This article is intended for individual/individuals who predominantly work for mobile operators and mobile enterprise business who would like to leverage containerized network functions that can generate, emulate, and validate real-world traffic to test.
In today's cloud-native world, there are a number of advantages when it comes to deploying containerized network function test tools that run on containers in cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure. This article covers some of the important configurations and recommendations which can be helpful for the deployment process and leverages the self-healing properties of Kubernetes. It concludes with how users can leverage Spirent tools for testing needs from a 5G, Wi-Fi, and network testing perspective.
Azure Infrastructure consists of compute with NUMA-aligned VMs with dedicated cores backed by hugepages ensuring consistent performance. Azure networking includes SR-IOV and DPDK for low latency and high throughput. Filesystem storage is backed by high performance storage arrays. Kubernetes can be deployed on VMs or directly on bare-metal servers, depending on the performance needs. Azure prefers to run Kubernetes on VMs. Azure Kubernetes service (AKS) is a managed service that lets users focus on developing and deploying their network functions while letting Azure handle the management and operational overheads.
HAKS (Hybrid Azure Kubernetes Service) is an emerging concept that combines on-premises and cloud-based Kubernetes solutions. It offers users the flexibility of running AKS both in the Azure cloud and in their on-premises environments, typically through Azure Arc. This hybrid setup enables organizations to manage and deploy containerized applications consistently across cloud and on-premises resources, making it suitable for scenarios with specific compliance, latency, or data concerning requirements.
Follow these steps to ensure container applications that are deployed on Azure Kubernetes services run smoothly and efficiently.
Spirent Landslide CNF Validation is a cutting-edge, automated solution that evaluates and validates cloud-native functions resiliency within 5G networks. It provides comprehensive testing capabilities to assess the robustness, fault tolerance, and performance of cloud-native functions in various real-world scenarios, enabling network operators and developers to ensure the reliability and stability of 5G deployments. Landslide CNF Validation supports testing of microservices and containerized applications, ensuring fault tolerance, scalability, and failover capabilities.
Landslide is designed to execute user-defined test scenarios to simulate real-world conditions and potential failure scenarios. These scenarios include network disruptions, infrastructure failures, and high traffic loads allowing users to validate the resiliency of their cloud-native functions under different stress conditions. Concurrently, the solution collects cloud-native metrics to monitor the impact on the 5G CNF and the cloud-native infrastructure.
For some insight on cloud native functions themselves, download our whitepaper, "How 5G CNFs are Designed to Fail."