BRKNMS-2289

NSO for Network Operators

Michael Maddern – Technical Marketing Engineer

Jay Kurji – Solutions Architect
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© 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
Model driven automation of your
entire network
Agenda

• Introduction
• NSO Overview
• NSO for Network Engineers
• NSO for Operations Teams
• NSO for Service Developers
• Conclusion
Cisco Network Services Orchestrator

Open via Northbound APIs Third-Party Network

Applications Engineers
• OSS and BSS
• Third-party applications
• DevOps support NSO Enabled by Tail-f

Service Manager
Agile Automation
• Model driven Device Manager
• Active service/network view
• Any service, any device Multi-vendor Network Element Drivers
• Multi-vendor support

Automated Network Abstraction Physical Networks Virtual Networks Network Apps

• Physical devices
• Virtual devices • VNFM
• Controller apps
• Network applications • EMS, NMS, IPAM, AAA
• ConfD

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A two minute introduction to NETCONF/YANG
NETCONF
Network management protocol specifically designed to support service activation and provisioning.

• Encrypted, efficient transport

• Extensible
• Transactional
• Network-wide

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A two minute introduction to NETCONF/YANG
YANG
Text based data modeling language designed for use with NETCONF.

• Operator friendly
• Precise
• Extensible
• Human readable

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Key Market Trend Observations

Execution at the Changing customer behavior Rapidly changing

speed of software and new expectations business models

• Agility, DevOps, NFV, SDN, • Everything on demand • Cloud services, virtualization,

new services platforms • New services with a press programmable networks
of a button • New ecosystems and
value chains
• OTT Co-opetition

All of this requires successful, flexible automation.

But complexity has destroyed many automation initiatives.

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Departmental Pain Points

Network Engineer Ops and Provisioning Team Service Developers

“Automation” “Customer Experience” “Time-to-Market”

Day-to-day management Provisions services and Develops new network

of rapidly growing, manages service quality services on demand
complex networks in networks
Challenge
Challenges Challenge • Implementation time
• Error-prone manual tasks • No service insight • Cost of change
• Growing backlog • Lack of automation • Lack of tooling
• Virtualization is coming • Quality issues in service delivery

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Transition Towards Automation
Network Engineer Ops and Provisioning Team Service Developers
“Automation” “Customer Experience” “Time-to-Market”

Day-to-day management Provisions services and Develops new

of rapidly growing, manages service quality network services
complex networks in networks
Challenge
Challenge Challenge • Implementation time
• Device configuration tasks • No service insight • Cost of change
• Growing backlog • Lack of automation • Lack of tooling
• Virtualization is coming • Quality issues in service delivery

Network API
Service Abstraction Transformation
Utilize a single interface to all network
Leverage one central API for all services Develop your own services
devices

Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3

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System Overview
Network Engineering Ops and Provisioning Service Developers • Model-driven end-to-end
service lifecycle and
customer experience in focus
NSO
• Seamless integration
with existing and future
Service Manager
Package OSS/BSS environment
CDB Manager
Device Manager • Loosely-coupled and
modular architecture
Device Abstraction ESC (VNFM) leveraging open APIs and
standard protocols

NED NED NED

VNF Lifecycle VNF Service • Orchestration across
Manager Monitoring multi-domain and multi-layer
for centralized policy
and services across
Multi-domain Networks entire network

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Stage #1: The Network API
Network Engineer Ops and Provisioning Team Service Developers
“Automation” “Customer Experience” “Time-to-Market”

Day-to-day management Provisions services and Develops new

of rapidly growing, manages service quality network services
complex networks in networks
Challenge
Challenge Challenge • Implementation time
• Device configuration tasks • No service insight • Cost of change
• Growing backlog • Lack of automation • Lack of tooling
• Virtualization is coming • Quality issues in service delivery

Network API
Service Abstraction Innovation
Utilize a single interface to all
Leverage one central API for all services Develop your own services
network devices

Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3

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 The Network API - Overview

Network Engineering Ops and Provisioning Service Developer

Features in focus:
NSO • Multivendor abstraction
Service Manager through NEDs
Package
CDB Manager • Single data store for all network
Device Manager
elements under management
Device Abstraction ESC (VNFM)
• Multiple interfaces including
NED NED NED
VNF Lifecycle VNF Service CLI, REST, Python
Manager Monitoring
• Templates and
compliance reporting
Multi-domain Networks

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 Multivendor Abstraction Through NEDs

Network Engineering Ops and Provisioning Service Developer A NED abstracts

• Underlying protocol and data-models
NSO • Error-handling

Service Manager The NED computes the ordered

Package
sequence of device-specific
CDB Manager
Device Manager commands to go:
• from current configuration state
Device Abstraction ESC (VNFM)
• to desired configuration state
VNF Lifecycle VNF Service
NED NED NED
Manager Monitoring
Key benefits include: removes the
device adapter problem. Removes
complex device logic from the
Multi-domain Networks service logic

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The Industry’s Broadest Multivendor Support
Over 100 Supported NEDs—Customization Available

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 The Configuration Data Store
Built for speed at scale:
Network Engineering Ops and Provisioning Service Developer • In memory with journaled backend
• YANG is native schema language
NSO • …including when, must, XPath, etc

Service Manager Highly available

Package
Manager
• 1:N hot-standby
CDB
Device Manager • Synchronous and
asynchronous slaves
Device Abstraction ESC (VNFM)
• Slave chaining
VNF Lifecycle VNF Service
NED NED NED
Manager Monitoring
Fully integrated
• Managed through NSO interfaces
• Runs in main process memory
Multi-domain Networks • Automatic versioning of
YANG modules

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Network-wide CLI
• Two flavors of CLI including all main interaction idioms
including control-commands, command-line editing

• Strict separation between operational data and

configuration data

• Range and group operations for performing configuration

changes on sets of devices

• Full AAA (NACM) integration provides policies on both

models and instance data

• Leverages the two-phase commit engine in NSO to provide

all-or-nothing changes including explicit validation stages

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Templates and Compliance Reporting

• Engineering teams create device templates from

device configuration

• Device templates are then manually applied to

groups of devices, reporting diffs

• This process can then be packaged into a

compliance report to produce reports
(plain text, XML, HTML)

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Demo 1
• Device Management
• Multi-vendor
• Dry-run operations
• Rollback

• Interfaces
• CLI
• Web UI

• Device Templates
• SNMP Communities
• Access Lists

• Compliance Reports
 APIs and Language Bindings

• Remember: the northbound APIs are all clients to the same YANG-based datastore

• Many customers start (and build trust) using the CLI, but gradually introduces
e.g. REST for scripting trivial tasks

• Choice of technology tightly related to team background, specific use cases and more

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Network Scripting
• Traditional scripting
• Towards CLI interfaces
• Unstructured / human-orientated
• Complex regular expressions
• Parsing libraries (i.e. Netmiko)
• Manual credential and connection management

• Scripting with NSO

• Structured data (YANG)
• Fast easy-to-use API across all devices
• Transactional guarantees
• Device management

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Demo 2
• NSO ad-hoc scripting
• Python
• Maagic API
Stage #2: Network Service Abstraction
Network Engineer Ops and Provisioning Team Service Developers
“Automation” “Customer Experience” “Time-to-Market”

Day-to-day management Provisions services and Develops new

of rapidly growing, manages service quality network services
complex networks in networks
Challenge
Challenges Challenge • Implementation time
• Device configuration tasks • No service insight • Cost of change
• Growing backlog • Lack of automation • Lack of tooling
• Virtualization is coming • Quality issues in service delivery

Network API
Service Abstraction Innovation
Utilize a single interface to all
Leverage one central API for all services Develop your own services
network devices

Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3

BRKNMS-2289 © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 24
 Network Service Abstraction - Overview

Network Engineering Ops and Provisioning Service Developer Features in focus:

• Full service lifecycle
NSO management
Service Manager
Service
Model • All-or-nothing changes
Package
CDB Manager across devices
Device Manager Device
Model
• Service insight
Device Abstraction ESC (VNFM)
• Orchestrated assurance
VNF Lifecycle VNF Service
NED NED NED
Manager Monitoring

Multi-domain Networks

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 Transactions and Models
The datastore:
Network Engineering Ops and Provisioning Service Developer
• Implements full ACID properties
NSO • Uses YANG as native
schema language
Service Manager
Package • Provides a two-phase commit
CDB Manager
Device Manager protocol towards the network
for distributed atomicity
Device Abstraction ESC (VNFM)

VNF Lifecycle VNF Service

NED NED NED
Manager Monitoring

Multi-domain Networks

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Service Insight
• In order to maintain intent, we need to be able to
answer:
• What is the resulting configuration from this service?
• Which service(s) does this configuration
parameter come from?
• Are the two in sync?

• To support:
• Remedial actions
• Service migration
• Service discovery

• NSO provides full referential integrity between

service and device layers

BRKNMS-2289 © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 27
Demo 3
• MPLS VPN Demo
• Service creation through REST Interface
• Service creation through custom UI / portal
• View device changes
• Out of band changes and re-deploy
Orchestrated Assurance

“To assure what is orchestrated, we must

• Extending the service models with KPI orchestrate assurance”
definitions and SLAs -- Wise Person
• Working with a programmable collector
and correlator

• Allows us to…
- Automate activation tests and service
assurance
- Provide service-level assurance in hybrid
networks

BRKNMS-2289 © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 29
Stage #3 Transformation
Network Engineer Ops and Provisioning Team Service Developers
“Automation” “Customer Experience” “Time-to-Market”

Day-to-day management Provisions services and Develops new

of rapidly growing, manages service quality network services
complex networks in networks
Challenge
Challenges Challenge • Implementation time
• Device configuration tasks • No service insight • Cost of change
• Growing backlog • Lack of automation • Lack of tooling
• Virtualization is coming • Quality issues in service delivery

Network API
Service Abstraction Innovation
Utilize a single interface to all
Leverage one central API for all services Develop your own services
network devices

Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3

BRKNMS-2289 © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 30
 Transformation - Overview

Network Engineering Ops and Provisioning Service Developer

NSO Features in focus

Service Manager
Service
Model • Fully model-driven framework
Package
CDB Manager • Direct and reactive stateful
Device Manager Device
Model convergence of services
Device Abstraction ESC (VNFM)
• Package lifecycle manager
NED NED NED
VNF Lifecycle VNF Service • Suite of design-time
Manager Monitoring
development tools

Multi-domain Networks

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 Model-based Architecture

Network Engineering Ops and Provisioning Service Developer

• NSO assumes nothing about:
NSO - Network services
Service
Service Manager Model - Network devices
Package
Manager
Device Manager
CDB Device
Model
• All data sets strictly defined
Device Abstraction ESC (VNFM)
by YANG models

VNF Lifecycle VNF Service • Tree-to-tree mapping reduces

NED NED NED
Manager Monitoring
coding for lifecycle to
absolute minimum
Multi-domain Networks

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 Model-based Architecture (cont’d)

Network Engineering Ops and Provisioning Service Developer

• Developer owns and versions
formal service definition:
NSO
- Product management defines
Service
Service Manager Model the services
Package
Manager - Infrastructure team deploys and
CDB
Device Manager Device
manages system
Model

Device Abstraction ESC (VNFM) - Ops and Provisioning team

consumes the services
VNF Lifecycle VNF Service
NED NED NED
Manager Monitoring • The Service Model is an exact
black-box specification. Fast
iteration of design-time changes.
Multi-domain Networks

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 Stateful Convergence

Network Engineering Ops and Provisioning Service Developer

• Only create operation needs to

NSO be declared
Service
Service Manager Model
Package
• Update, delete inferred (!)
Device Manager
CDB Device
Manager • Decomposition logic in:
Model
- Service templates for
Device Abstraction ESC (VNFM)
straight mapping
VNF Lifecycle VNF Service - Java, Python for programmatic
NED NED NED
Manager Monitoring mapping (side effects, etc)
- …or a combination of both

Multi-domain Networks

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Demo 4
• MPLS VPN Demo
• Service changes
• Service migration
• Service delete
 Reactive Fastmap

Network Engineering Ops and Provisioning Service Developer

• Events happen in the network

NSO that may impact the service
Service Manager
Service
Model
instances:
Package
CDB Manager - VMs started, moved or
Device Manager Device
destroyed
Model

Device Abstraction ESC (VNFM) - Topology changes

VNF Lifecycle VNF Service • Reactive FastMap calculates

NED NED NED
Manager Monitoring the minimum diff to drive
towards intent
Multi-domain Networks

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NFVO High Level Architecture

VNFD Catalogue
OSS/BSS RFS Services
NSD Catalogue
NFV Orchestrator (NFVO)
NSRs and VNFRs

EM EM EM NFVI Resources

Or-Vnfm
Or-Vi
VNF VNF VNF VNF Manager (VNFM)

NFV Infrastructure (NFVI) Virtual Infrastructure Manager (VIM)

BRKNMS-2289 © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 37
NFVO High Level Architecture Mapping

RFS Services NFV Orchestrator

RFS Provisioning
(NFVO)
and Activation VNFD, NSD Catalogue
NSO NFVO
Cisco NSO NSRs and VNFRs
Component
NFVI Resources

Or-Vnfm
Or-Vi
VNF Manager (VNFM)
VNF VNF VNF
Cisco ESC

NFV Infrastructure (NFVI) Virtual Infrastructure Manager (VIM)

BRKNMS-2289 © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 38
NFV Orchestration Challenges
Lessons Learned

CISCO’S NFVO PROVIDES… …TO AVOID

A flexible software platform with open and Proprietary technologies with specialized
ETSI-aligned architecture and interfaces tooling driving long integration projects

Hard-coded assumptions on VNF design

A fully multi-vendor stack to accelerate
and behavior requiring fundamental
VNF onboarding to smallest effort possible
updates

An integrated set of lifecycle operations on Procedural operations leading to expensive

network service and VNF-level change life cycle

BRKNMS-2289 © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 39
Demo 5
• Virtual MPLS VPN
• NFVO
• Elastic Services Controller
• OpenStack

• Orchestrated Assurance
• Netrounds Control Centre
• Virtual probes
• Activation tests
• Service SLA monitoring
 The Package Manager

Network Engineering Ops and Provisioning Service Developer

Well-defined management of
NSO
packaged applications, including:
Service Manager
Package • Install, upgrade, uninstall
Device Manager
CDB Manager • Strict versioning
• Dependencies resolution
Device Abstraction ESC (VNFM)
• Isolation
NED NED NED
VNF Lifecycle VNF Service • Bundle management
Manager Monitoring
• Distribution across clusters

Multi-domain Networks

BRKNMS-2289 © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 41
Developer Tools and SDK Content

Create Verify Package

• Dev-local multi-vendor • Dev-local multi-vendor • Self-contained and

network simulator network simulator versioned package format
• Full production-grade • Build- and • Hitless package installation
installation in dev runtime validation of and version migration
environments package content
• Local or remote project
• YANG tools including • Offline-tools for and package locations
validator, compiler validating version
• Project tooling for migration
managing package sets

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Review
 Network
Automating Service
What you gain with NSO
Delivery Abstraction

Before: After:
• Time-consuming, manual • 70% operational efficiency
Multi-vendor
provisioning processes increase*
• Days and weeks to implement Network • 60% reduced time to revenue*
new services Orchestration • Optimized service and network
• Poor visibility across network quality through better visibility
Comprehensive lifecycle
during service activations service automation for
hybrid networks

Virtualization
Complexity Simplicity
Made Easy
*Cisco BTA

Cisco Network Services Orchestrator (NSO) enabled by Tail-f

BRKNMS-2289 © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 44
What you gain with NSO
• Agility throughout service lifecycle
− Strict YANG model-driven solution
− Auto-rendered business logic results in 90% less code
− Effortlessly re-deployment of updated service and device models
− DevOps for differentiation
• Full automation
• Robust and proven in tier-1 deployments
• Industry’s broadest multivendor support
• Relevant in today’s and tomorrow’s networks
NSO Architecture Review

OSS/BSS/ Network
Portal Engineer

NETCONF REST JSON-RPC Java/Python/C/Erlang CLI Web UI

NSO
Service Manager Service
Models
Script API
Mapping
Templates
Package Logic
AAA Core Engine
Manager
Developer Fast Map
API
Alarm Manager Notification Receiver Device Manager Device
Models

Network Element Drivers

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NSO DevNet – Key Highlights
The one place to use for sharing, finding and collaborating on NSO public knowledge!

Light start Constant Large Cisco Got a Easy to Code

through news and searchable customers, question, share and sharing
DevNet updates to content pool partners ask! We will find public through
content help you and help ensure content public
page and keep up to employees a fast GitHub
Learning- date all have response
Labs access

Reach it here: www.cisco/go/nsodevnet

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Questions
Cisco Spark
Questions?
Use Cisco Spark to communicate
with the speaker after the session

How
1. Find this session in the Cisco Live Mobile App
2. Click “Join the Discussion”
3. Install Spark or go directly to the space
4. Enter messages/questions in the space

cs.co/ciscolivebot#BRKNMS-2289

© 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public
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Model driven automation of your
entire network

www.cisco/go/nsodevnet
Continue Your Education
• Demos in the Cisco campus
• Walk-in Self-Paced Labs
• Tech Circle
• Meet the Engineer 1:1 meetings
• Related sessions

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Thank you