ONF Connect 2019

Our industry is moving further and further into the world of containerization. The VNF future seems to be clear - with network functions running on Kubernetes, and everything crucial working as CNFs… But… Everything? There are already a ton of battle tested VNFs. They can’t be simply turned into CNFs, because they depend on proprietary linux kernel modules. They use kernels other than Linux ones (pf on *bsd, unikernels, proprietary blackbox software), or because there is another reason to guard them with hardware-assisted virtualization. When we have such functions, do we need to keep around our future Kubernetes cluster another cluster solution like OpenStack or VMware over or under it? This talk will look at the possibility of running VNFs natively for a CNF Kubernetes cluster, leveraging the advantage of Kubernetes (running VNFs as a part of DaemonSets) in a converged open source-based solution and using virtual machines as pods.