Service Assurance in 5G-based vCDN

Due to their dynamic nature, 5G communications bring additional complexity to operator networks. Due to their reliance on network softwarization and virtualization, 5G networks can adapt themselves by changing their topology or simply by adding or removing services and resources as needed, in regards to Quality of Service (QoS) metrics. For an operator, network monitoring and orchestration gain further importance for automation and management of virtual functions life-cycle. Monitoring is a crucial aspect of the life-cycle management of virtual functions in order to ensure that the QoS metrics are met at all times. Accordingly, network orchestration is one of the fundamental pillars for the implementation of the new generation of mobile networks use cases. The Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) is an open-source project that provides management and orchestration support for end-to-end services and infrastructures. This paper aims to explore ONAP’s capabilities, coupled with the Prometheus monitoring tool, to address the possible QoS problems of a vCDN service, more precisely, the lack of a horizontal system scaling. An experimental proof of concept evaluation provided low instantiation times, allowing the system to recover from heavy workloads more efficiently.