Project Nephio, an open source initiative of partners across the telecommunications industry working towards true cloud-native automation under the Linux Foundation, today announced the availability of its Release 1 (R1). Nephio R1 brings revolutionary advancements in deployment, life cycle management and scaling of telecom cloud infrastructure and network functions by using Kubernetes cloud native technologies and intent- based automation.
Nephio delivers carrier-grade, simple, open, Kubernetes-based cloud native intent automation and common automation templates that materially simplify the deployment and management of multi-vendor cloud infrastructure and network functions across large-scale edge deployments. It brings zero-touch provisioning of cloud infrastructure and network functions, which can offer increased network availability and resiliency while reducing maintenance downtime.
Since its launch in April 2022 in partnership with Google Cloud, cloud, telecom and network function providers have embraced Nephio by expanding the seed code provided by Google Cloud to deliver R1. The community is further committed to enhance Nephio with additional use cases in future releases.
“We are thrilled to see the high-demand release of Nephio R1,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Edge, and IoT, the Linux Foundation. “By simplifying the complexity of orchestrating interconnected workloads across large-scale edge deployments, R1 represents significant progress managing large systems within the cloud-native ecosystem.”
“The telecommunications industry is in much need for open, standard, efficient cloud-native automation solutions to keep up with connectivity demands,” said Gabriele Di Piazza, senior director, Product Management, Google Cloud. “The release of Nephio R1 simplifies cloud based deployments and network management, while also demonstrating the importance of telecom and technology companies working together to develop open cloud native automation solutions that are scalable, reliable, and secure.”
“Nephio is a game-changer for the telecom industry. It can help telecoms to automate their entire network efficiently and reliably, while achieving true zero-touch provisioning. The speed in which the community has embraced Kubernetes principles and further evolved Google Cloud’s seed code to deliver Nephio R1 is truly phenomenal. It’s clear that there is a great need for intent based automation to simplify the telecom deployments, and Nephio is well-positioned to meet that demand.” said Kandan Kathirvel, Technical Steering Committee chair, Nephio.
Nephio R1 introduces features to empower telecoms to efficiently configure and manage cloud infrastructure and network functions using Kubernetes-based intent automation.
Release 1 highlights:
- A framework to orchestrate cloud native network functions (CNF), infrastructure, and cross-domain lifecycle management
- Core Nephio principles and Kubernetes integration with custom resource definitions (CRDs).
- Enhanced user experience and sandbox environment.
New feature details:
- Common configuration templates to provision and life-cycle management of cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes clusters, 5G network functions and network configurations
- Gitops- based package management and scaled deployment using Kubernetes Resource Model (KRM) and Configuration as data (CaD)
- Uniform Kubernetes CRD and operator-based deployment of multi-cloud infrastructure and multi-vendor network functions
- Kubernetes- based Nephio control-plane which supports single pane of management of large scale deployments
- Common set of user interface and APIs for integration with service orchestration layers
- Multiple personas- based management and approval of configurations, and much more
