CLARA: Closed Loop-based Zero-touch Network Management Framework

Evolving 5G systems are adopting strategic technologies such as SDN, NFV, Network Slicing, and Intent-based Networking to provide flexibility, programmability, and more advanced services. Such environments are characterized by heterogeneous infrastructures, dynamic behavior, and growing demand for new users, along with increasing management complexity of networks and services. Accordingly, automation is crucial for reducing management complexity while minimizing the need for human intervention. Towards a fully automated end-to-end network and service management approach, key enablers include intents for representing the user needs, and policy-based closed control loops (CCL) to enable self-x properties. This work contributes to specific advances in using policy-based management to govern the CCL behavior and fulfill user requirements in a multi-domain environment. Specifically, we cover service management from network service requests to the enforcement of policies across management domains. To embed all, we propose a CCL-based Zero-touch Network Management Framework named CLARA. Implementation of prototypes and functional evaluation presented in previous works demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed components.