VMware recently announced the general availability of VMware Telco Cloud Service Assurance.
As part of the VMware Telco Cloud portfolio, VMware Telco Cloud Service Assurance, previously also known as VMware Telco Cloud Operations, is a cross-domain, multi-layer automated assurance solution that enables CSPs to holistically monitor and manage their complex infrastructure and services, from the core to the RAN.
With 20+ years of experience and has validated over 4000 physical networking devices, VMware rebranded its VMware Telco Cloud Operations as VMware Telco Cloud Service Assurance to reflect the evolution of this product. This new generation of VMware Telco Cloud Service Assurance expands its capabilities to address new use cases for end-to-end mobile service assurance, including CaaS assurance, 4G/5G mobile core and RAN assurance.
The solution reduces costs and complexity for Network Operations Centers and Service Operations Centers by providing a single pane of glass for Fault Management, Performance Management, Service Management, Root Cause Analysis and Service Impact Analysis in multi-vendor, multi-cloud environments.
VMware Telco Cloud Service Assurance 2.0 also includes cloud native architecture and data collector framework to support modern network transformation. Besides its build-in Smart data collector, Telco Cloud Service Assurance can collect data from 3rd party monitoring tools, including VMware vRealize Operations for virtual infrastructure and public cloud monitoring. In addition, Telco Cloud Service Assurance 2.0 uses standard ETSI NFV-SOL interface for integration with standard-based orchestrator such as VMware Telco Cloud Automation in this release. Together, our solution enables closed-loop automation and remediation.
End-to-End Assurance from The Mobile Core and Transport to RAN VMware Telco Cloud Service Assurance 2.0 supports end-to-end assurance of the mobile network across all domains (from the core, to the transport, and to the RAN). It also supports multi-layer from physical and virtual infrastructure, xNFs to the service layer to order to meet the SLA and deliver superior service quality for 5G services.
In the Mobile Core Assurance use case, VMware Telco Cloud Service Assurance significantly reduces the time to identify root cause in a multi-domain, multi-vendor core network. By proactively reducing mean-time-to-repair, customer experience levels and SLAs can be maintained.
VMware Telco Cloud Service Assurance provides root cause analysis by correlating events across domains, from the connected network equipment, physical servers, VIM, CaaS, CNFs, to service layers. This is important since, for example, a disconnected cable in a network switch that is connected to a physical server can cause a high severity alarm in a User Plane Function. Without cross-domain correlation, root cause would need to be determined manually by evaluating faults identified by different monitoring tools.
VMware Telco Cloud Service Assurance automatically discovers on-premises and cloud network resources in real-time and creates an end-to-end topology map, as illustrated below, on a single pane of glass. The topology map shows the physical and logical connectivity and relationships between the underlying network infrastructure and the various software components that compose the 5G service.
For RAN use case, VMware Telco Cloud Service Assurance reduces the complexity of managing multi-vendor, distributed and disaggregated, physical and virtual RAN networks. The root cause of problems can be identified and resolved quickly to meet customer quality expectations.
VMware Telco Cloud Service Assurance uses rich sets of data collection techniques to gather fault and performance data from the RAN. Data is gathered from the transport network and physical hardware using built-in collectors. VIM and CaaS data are obtained from VMware vRealize Operations. A new Kafka collector consumes fault and performance metrics from the RAN element management systems.
Events from all the data sources are correlated and analyzed across the RAN in real time to pinpoint the root cause and its impact on 5G services. The physical and logical topology is displayed on a single pane of glass, as shown below.
Since the physical and virtual discovery process is fully automated, when VMware Telco Cloud Automation or other orchestrator deploys a mobile RAN service, it sends a notification to Telco Cloud Service Assurance, which receives the service blueprint and starts the auto discovery process throughout all the layers of the service.
Dr. Mark H Mortensen, Principal Analyst, ACG Research
5G mobile networks demand end-to-end service assurance, but now CSPs need more, assuring the underlying computing layer of virtualized network infrastructure and network control software. VMware Telco Cloud Service Assurance provides that comprehensive, integrated coverage, end-to-end and top-to-bottom, from a vendor with a long history in telco multivendor service assurance and market leadership in virtualized infrastructure.
