In this release, Ultra M supports the Ultra Gateway Platform (UGP) VNF.

The UGP currently provides virtualized instances of the various 3G and 4G mobile packet core (MPC) gateways that enable mobile operators to offer enhanced mobile data services to their subscribers. The UGP addresses the scaling and redundancy limitations of VPC-SI (Single Instance) by extending the StarOS boundaries beyond a single VM. UGP allows multiple VMs to act as a single StarOS instance with shared interfaces, shared service addresses, load balancing, redundancy, and a single point of management.

The Ultra M Extra Small (XS) model is currently available. It is based on OpenStack 10 and implements a Hyper-Converged architecture that combines the Ceph Storage and Compute node. The converged node is referred to as an OSD compute node.

This model includes 6 Active Service Functions (SFs) per VNF and is supported in deployments from 1 to 4 VNFs.

As described in Hardware Specifications, the Ultra M solution consists of multiple hardware components including multiple servers that function as controller, compute, and storage nodes. The various functional components that comprise the Ultra M are deployed on this hardware:

• OpenStack Controller: Serves as the Virtual Infrastructure Manager (VIM).

  Important

  In this release, all VNFs in a multi-VNF Ultra M are deployed as a single “site” leveraging a single VIM.

• Ultra Automation Services (UAS): A suite of tools provided to simplify the deployment process:

  • AutoIT: Automates the VIM Orchestrator and VIM installation processes and provides storage and management for system ISOs.

  • AutoDeploy: Initiates the deployment of the VNFM and VNF components through a single deployment script.

  • AutoVNF: Initiated by AutoDeploy, AutoVNF is directly responsible for deploying the VNFM and VNF components based on inputs received from AutoDeploy.

  • Ultra Web Service (UWS): The Ultra Web Service (UWS) provides a web-based graphical user interface (GUI) and a set of functional modules that enable users to manage and interact with the USP VNF.

• Cisco Elastic Services Controller (ESC): Serves as the Virtual Network Function Manager (VNFM).

  Important

  ESC is the only VNFM supported in this release.

• VNF Components: USP-based VNFs are comprised of multiple components providing different functions:

  • Ultra Element Manager (UEM): Serves as the Element Management System (EMS, also known as the VNF-EM); it manages all of the major components of the USP-based VNF architecture.

  • Control Function (CF): A central sub-system of the UGP VNF, the CF works with the UEM to perform lifecycle events and monitoring for the UGP VNF.

  • Service Function (SF): Provides service context (user I/O ports), handles protocol signaling, session processing tasks, and flow control (demux).

Each of the Ultra M functional components are deployed on one or more virtual machines (VMs) based on their redundancy requirements as identified in Table 1. Some of these component VMs are deployed on a single compute node as described in VM Deployment per Node Type. All deployment models use three OpenStack controllers to provide VIM layer redundancy and upgradability.