This is a continuation from my previous blog on NFV overview. In this blog, I will cover popular NFV solutions in the market. This is not an exhaustive list, these are the NFV solutions that I am aware of. Following are the ones that I will cover:
Network function Virtualization(NFV) refers to Services running on commodity hardware(compute, storage, network) which replaces functions that are done in specialized boxes currently. This applies mainly to Telecom sector, but the same concept can be extended into other areas as well. If we look at current products in the Telecom sector, there are separate hardware systems for each functionality. Examples of these systems are CPE switches, BRAS, LTE, mobile backhaul, firewall, load balancer etc. In all these systems, there is a tight coupling between the software stack and the hardware supplied. This causes multiple issues to the carrier/operator like high capital cost, multiple management systems, dependency on few select vendors etc. In the initial days, one of the reasons for using specialized hardware was that general purpose servers did not have enough horsepower. Newer generation servers pack in a lot of horse power that allows both control and data plane functionality to be done with commodity servers. This in addition to the maturity of Virtualization technologies(compute, storage and network) have made NFV more practically possible now. There will still be some scenarios where it is necessary to use hardware systems with ASICs for high throughput and distributed processing needs etc.
In this blog, I will cover the following:
In the next blog, I will cover popular NFV implementations available in the market today.
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