration, integration, testing and validation of cloud-native telecom solutions.
For the Telecom Blueprint for Rakuten Cloud testing, Dell and Rakuten Symphony designed a cloud system using Rakuten CNP running on the following servers:
Special consideration was given to very complex features such as NUMA-aware scheduling and affinity/anti-affinity rules. Telecom cloud builders now have a first-hand account of the configuration and advantages of these services.
The testing and validation of Rakuten Cloud on Dell Infrastructure were conducted to ensure the robustness, efficiency and scalability of the cloud architecture. This comprehensive validation process encompassed several critical aspects such as validating and demonstrating the Proof of Architecture and the underlying components, validating the automated deployment and scalability of the cloud infrastructure, and scaling the deployment over supporting compute clusters.
Thanks to the verification of the Telecom Blueprint for Rakuten Cloud, service providers can be confident that they now have a hardware and virtualization platform that, once deployed, is ready for network functions and will work as advertised.
That’s important because building a telecom cloud is a significant undertaking. Rakuten Symphony is committed to working with partners such as Dell Technologies to deliver a telecom cloud solution and experience that takes out as much complexity as possible.
