SDF overview and terminology

A Solution Definition File (SDF) contains information about all Metaswitch products in your deployment. It is a plain-text file in YAML format.

  • The deployment is split into sites. Note that multiple sites act as independent deployments, e.g. there is no automatic georedundancy.

  • Within each site you define one or more service groups of virtual machines. A service group is a collection of virtual machines (nodes) of the same type.

  • The collection of all virtual machines of the same type is known as a VNFC (Virtual Network Function Component). For example, you may have a SAS VNFC and a MDM VNFC.

  • The VMs in a VNFC are also known as VNFCIs (Virtual Network Function Component Instances), or just instances for short.

Tip

Some products may support a VNFC being split into multiple service groups. However, for custom Rhino application VMs, all VMs of a particular type must be in a single service group.

The format of the SDF is common to all Metaswitch products, and in general it is expected that you will have a single SDF containing information about all Metaswitch products in your deployment.

This section describes how to write the parts of the SDF specific to the custom Rhino application product. It includes how to configure the MDM and custom VNFCs, how to configure subnets and traffic schemes, and some example SDF files to use as a starting point for writing your SDF.

Further documentation on how to write an SDF is available in the 'Creating an SDF' section of the SIMPL VM Documentation.

For the custom Rhino application solution, the SDF must be named sdf-rvt.yaml when uploading configuration.

Structure of a site

Each site in the SDF has a name, site-parameters and vnfcs.

  • The site name can be any unique human-readable name.

  • The site-parameters has multiple sub-sections and sub-fields. Only some are described here.

  • The vnfcs is where you list your service groups.

Site parameters

Under site-parameters, all of the following are required for the custom Rhino application product:

  • deployment-id : The common identifier for a SDF and set of YAML configuration files. It can be any name consisting of up to 20 characters. Valid characters are alphanumeric characters and underscores.

  • site-id: The identifier for this site. Must be in the form DC1 to DC32.

  • fixed-ips: Must be set to true.

  • vim-configuration: VNFI-specific configuration (see below) that describes how to connect to your VNFI and the backing resources for the VMs.

  • services: → ntp-servers must be a list of NTP servers. At least one NTP server is required; at least two is recommended. These must be specified as IP addresses, not hostnames.

  • networking: Subnet definitions. See Subnets and traffic schemes.

  • timezone: Timezone, in POSIX format such as Europe/London.

  • mdm: MDM options. See MDM service group.

Structure of a service group

Under the vnfcs section in each site, you list that site’s service groups. For custom VMs, each service group consists of the following fields:

  • name: A unique human-readable name for the service group.

  • type: Must be one of custom.

  • version: Must be set to the version of the CSAR.

    Tip

    The version can be found in the CSAR filename, e.g. if the filename is custom-4.0.0-12-1.0.0-vsphere-csar.zip then the version is 4.0.0-12-1.0.0. Alternatively, inside each CSAR is a manifest file with a .mf extension, whose content lists the version under the key vnf_package_version, for example vnf_package_version: 4.0.0-12-1.0.0.

    Specifying the version in the SDF is mandatory for custom Rhino application service groups, and strongly recommended for other products in order to disambiguate between CSARs in the case of performing an upgrade.

  • cluster-configuration: → count: The number of VMs in this service group.

  • cluster-configuration: → instances: A list of instances. Each instance has a name (the VM’s hostname) and, on VMware vSphere, a list of vnfci-vim-options (see below).

  • networks: A list of networks used by this service group. See Subnets and traffic schemes.

  • vim-configuration: The VNFI-specific configuration for this service group (see below).

VNFI-specific options

The SDF includes VNFI-specific options at both the site and service group levels. At the site level, you specify how to connect to your VNFI and give the top-level information about the deployment’s backing resources, such as datastore locations on vSphere, or availability zone on OpenStack. At the VNFC level, you can assign the VMs to particular sub-hosts or storage devices (for example vSphere hosts within a vCenter), and specify the flavor (as defined in your node-parameters.yaml that you passed to VMBC) of each VM.

Options required for custom VMs

For each service group, include a vim-configuration section with the flavor information, which varies according to the target VNFI type:

  • VMware vSphere: vim-configuration: → vsphere: → deployment-size: <flavor name>

  • OpenStack: vim-configuration: → openstack: → flavor: <flavor name>

  • VMware vCloud: vim-configuration: → vcloud: → deployment-size: <flavor name>

When deploying to VMware vSphere, include a vnfci-vim-options section for each instance with the following fields set:

  • vnfci-vim-options: → vsphere: → folder
    May be any valid folder name on the VMware vSphere instance, or "" (i.e. an empty string) if the VMs are not organised into folders.

  • vnfci-vim-options: → vsphere: → datastore

  • vnfci-vim-options: → vsphere: → host

  • vnfci-vim-options: → vsphere: → resource-pool-name

For example:

vnfcs:
  - name: custom
    cluster-configuration:
      count: 3
      instances:
        - name: custom-1
        vnfci-vim-options:
            folder: production
            datastore: datastore1
            host: esxi1
            resource-pool-name: Resources
        - name: custom-2
        ...
    vim-configuration:
      vsphere:
        deployment-size: medium

For OpenStack and VMware vCloud, no vnfci-vim-options section is required.

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