Service provisioning orchestration

Goal

GP4L group is collaborating with the Polish NREN PIONIER on developing a generalized, reusable approach to orchestrating service provisioning.

The starting point for this initiative is the TM Forum standardized process of order to payment, encompassing all steps required to capture a service order, configure and test the service, set up monitoring, and fulfill the client order, including billing if necessary. By abstracting this process to define common steps in service provisioning, the goal is to provide a collaborative blueprint that can be adopted by other NRENs. The modular nature of the approach allows the creation of a repository of processes, sub-processes, and elementary tasks that can be reused across the community.

To facilitate reuse while maintaining flexibility, the PIONIER use-case employs the AirFlow orchestrator. AirFlow enables the definition of processes in the form of directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), with each DAG described independently, and each step in each DAG defined in a separate file. These files can be stored and managed in a Git repository, fostering a collaborative environment with high granularity. AirFlow, through its Operators, supports the use of different technologies (Python, Java, Bash, Jinja templates, etc.), allowing collaborative parties to implement different steps while remaining interoperable with a common high-level blueprint process.

This approach allows the community to build a repository of diverse implementations of the same steps, adapting to different components, APIs, or internal data models. However, to ensure efficiency, a set of collaborative principles must be defined for organizing the repository meaningfully, making it easy for each party to identify reusable components and determine areas requiring customization. For maximum reusability with minimum customization, contributors must follow a consistent approach, breaking down work into granular logical steps.

To demonstrate the practical implementation of this approach GP4L is developing the DAGs necessary to provision services in PIONIER, initially L2 circuits.

Video demonstration

This video shows the pilot implementation of network service provisioning in the PIONIER Network with the use of orchestration and Single Source of Truth component.