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Dell Infra Block RAN 1.0 Software Architecture Guide PDF

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Summary of Content for Dell Infra Block RAN 1.0 Software Architecture Guide PDF

Dell Technologies Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River Architecture Guide

Version 1.0

Abstract

The guide describes Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River's architecture.

Dell Technologies Solutions

November 2022 Rev. 01

Notes, cautions, and warnings

NOTE: A NOTE indicates important information that helps you make better use of your product.

CAUTION: A CAUTION indicates either potential damage to hardware or loss of data and tells you how to avoid

the problem.

WARNING: A WARNING indicates a potential for property damage, personal injury, or death.

2022 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. All rights reserved. Dell Technologies, Dell, and other trademarks are trademarks of Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. Other trademarks may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Chapter 1: Introduction to Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River...................................... 4 Summary................................................................................................................................................................................ 4 Audience................................................................................................................................................................................ 4 Scope......................................................................................................................................................................................4 Value....................................................................................................................................................................................... 4 Terminology...........................................................................................................................................................................5 We value your feedback.....................................................................................................................................................5

Chapter 2: Architecture of Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River .................................... 6 Architectural overview....................................................................................................................................................... 6 Deployment overview......................................................................................................................................................... 7 Infrastructure Blocks.......................................................................................................................................................... 9 Bare Metal Orchestrator .................................................................................................................................................10 Wind River Studio............................................................................................................................................................... 11

Wind River Cloud Platform......................................................................................................................................... 11 Wind River Conductor.................................................................................................................................................12

Customer Information Questionnaires.......................................................................................................................... 12 Servers required for Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River deployment.............................................. 14 Validated hardware components....................................................................................................................................15 Required hypervisors, operating systems, applications, and files.......................................................................... 16

Chapter 3: Use Cases for Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River...................................... 18 Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River use cases........................................................................................ 18

Chapter 4: Design Guidelines for Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River...........................19 Guidance for National Data Centers............................................................................................................................. 19 Guidance for Regional Data Centers............................................................................................................................. 19 Guidance for Cell Sites.................................................................................................................................................... 20

Contents

Contents 3

Introduction to Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River

Topics:

Summary Audience Scope Value Terminology We value your feedback

Summary

Dell believes that digital transformation is a key initiative for telecommunications customers, and that how to effectively manage infrastructure is a key strategic decision required for successful transformation. Dell Technologies combines telecom-grade hardware and software products with consultancy and professional services to provide flexibility in tailoring solutions to meet telecom workload needs.

Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River addresses the challenge of deploying and managing a physically distributed, ultra- low-latency, cloud-native infrastructure. Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River combines Dell Technologies PowerEdge servers, Dell Technologies Bare Metal Orchestrator, Wind River Cloud Platform, and plug-ins that integrate Wind River Conductor with Bare Metal Orchestrator to create an autonomous and orchestrated radio access network (RAN) solution for several server nodes.

Audience

This guide is for Dell Professional Services Consulting, Dell Pre-Sales Consultants, customer site planners, and customer network planners.

Scope

This architecture guide provides an overview of the Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River solution. It details the Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River design architecture and core components such as server orchestration. This guide focuses on:

Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River architecture. It does not cover installation, upgrade, administration, or repair procedures.

The user experience as it relates to the Customer Information Questionnaire completion and fulfillment. Design guidelines to size the Regional Data Center management plane and Cell Site radio access network domains.

Value

Dell provides a validated configuration with Wind River by performing continuous integration testing to reduce operator integration costs and ensure a consistent deployment of Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind Rivers hardware and software stack. Dell automates the deployment and lifecycle management of a telecom-grade cloud platform and provides the flexibility to choose the best and most cost-effective cloud platform to meet a broad range of workload requirements. Dell and Wind River

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4 Introduction to Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River

worked together to create their Telecom Infrastructure Blocks, which are foundational building blocks that are co-engineered to meet specific workload requirements at a defined scale, integrated in Dells factories, and backed with a unified support model from Dell.

Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River provides communication service providers with:

Proven interoperability with co-engineered solutions that have been rigorously tested and validated for carrier-grade performance from the core to the far edge

Optimized hardware and Wind River Studio Operator and Dell Bare Metal Orchestrator configurations for radio access network use cases

Telecom-grade support and services delivering the SLAs required by communication service providers

Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River can help your organization:

Lower operating costs by minimizing operator integration requirements, automating manual tasks, and reducing time spent on fault, configuration, and security management

Meet service level agreements by ensuring a consistent, telecom-grade deployment or upgrade of leading cloud platforms that meet stringent performance and availability requirements and are backed by a unified support model for the entire cloud stack

Accelerate service delivery while simplifying the procurement, deployment, lifecycle management, and support of a telecom cloud

Terminology

Bare Metal Orchestrator

An infrastructure management solution that enables communication service providers to rapidly provision, manage, and monitor their infrastructure.

Cell Sites Cell Sites are the lightweight first aggregation point for distributed radio access networks.

Containers as a Service (CaaS)

Containers as a Service layer on bare metal hardware.

Customer Information Questionnaire (CIQ)

CIQs are populated with customer data and are used to set up the National and Regional Data Centers and Cell Sites. This data includes physical locations, credentials, server details, and network details.

Dell Telecom Multi-Cloud Foundation (DTMCF)

An engineered system designed to simplify procuring, deploying, managing, and supporting a telecommunications cloud.

Life cycle management (LCM)

Deployment LCM is related to various infrastructure states including deploying, scaling vertically and horizontally, upgrading, maintaining, decommissioning, patching, hardware profile upgrading and patching, and managing firmware and software versions.

National Data Center (NDC)

Hosts the subscriber and non-subscriber databases, data repositories, and software related to network management, continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) automation, and service assurance.

Regional Data Center (RDC)

Serves as the aggregation point of multiple Cell Sites. It hosts some of the centralized radio access network software and Control Plane functions. It also provides the DHCP, DNS, and NTP services.

We value your feedback

Dell Technologies and the authors of this document welcome your feedback on the solution and the solution documentation. Contact the Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River team by email.

Authors: Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River team

NOTE: The following website provides additional documentation for Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River: Infra

Block for RAN Product Support.

Introduction to Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River 5

Architecture of Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River

Topics:

Architectural overview Deployment overview Infrastructure Blocks Bare Metal Orchestrator Wind River Studio Customer Information Questionnaires Servers required for Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River deployment Validated hardware components Required hypervisors, operating systems, applications, and files

Architectural overview The Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River solution is an engineered, fully-supported telecommunications stack for radio access network (RAN) and far edge use cases. Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River offers customers a zero-touch, end-to-end Wind River stack deployment.

Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River's four key components

1. Infrastructure Block managementthe control and management plane that is deployed across the National Data Center (NDC), Regional Data Center (RDC), and Cell Sites.

2. Infrastructure Block Data Plane payloadthe RAN stack deployed at the Cell Sites to accommodate user traffic between controllers.

3. Customer Information Questionnaire (CIQ)customer network domain information that is used to create the NDC, RDC, and Cell Sites.

4. Wind River Conductor user interfacethe user interface that drives the deployment workflows, provides deployment and steady state operational status through events, alarms, and notifications.

Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River's five management components

1. Wind River Conductorthe resource orchestrator and main entry for the workflow blueprint. 2. Wind River Cloud Platformthe Wind River Containers as a Service (CaaS) layer. 3. Bare Metal Orchestratorinfrastructure management solution that enables communication service providers (CSPs) to

rapidly provision, manage, and monitor their infrastructure. 4. Bare Metal Orchestrator plug-inenables Wind River Conductor to communicate with Bare Metal Orchestrator. 5. Wind River Conductor plug-indeploys the Wind River stack.

The Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River deployment workflow automatically deploys the network functions virtualization (NFV) stack to the bare metal servers at the RDC and Cell Sites. The NFV stack is deployed in a fully operational ready state. Once the customer's NFV stack is ready, the customer can deploy workloads into the Cell Sites and begin deployment life cycle management (LCM). This autonomous deployment functionality is one of the Day-0 and Day-1 capabilities that lowers CSP operational costs.

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6 Architecture of Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River

The Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River network is fully distributed from the core to the far edge and Cell Sites. This network uses a hierarchical tree structure with a National Data Center (NDC) as the core data center, and a Regional Data Center (RDC) and Cell Sites as the subsequent components in the tree structure.

The following figure depicts the overall customer target network topology and the high level of the deployment process.

Figure 1. Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River network topology and deployment workflows

This network topology enables Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River to scale by adding sites without making modifications to the service code. A region and sites infrastructure can be scaled up. You can deploy additional sites in a region and add them to the cloud service as additional resources.

The logical distributed architecture is mapped to the CSP's physical network domains infrastructure. Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River is deployed in a CSP's operational environment based on the telecommunications hierarchical network domains NDC, RDC, and Cell Sites.

Deployment overview

The National Data Center (NDC) deployment is custom built. Dell Professional Consulting Services, based on the customer's NDC CIQ data, installs the Infrastructure Block Management cluster. After the NDC Infrastructure Block management cluster is installed, the deployment automation workflow deploys the Infrastructure Block Management cluster in the Regional Data Center (RDC) and the Infrastructure Block compute cluster at the Cell Sites.

The NDC management cluster deployment starts with deploying the Bare Metal Orchestrator Global Controller on the ESXi cluster. Next, the Global Controller assists with deploying the Bare Metal Orchestrator remote site at the RDC, as well as discovering the RDC and Cell Site servers and server components.

Cell Sites are dispersed across a communication service provider's (CSP's) geographical area. You can have up to 1000 Cell Sites in a geographical area. Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River uses one RDC. The number of Cell Sites in a geographical area determines the amount of racks and equipment in the RDC. In addition to the base number of racks, one extra rack is placed and equipped in the RDC for redundancy.

Wind River Conductor is deployed onto Wind River Cloud Platform, and once installed it establishes a communication path with the Bare Metal Orchestrator Global Controller. The Bare Metal Orchestrator Global Controller provides Wind River Conductor with additional information regarding the RDC and Cell Site resources. Based on this information, Wind River Conductor deploys Wind River Cloud Platform components on the RDC and Cell Sites.

The deployment hierarchy and stack deployment workflow are depicted in the following figures.

Architecture of Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River 7

Figure 2. Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River hierarchy

Figure 3. Bare Metal Orchestrator and Wind River stack deployment workflow

The Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River topology in the CSP's area is depicted in the following figure.

8 Architecture of Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River

Figure 4. Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River topology

Infrastructure Blocks

Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River integrates Wind River Cloud Platform, Dell Bare Metal Orchestrator, Dell servers, and customer networks to create a Dell Telecom Infrastructure Block. The complete Infrastructure Block provides a factory- integrated system for radio access network (RAN), centralized unit (CU), and distributed unit (DU) configurations and Cell Site controller configurations.

Figure 5. Telecom Infrastructure Block structure

Architecture of Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River 9

Bare Metal Orchestrator Bare Metal Orchestrator is an infrastructure management solution that enables communication service providers (CSPs) to rapidly provision, manage, and monitor their infrastructure.

Bare Metal Orchestrator provides different interfaces for end-to-end infrastructure management and monitoring. Bare Metal Orchestrator works with the baseboard management controller and supports role-based access control, site management, multitenancy, user management, hardware discovery and provisioning, server and switch management, operating system and firmware management, health monitoring, and telemetry collection.

Management

As the hardware infrastructure manager, Bare Metal Orchestrator manages hardware components and serves as the single source for hardware infrastructure status information. In Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River, Bare Metal Orchestrator manages Infrastructure Block hardware at the Regional Data Center (RDC) and Cell Sites. Bare Metal Orchestrator does not manage hardware at the National Data Center (NDC), which includes the hardware that Bare Metal Orchestrator and Wind River Conductor run on.

Bare Metal Orchestrator also provides switch configuration for Dell and Cisco switches, uses DHCP to assign IP addresses, and configures iDRAC operations, administration, and management.

The Bare Metal Orchestrator Global Controller is installed on-site as part of the NDC configuration. The Global Controller is installed separately from other components. Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River cannot function until the Global Controller installation and deployment is complete.

Bare Metal Orchestrator site controllers are optional, and can be installed in the RDC to assist with scaling. If installed, the site controllers are configured to work with the Global Controller at the NDC to orchestrate hardware.

Discovery

For most operations, Bare Metal Orchestrator takes directions from and reports status to Wind River Conductor. If you are using DHCP, Bare Metal Orchestrator automatically detects hardware as it comes online. This setting is configurable. If enabled, Bare Metal Orchestrator detects and provides temporary IP addresses to new hardware as it comes online, making these devices available to Wind River Conductor as part of an unassigned resources pool. If disabled, Bare Metal Orchestrator only detects and adds devices to the unassigned resources pool on demand when instructed to scan for devices by Wind River Conductor. Bare Metal Orchestrator can also discover devices by scanning IP addresses. This process is initiated by Wind River Conductor.

Bare Metal Orchestrator does not apply settings or configure discovered hardware until it is instructed to do so by Wind River Conductor. Then Bare Metal Orchestrator applies hardware profiles to the devices specified by Wind River Conductor.

Monitoring

During normal operation, Bare Metal Orchestrator monitors infrastructure hardware and Wind River Conductor can request hardware status when needed. However, Bare Metal Orchestrator does not automatically alert or notify Wind River Conductor of events.

Bare Metal Orchestrator supports a heartbeat mechanism, initiated by Wind River Conductor, to ensure Wind River Conductor and Bare Metal Orchestrator can communicate and perform their functions. In the event this heartbeat fails, Bare Metal Orchestrator does not perform any new operations until the heartbeat is re-established. Any operations already underway are completed.

Narrowband components like Wind River Conductor detect heartbeat failures and cease further transaction and interaction with Bare Metal Orchestrator until it is back online. Narrowband components periodically poll Bare Metal Orchestrator to check its status and register once it is reachable and operational. Once it is, Bare Metal Orchestrator runs ongoing operations, makes API calls, and sends and returns responses.

Upgrades

Bare Metal Orchestrator upgrades must be applied without causing service downtime for Wind River Conductor, unless explicitly managed or mandated by a customer. If the upgrade fails, Bare Metal Orchestrator rolls back to the currently running version.

10 Architecture of Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River

For upgrade compatibility, no API can be changed, replaced, or deprecated in a single release. This means Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River is not impacted if Bare Metal Orchestrator upgrades but Wind River Conductor fails, or if upgrades are not properly coordinated. Bare Metal Orchestrator reports API version information to assist with compatibility determination. API versions and other relevant information are exchanged as part of the registration process. There is no separate Bare Metal Orchestrator action for API version reporting.

Wind River Studio

Wind River Studio is a cloud-native platform for the development, deployment, operations, and servicing of mission-critical intelligent edge systems that require security, safety, and reliability. It consists of three software applications: Wind River Studio Analytics, Wind River Cloud Platform, and Wind River Conductor.

Wind River Studio Analytics simplifies the monitoring management of a distributed edge cloud at scale by collecting and processing data across the network to produce meaningful insights for decision-making

Wind River Cloud Platform is an open source, production-grade distributed Kubernetes solution for managing edge cloud infrastructure

Wind River Conductor provides a single interface to manage and automate application deployment in a large-scale, distributed environment

Wind River Cloud Platform

Wind River Cloud Platform provides an integrated and ready-to-deploy cloud native platform that is deployed on dedicated servers across a communication service provider's network.

Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River supports standard all-in-one (AIO) simplex (SX) and AIO duplex (DX) Wind River Cloud Platform 21.12 deployments. The Wind River Cloud Platform deployment is divided into multiple regions, or sites. These regions include the system controller, or Central Site, and the subclouds, or Cell Sites.

The system controller, or Central Site, provides orchestration and synchronization services for up to 1000 distributed subclouds, or Cell Sites. There are three types of system controller components: Controller-0, Controller-1, and Worker-0 through n. Controller-0 and Controller-1 components are mandatory for an AIO DX deployment. The system controller is deployed on Bare Metal Orchestrator's Global Controller site.

The subclouds, or Cell Sites, are geographically distributed edge sites of various sizes. There are three types of Cell Site deployments: AIO SX, AIO DX, or AIO DX + workers. Subclouds require at least one server for a standard AIO SX deployment. Subclouds are deployed on Bare Metal Orchestrator remote worker sites.

As the Container as a Service (CaaS) manager, Wind River Cloud Platform is responsible for the software infrastructure layer at both the Regional Data Center (RDC) and at the Cell Sites. Like Bare Metal Orchestrator, Wind River Cloud Platform does not manage components at the National Data Center (NDC). Unlike Bare Metal Orchestrator, Wind River Cloud Platform does not run at the NDC.

Wind River Cloud Platform installation

Wind River Cloud Platform is installed as a cluster on three PowerEdge R750 servers at the RDC. The cluster is used as the system controller. The system controller acts as the CaaS manager, and it acts as a single endpoint for all the Wind River Cloud Platform nodes running at Cell Sites. The system controller nodes have two redundant controllers and at least one worker node. In case a virtual centralized unit (vCU) is also running in the RDC, then more worker nodes may be required. The default position is running the vCU and virtual distributed units (vDU) at the Cell Sites.

The system controller's Controller-0 is installed by Wind River Conductor, which is running at the NDC. Once Controller-0 is installed, Wind River Conductor initiates the remote bootstrap, followed by a remote call to the deployment manager. The deployment manager runs on the system controller. The deployment manager finishes the configuration on Controller-0, and then installs Controller-1 and any workers.

Wind River Conductor receives information from Bare Metal Orchestrator as new Cell Sites come online. Wind River Conductor instructs the system controller (CaaS manager) to install, bootstrap, and deploy the CaaS at the Cell Site.

Wind River Cloud Platform is installed at the Cell Sites as an AIO SX with one server or an AIO DX or AIO DX + workers with multiple servers. High availability (HA) in AIO DX is only for the Control Plane, and it is not available for the vCU and vDU. Adjacent Cell Sites cover the Data Plane HA during maintenance intervals or hardware failures. This must be taken into consideration during updates and upgrades.

Architecture of Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River 11

Wind River Cloud Platform monitoring

The CaaS manager monitors the status of all Cell Sites in its region. The number of Cell Sites can be up to 1000 PowerEdge XR11 SX Cell Sites for centralized radio access networks, or 500 PowerEdge XR11 DX Cell Sites for Distributed-RANs (D-RANs). Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River assumes virtualized radio access network (vRAN) macro Cell Sites are only running in a D-RAN. D-RAN configurations run both the vCU and the vDU at the Cell Site, and depending on the bands, may require an AIO SX, AIO DX, or AIO DX + workers.

Figure 6. Wind River Cloud Platform architecture

Wind River Conductor

As an orchestrator and infrastructure automation manager, Wind River Conductor runs in the Regional Data Center and provides a single interface to manage and automate application deployment in a large-scale distributed environment. Wind River Conductor works with the Wind River InfraBlock plug-in and Bare Metal Orchestrator plug-in to deploy and manage a customer's Wind River Cloud Platform cluster.

Wind River Conductor is installed on VMs as a three-node compact cluster. There are three main goals for Wind River Conductor:

Install the system controller's Controller-0, initiate the remote bootstrap, and call the deployment manager Instruct the system controller to install, bootstrap, and deploy the Cell Sites Onboard the virtual centralized units to the system controller and virtual distributed units to the Cell Sites

Customer Information Questionnaires The Customer Information Questionnaires (CIQs) must be completed before Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River can be deployed. Each CIQ is a YAML file that lists the information required from customers before deployment.

The following figure shows CIQ-defined network topology in a small Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River deployment.

12 Architecture of Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River

Figure 7. CIQ-defined network topology

A CIQ data template represents an aggregation of multiple data sets related to the customer site location, site networking, and cloud-native network function profiles. It also includes data related to Bare Metal Orchestrator and Wind River that is needed to connect to and provision customer sites. In the CIQ data model, there are three subclass CIQ types for the National Data Center (NDC), Regional Data Center (RDC), and the Cell Sites. The actual CIQ instances are populated by the customer using various methods. The following figure shows the CIQ data model:

Figure 8. CIQ data model

There are six CIQsNational Data Center (NDC), NDC Secrets, Regional Data Center (RDC), RDC Secrets, Cell Site, and Cell Site Secrets. See the Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River Deployment and Troubleshooting Guide for explanations of the fields in each CIQ YAML file.

The NDC, RDC, and Cell Site CIQ files have corresponding Secrets YAML files for passwords and other credentials. The CIQ Secrets files have fields that match fields in the NDC, RDC, and Cell Site CIQ files. These matching fields must use the same values or the deployment workflow fails. For example, the service_tag values in the Cell Site CIQ must match the service_tag values in the Cell Site Secrets CIQ.

Architecture of Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River 13

File List CIQ

The File List CIQ is the full list of CIQ and golden configuration files to use during Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River deployment.

NDC CIQ

For the NDC, the information that must be collected includes baseboard management controller (BMC) credentials, IP address allocation, physical location, Docker registry server details, and NTP and DNS addresses. The NDC requires one NDC CIQ.

NDC Secrets CIQ

The NDC Secrets CIQ lists the remote SSH password, the BMC secrets for each NDC server, the ESXI and vCenter passwords, and the Docker Registry credentials.

RDC CIQ

For the RDC, the information that must be collected includes BMC credentials, installation type, bootstrap network and device values and credentials, storage details, physical location, operations, administration, and management (OAM) network values, cluster host network values, and Bare Metal Orchestrator details. The RDC requires one RDC CIQ.

RDC Secrets CIQ

The RDC Secrets CIQ lists the remote SSH password and the BMC secrets for each RDC server.

Cell Site CIQ

For the Cell Site, the information that must be collected includes BMC credentials, installation type, bootstrap network and device values and credentials, physical location, OAM network values, and cluster host network values. Each Cell Site requires a unique Cell Site CIQ.

Cell Site Secrets CIQ

The Cell Site Secrets CIQ lists the remote SSH password and the BMC secrets for each Cell Site server.

Completing the CIQs

Dell Professional Services Consulting works with customers to fill in the CIQ YAML files.

Servers required for Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River deployment

Table 1. Servers for Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River the National Data Center and Regional Data Center

Domain type Management Control Plane minimum number of servers

National Data Center Three ESXi instances in a high availability arrangement

Regional Data Center Three physical servers in a high availability arrangement

14 Architecture of Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River

Table 1. Servers for Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River the National Data Center and Regional Data Center (continued)

Domain type Management Control Plane minimum number of servers

One physical server each for Controller-0, Controller-1, and Worker-0.

Table 2. Servers for Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River Cell Sites

Domain type Management Control Plane and Data Plane (workloads) minimum number of servers

Cell Site, single node simplex subcloud One physical server for Controller-0

Cell Site, multiple node duplex all-in-one subcloud

Two physical servers for Controller-0 and Controller-1

Validated hardware components Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River is a bring-your-own-networking solution that uses existing customer-provided switches. The following tables list validated server components and switches used for internal testing.

The following tables contain information about Dell PowerEdge servers used at the Regional Data Center (RDC) and at Cell Sites.

Table 3. Servers

Model Supported BIOS version Supported iDRAC firmware version

Dell PowerEdge R750 rack server, used at the RDC

1.6.5 5.10.30.00

Dell PowerEdge XR11 rack server, used at the Cell Sites

1.6.5 5.10.30.00

Table 4. Network card

Network card Server

Intel E810-XXVDA4 Quad Port 10/25 GbE SFP28 Adapter PowerEdge R750

Intel E810-XXVDA4TGG1 Quad Port 10/25 GbE SFP28 Precision Timing Adapter with GNSS

PowerEdge XR11

Table 5. Drive controller

Host Bus Adapter Description

Dell Host Bus Adapter 355i (HBA355i) Used in PowerEdge R750

Table 6. Storage

Quantity Drive Description

1 960 GB SSD SATA RDC controller node (PowerEdge R750)

4 3.84 TB SSD SAS RDC controller node (PowerEdge R750)

1 960 GB SSD SATA RDC worker node (PowerEdge R750)

4 960 GB SSD SATA Cell Site (PowerEdge XR11)

Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River does not include switches. Switches used in this solution are customer-provided. The following switches were used for internal testing.

Architecture of Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River 15

Table 7. Switches

Switch Description

Dell PowerSwitch S3048-ON Used as the management switch for internal testing.

Dell PowerSwitch S5232F-ON Used as the leaf switch for internal testing.

Required hypervisors, operating systems, applications, and files

National Data Center hypervisors, applications, and files

Name Version Description

VMware ESXi 6.7 Update 3

7.0 Update 3

The customer supplies the installation ISO and the license.

Bare Metal Orchestrator Global Controller 1.2.3 Controls the Bare Metal Orchestrator worker nodes.

Bare Metal Orchestrator worker nodes one, two, and three and Bare Metal Orchestrator Load Balancers one and two

1.2.3 Worker nodes and Load balancers are installed on VMs running Ubuntu 20.04.

National Data Center (NDC) Customer Information Questionnaire (CIQ)

1.0 NDC CIQ YAML file template that is populated with customer information.

NDC CIQ Secrets 1.0 NDC CIQ Secrets YAML file template that is populated with secrets containing customer credentials.

Regional Data Center applications and files

Name Version Description

Wind River Conductor RPM Package Manager (RPM) files

22.03 The cloudify-cluster-manager and cloudify- manager-installer RPM files.

Wind River blueprint 1.0 The blueprint is in the examples_and_golden_configs folder inside WindRiver_Infrablock_1.0.0.zip.

Wind River InfraBlock plug-in 1.0 WindRiver_Infrablock_1.0.0.zip, a ZIP file that contains a Wagon (WGN) file along with customer environment and configuration data.

Bare Metal Orchestrator plug-in 1.0 dell_bmo_orchestrator_plugin-v1.0.0.zip, a ZIP file that contains a WGN file along with customer environment and configuration data.

Conductor File Service 1.0 The cfs-v1.0.0.tgz file inside WindRiver_Infrablock_1.0.0.zip

Harbor offline installer 1.10.10 Harbor-offline-installer-v1.10.10.tgz, used to install the Harbor registry for Kubernetes.

Regional Data Center (RDC) ISO file 21.12 wind-river-cloud-platform-host- installer-21.12-b45-PATCH_0004.iso, used to create the custom installation ISO for the RDC.

RDC CIQ 1.0 RDC CIQ YAML file template that is populated with customer information.

16 Architecture of Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River

Name Version Description

RDC CIQ Secrets 1.0 RDC CIQ Secrets YAML file template that is populated with secrets containing customer credentials.

Cell Site applications and files

Name Version Description

Cell Site ISO file 21.12 wind-river-cloud-platform-host- installer-21.12-b45.iso, used to create the custom installation ISO for a Cell Site.

Cell Site CIQ 1.0 Cell Site CIQ YAML file template that is populated with customer information.

Cell Site CIQ Secrets 1.0 Cell Site CIQ Secrets YAML file template that is populated with secrets containing customer credentials.

All sites operating systems, applications, and files

Name Version Description

Ubuntu 20.04 Used as the default operating system for the following services and virtual machines: Control Plane 1 Control Plane 2 Load Balancer 1 Load Balancer 2 Site VM

CentOS 7.9 Used as the default operating system for the following services and virtual machines: Wind River Conductor 1 Wind River Conductor 2 Wind River Conductor 3 Harbor registry VM

ISO signature file 21.12 wind-river-cloud-platform-host- installer-21.12-b45.sig, used to verify wind-river-cloud-platform- host-installer-21.12-b45-PATCH_0004.iso and wind-river-cloud-platform-host- installer-21.12-b45.iso.

Golden Configuration 1.0 The Golden Configuration is a set of Dell's recommended server settings.

Architecture of Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River 17

Use Cases for Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River

Topics:

Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River use cases

Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River use cases

Infrastructure Blocks use Wind River Studio as the cloud software platform and are based on configurations used in live deployments with Tier 1 communication service providers (CSPs). The blocks provide a cloud stack designed to support open radio access network (Open RAN) centralized unit (CU) and distributed unit (DU) use cases in small, medium, and large configurations as well as management clusters for the Dell Telecom Multi-Cloud Foundation site controller in small, medium, and large configurations. Specific uses cases are listed below.

Site deployment management and automation

Dell works with CSPs to manage and automate Regional Data Center (RDC) and Cell Site hardware and software deployment from the Dell Factory to the CSP geolocation. Deployment management and automation includes developing custom hardware and network configurations for customers and setting up services and repositories to automate software installation.

Site lifecycle management for hardware, upgrades, scaling, maintenance, and decommissioning

You can update or rollback RDC and Cell Site hardware firmware without visiting the site and with minimal service impact. You can also update RDC and Cell Site software such as Wind River Cloud Platform, Wind River Conductor, and Bare Metal Orchestrator without visiting the site and with minimal service impact.

Building blocks for Open RAN CU and DU networks

The Dell Telecom Infrastructure Block for CU and DU networks is based on the PowerEdge XR11 server. The PowerEdge XR11 servers have two Intel E810-XXVDA4TGG1 network interface cards that use a built-in Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) module for precision timing. PowerEdge XR11 servers also have Wind River Cloud Platform factory-installed. For more on why the PowerEdge XR11 is a good fit for telecom use cases, see Dell EMC PowerEdge XR11 and XR12 Servers: Telecom advantage.

Site controller for Dell Telecom Multi-Cloud Foundation

The Dell Telecom Multi-Cloud Foundation site controller requires three Infrastructure Block nodes. Two are worker nodes and the other is a controller node. These nodes run on PowerEdge R750 servers. The servers have two Intel E810-XXVDA4 network interface cards and Wind River Studio is factory-installed.

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18 Use Cases for Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River

Design Guidelines for Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River

Topics:

Guidance for National Data Centers Guidance for Regional Data Centers Guidance for Cell Sites

Guidance for National Data Centers

Deploying the National Data Center (NDC) includes defining the NDC deployment architecture and dimensioning and allocating compute and networking resources. Dell Professional Services Consulting works with communication service providers to create custom deployment specifications that are defined in Customer Information Questionnaire files.

National Data Center servers

The National Data Center (NDC) requires three ESXi instances in a high availability arrangement. Customers can use their own servers in the NDC. Dell recommends using the Dell PowerEdge R650 server. See Dell EMC PowerEdge R650 Technical Specifications for its technical specifications.

Guidance for Regional Data Centers

Deploying the Regional Data Center (RDC) includes installing the management cluster. Hardware components in the management cluster include Dell servers, network cards, and storage. The RDC requires, at a minimum, three Dell PowerEdge R750 servers with two Intel E810-XXVDA4 network interface cards in each server. Storage size is determined by the amount of telemetry gathered from Cell Sites. Software components include Dell Bare Metal Orchestrator and Wind River Studio.

The RDC acts as a site controller for Cell Sites. There are two types of RDC Infrastructure Blocks: controller nodes and worker nodes. Each site controller requires two controller nodes and one worker node. The RDC uses three Dell PowerEdge R750 servers for the two controller nodes and one worker node. Virtual centralized units (vCUs) run in the RDC. Running vCUs in the RDC requires additional workers. These additional workers must be specified by the vCU vendor.

The base configurations for both types of nodes are listed below.

Controller nodes

The RDC controller nodes are two PowerEdge R750 servers that use:

Two 3rd Generation Intel Xeon Gold processors 512 GB Memory 960 GB SSD SATA drive Four 3.84 TB SAS SSD drives Two Intel E810-XXVDA4 Quad Port 10/25 GbE SFP28 NICs Wind River Studio installed at the factory All Wind River and Bare Metal Orchestrator RTU licenses

For more technical specifications, see the Dell EMC PowerEdge R750 Technical Specifications.

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Design Guidelines for Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River 19

Worker node

The RDC worker node is a PowerEdge R750 server that uses:

Two 3rd Generation Intel Xeon Gold processors 512 GB Memory 960 GB SSD SATA drive Two Intel E810-XXVDA4 Quad Port 10/25 GbE SFP28 NICs Wind River Studio installed at the factory All Wind River and Bare Metal Orchestrator RTU licenses

RDCs can scale up by adding more storage to the controller nodes. Additional PowerEdge R750 servers are used for storage. You must add more storage in order to manage a large number of Cell Site servers.

Figure 9. Site controller scaling

Guidance for Cell Sites Deploying a Cell Site includes enumerating servers and network addresses, and defining security rules, performance targets, and capacity targets. It also includes determining the hardware requirements to dimension a Cell Site.

Design guidelines are based on predefined deployment units. These deployment units are building blocks that are used to create Cell Sites. These deployment units, or Infrastructure Blocks, are designed and created in the Dell Factory. Cell Sites use Dell PowerEdge XR11 servers. Each Cell Site requires, at a minimum, one PowerEdge XR11 server with two Intel E810- XXVDA4TGG1 network interface controllers.

Dell's Telecom Infrastructure Blocks support open radio access network (Open RAN) systems that span from eight to fifteen radios across a range of frequencies and operating bandwidths. Scaling up a Cell Site involves adding more PowerEdge XR11 servers. In addition, custom server configurations can be provided to meet specific operator requirements.

20 Design Guidelines for Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River

Figure 10. Open RAN CU and DU nodes

Cell Site configuration

For each Cell Site, Dell Professional Services Consulting works with the communication service provider (CSP) customer to complete a Cell Site customer information questionnaire (CIQ). The Cell Site CIQ is based on a Cell Site CIQ golden configuration template, which uses a default configuration that defines a baseline hardware configuration. The Cell Site CIQ contains naming and numbering standards, connectivity requirements, management network information, and delivery templates and standards.

Basic Cell Site configuration includes defining the layer 1 and layer 2 network architecture and the layer 3 network routing. This includes configuring IP addresses and subnet ranges, defining security rules and policies, and determining network performance and capacity targets.

Cell Site node

The Cell Site node is a PowerEdge XR11 server that uses:

One 3rd Generation Intel Xeon Gold processor 256 GB memory Four 960 GB SSD drives Two redundant AC or DC power supply units Up to four 2.5-inch SAS/SATA/NVMe SSD drives Two Intel E810-XXVDA4TGG1 Quad Port 10/25 GbE SFP28 Precision Timing Adapters with GNSS (Westport Channel) Wind River Cloud Platform installed at factory All Wind River and Dell Bare Metal Orchestrator RTU licenses

For more technical specifications, see the Dell EMC PowerEdge XR11 Technical Specifications.

Cell Site dimensioning

Cell Site dimensioning is based on a single distributed cloud with up to 1000 Cell Site servers. The size of the distributed cloud and the vendor specification for the workload must be taken into consideration when determining Cell Site dimensioning. Additionally, virtual distributed units (vDUs) run at the Cell Sites. Cell Site dimensioning also requires considering the following attributes:

Distributed cloud CPU

Design Guidelines for Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River 21

Distributed cloud memory Database size Disk throughput Worker node CPU Worker node memory Kubernetes pod dimensioning Container network dimensioning

There are three sizing recommendations for small, medium, and large deployments. A small deployment requires four PowerEdge R750 servers and 300 PowerEdge XR11 servers, which control up to 150 C

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