5GENESIS Dispatcher & MANO Wrapper

The 5GENESIS Dispatcher is the entry point to the system, offering the functionalities to an Experimenter through a single interface. These functionalites are know as the Open APIs, being able to interact with the key features of the underlying modules (as shown in the architecture diagram below) without actually exposing them

This implementation is based on a NGINX reverse proxy containerised in a Docker environment.

By default, The Dispatcher includes as added on modules, the Auth, the MANO Wrapper and a Swagger environment to test the available features. On top of all that and to secure all the requests, the Dispatcher provides user registration and authentication using JWT. Consult the Auth documentation for the available actions and how to use them.

NOTE: As shown below in the architecture diagram, the Dispatcher does not deal with the MANO directly but through a wrapper that simplies the communication. Also for simplification, in this document we will refer to the MANO Wrapper as mano, which is conceptually correct from the Dispatcher point of view.

Architecture

Available features

The available features will depend on the features exposed by each dispatched module. The currently available features are:

MANO enabler

• Validation service: Validate VNFD or NSD as a standalone service
• Retrieve registered VIMs
• Upload VIM images
• List VNFDs
• Update VNFD with a new version
• List NSDs
• Update NSD with a new version

Repository

• Expose the directory of the NS and VNF artifacts.
• Integration with ETSI OSM

ELCM (Future Distributor)

• Validation of Experiment descriptor
• Retrieve stored experiments from the database
• Launch experiment (create)
• Cancel execution
• Get execution logs

Getting Started

These instructions will get you a copy of the project up and running on your local machine for development and testing purposes after you clone the repository.

Pre-requisites

For running the 5Genesis Dispatcher, you will need:

• docker version >= 18.09.6
• docker-compose version >= 1.17.1
• Configuration files correctly filled up:
  • MANO Wrapper module config: configuration file (mano.conf) inside the mano folder.
• NFVO + VIM

Config file and installation

The Dispatcher needs to be configured properly before the containers are built. For that, a simplified configuration file is offered: dispatcher.conf, which will have to be edited and adapted. The file should contain information of all the modules the Dispatcher forwards information to (validator, mano, elcm, result_catalog, etc.) and how to do it. For each module, a new enabler will be added in the Dispatcher. It uses the following format:

[module_name]
PROTOCOL=[http|https]
HOST=x.x.x.x -> IP or DNS name of the host component
PORT=xxxx -> Port where the app API is available
PATH=/ -> Base path of the application ("/" by default)

The config file template already includes the validator and the mano modules as they are included within the Dispatcher. They are already configured and should not be touched.

During the installation process you will be asked for a couple of simple questions: One of them is whether you want the Authentication module installed as well or not, so it is completely optional.

Once edited properly, the configuration will be applied and the containers built, based on the config file we have just created (dispatcher.conf):

$ ./install.sh

Example

[mano]
PROTOCOL=http
HOST=mano
PROTOCOL=5001
PATH=/

With the sample config file above, using the ELCM API as an example, the dispatcher will translate the original request to a new one. For example, the original URL would be the following one:

Original URL: http://192.168.33.102:5000/api/v0/run

The previous URL is translated to a new one, removing the speficied base path (/api, in this example), adding a new base path common to all the requests directed to the ELCM (/elcm in this example) and leaving the particular endpoint (/v0/run) as it was:

Translated URL: http://{dispatcher_ip}:{dispatcher:port}/elcm/v0/run

Start

The start script will deploy and run the Dispatcher container, the Validator, the MANO Wrapper and a Swagger environment to test the available features:

$ ./start.sh

Dispatcher will be accessible through port 8082 through a SSL certificate, so HTTPS is required.

Swagger environment will be accessible through port 5002.

Installation of the SSL certificate

The SSL certificate is self-signed. It is not supervised by a Certification Authority because in this current moment is not possible know where the platforms will be hosted.

For installing the certificate is required to open the internet navigator in: https://<IP_OF_DISPATCHER>:8082

Something like this will apear, the web page format depends of your browser:

You must add the exception/believe in the certificate or something like that. After this step, you are able to use the dispatcher through SSL certification.

Stop

To stop the Dispatcher service just run the following:

$ ./stop.sh

Try out the application

A swagger testing framework is deployed on port 5002 with the following API specifications:

Logging

Dispatcher logs containing all access attemtps to the application are available in the log folder of the application. In case of needing any help, contact the authors for support.

Example

192.168.33.11 - - [02/Jan/2020:15:31:05 +0000]  401 "POST /validator/validate/ed HTTP/1.1" 179 "-" "curl/7.59.0" "-"
192.168.33.11 - - [02/Jan/2020:15:31:44 +0000]  200 "OPTIONS /auth/get_token HTTP/1.1" 0 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/79.0.3945.88 Safari/537.36" "-"
192.168.33.11 - - [02/Jan/2020:15:33:51 +0000]  204 "OPTIONS /mano/vnfd HTTP/1.1" 0 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/79.0.3945.88 Safari/537.36" "-"
192.168.33.11 - - [02/Jan/2020:16:00:24 +0000]  200 "GET /auth/get_token HTTP/1.1" 363 "-" "PostmanRuntime/7.21.0" "-"
192.168.33.11 - - [02/Jan/2020:16:02:10 +0000]  200 "GET /mano/vnfd HTTP/1.1" 9407 "-" "PostmanRuntime/7.21.0" "-"
192.168.33.11 - - [02/Jan/2020:16:08:22 +0000]  401 "GET /mano/nsd HTTP/1.1" 179 "-" "PostmanRuntime/7.21.0" "-"
192.168.33.11 - - [02/Jan/2020:16:08:30 +0000]  200 "GET /auth/get_token HTTP/1.1" 363 "-" "PostmanRuntime/7.21.0" "-"
192.168.33.11 - - [02/Jan/2020:16:08:48 +0000]  200 "GET /mano/nsd HTTP/1.1" 4916 "-" "PostmanRuntime/7.21.0" "-"

Testing

The Dispatcher includes tests to validate each of its features based in Python Robot Test Framework. Consult the testing documentation for the available actions and how to use them.

Versioning

• 2.8.2 - Experiment authorization, interplatform experiment distribution
• 2.8.0 - Dispatcher testing
• 2.7.0 - Introduction of the Distributor/Validator for closing the loop with the Experiment execution
• 2.6.3 - Support for OpenNebula VIM to upload images
• 2.6.2 - New validation based on Image dependency for VNFs
• 2.6.1 - NSDs and VNFs More metadata added
• 2.6.0 - NSDs and VNFs Repository added with updated validation filter
• 2.5.1 - Swagger updated with new requests, and HTTPS
• 2.5.0 - SSL added (Self-sign certification )
• 2.4.1 - Auth Registration of Platforms With Token Service
• 2.4.0 - Auth Registration of Platforms
• 2.3.2 - Fix Auth typos
• 2.3.1 - Improve Auth response messages
• 2.3.0 - Update validator component to store the experiments
• 2.2.0 - Update MANO component to provide list of registered VIMs
• 2.1.0 - Make Authentication optional during the installation process
• 2.0.1 - Auth module documentation updated
• 2.0.0 - User registration and authentication
• 1.3.3 - Added VNFD and NSD update to the MANO API features and image uploading.
• 1.2.3 - Move to fastjsonschema for draft 7 schema validation.
• 1.2.0 - MANO wrapper is included now inside the Dispatcher as a new container.
• 1.1.0 - Added logging in the Dispatcher and the Validator.
• 1.0.0 - First stable version including all features.

Next steps

• Introduce the Distributor microservice that will be in charge of validate experiments, distribute them, and obtain the results through the result catalog.

Authors

Javier Melian (javier.melian at atos.net)

Luis Gómez (luis.gomez.external at atos.net)

License

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.