Other Blueprints

The previous sections describe how to deploy four Aether blueprints, corresponding to four variants of var/main.yml. This section documents additional blueprints, each defined by a combination of Ansible components:

  • A vars/main-blueprint.yml file, checked into the aether-onramp repo, is the “root” of the blueprint specification.

  • A hosts.ini file, documented by example, specifies the target servers required by the blueprint.

  • A set of Make targets, defined in a submodule and imported into OnRamp’s global Makefile, provides commands to install and uninstall the blueprint.

  • (Optional) A new aether-blueprint repo defines the Ansible Roles and Playbooks required to deploy a new component.

  • (Optional) New Roles, Playbooks, and Templates, checked to existing repos/submodules, customize existing components for integration with the new blueprint. To support blueprint independence, these elements are intentionally kept “narrow”, rather than glommed onto an existing element.

  • A Jenkins job, added to the set of OnRamp integration tests, verifies that the blueprint successfully deploys Aether.

The goal of establishing a well-defined procedure for adding new blueprints to OnRamp is to encourage the community to contribute (and maintain) new Aether configurations and deployment scenarios.1 The rest of this section documents community-contributed blueprints to-date.

1

Not all possible configurations of Aether require a blueprint. There are other ways to add variability, for example, by documenting simple ways to modify an existing blueprint. Disabling core.standalone and selecting an alternative core.values_file are two common examples.

Multiple UPFs

The base version of SD-Core includes a single UPF, running in the same Kubernetes namespace as the Core’s control plane. This blueprint adds the ability to bring up multiple UPFs (each in a different namespace), and uses ROC to establish the UPF-to-Slice-to-Device bindings required to activate end-to-end user traffic. The resulting deployment is then verified using gNBsim.

The Multi-UPF blueprint includes the following:

  • Global vars file vars/main-upf.yml gives the overall blueprint specification.

  • Inventory file hosts.ini is identical to that used in the Emulated RAN section. Minimally, SD-Core runs on one server and gNBsim runs on a second server. (The Quick Start deployment, with both SD-Core and gNBsim running in the same server, also works.)

  • New make targets, 5gc-upf-install and 5gc-upf-uninstall, to be executed after the standard SD-Core installation. The blueprint also reuses the roc-load target to activate new slices in ROC.

  • New Ansible role (upf) added to the 5gc submodule, including a new UPF-specific template (upf-5g-values.yaml).

  • New models file (roc-5g-models-upf2.json) added to the roc-load role in the amp submodule. This models file is applied as a patch on top of the base set of ROC models. (Since this blueprint is demonstrated using gNBsim, the assumed base models are given by roc-5g-models.json.)

To use Multi-UPF, first copy the vars file to main.yml:

$ cd vars
$ cp main-upf.yml main.yml

Then edit hosts.ini and vars/main.yml to match your local target servers, and deploy the base system (as in previous sections):

$ make k8s-install
$ make roc-install
$ make roc-load
$ make 5gc-core-install
$ make gnbsim-install

You can also optionally install the monitoring subsystem. Note that because main.yml sets core.standalone: "false", any models loaded into ROC are automatically applied to SD-Core.

At this point you are ready to bring up additional UPFs and bind them to specific slices and devices. This involves first editing the upf block in the core section of vars/main.yml:

upf:
   ip_prefix: "192.168.252.0/24"
   iface: "access"
   helm:
       chart_ref: aether/bess-upf
  values_file: "deps/5gc/roles/upf/templates/upf-5g-values.yaml"
  additional_upfs:
      "1":
         ip:
            access: "192.168.252.6/24"
            core:   "192.168.250.6/24"
         ue_ip_pool: "172.248.0.0/16"
      # "2":
      #   ip:
      #      access: "192.168.252.7/24"
      #      core:   "192.168.250.7/24"
      #   ue_ip_pool: "172.247.0.0/16"

As shown above, one additional UPF is enabled (beyond upf-0 that already came up as part of SD-Core), with the spec for yet another UPF commented out. In this example configuration, each UPF is assigned a subnet on the access and core bridges, along with the IP address pool for UEs that the UPF serves. Once done with the edits, launch the new UPF(s) by typing:

$ make 5gc-upf-install

At this point the new UPF(s) will be running (you can verify this using kubectl), but no traffic will be directed to them until UEs are assigned to their IP address pool. Doing so requires loading the appropriate bindings into ROC, which you can do by editing the roc_models line in amp section of vars/main.yml. Comment out the original models file already loaded into ROC, and uncomment the new patch that is to be applied:

amp:
   # roc_models: "deps/amp/roles/roc-load/templates/roc-5g-models.json"
   roc_models: "deps/amp/roles/roc-load/templates/roc-5g-models-upf2.json"

Then run the following to load the patch:

$ make roc-load

At this point you can bring up the Aether GUI and see that a second slice and a second device group have been mapped onto the second UPF.

Now you are ready to run traffic through both UPFs, which because the configuration files identified in the servers block of the gnbsim section of vars/main.yml align with the IMSIs bound to each Device Group (which are bound to each slice, which are in turn bound to each UPF), the emulator sends data through both UPFs. To run the emulation, type:

$ make gnbsim-simulator-run