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Inline VNF Template

https://blueprints.launchpad.net/tacker/+spec/vnf-inline-template

This blueprint will bring in the support for making VNFD id optional for tacker vnf-create. Instead support an option where VNFD template can be passed in directly to the vnf-create API / CLI.

Problem description

Currently VNF Catalog is an integral part of Tacker solution. VNFD template should’ve been populated in the VNF Catalog before can instantiated. However, when Tacker is used just as a G-VNFM there are scenarios where the VNF/NFV Catalog exists outside Tacker. For those solutions it doesn’t make sense to use Tacker’s VNF Catalog.

In such cases, a VNFD template would directly be provided via CLI/API during VNF creation.

Proposed change

VNFD template will be directly provided to CLI/API while creating a VNF. The template will not be onboarded as VNFD. Tacker DB will hold information about the nature of the template used. Tacker server, while creating VNF, will bypass logic to fetch VNFD and instead call tosca-parser and then Heat APIs to spawn VNF. Inline VNF template will be given preference over VNFD name or id specified during VNF creation.

Alternatives

There are two options to implement this.

  1. Not store the template at all in Tacker DB. This seems to fulfil the initial idea of this BP perfectly. However, in cases when there are too many VNFs, it becomes difficult to map VNFs to the templates used.

  2. Store the template in VNFD table of Tacker DB. Template will be visible on CLI with “–all” flag in “vnfd list”.

Option 2 is discussed in this specification.

Data model impact

A new column “template-source” needs to be added to VNFD table indicating the nature of the template. The field will have 2 values namely “inline” for template passed directly or “onboarded” for template used from Tacker DB.

Logic to derive template name from vnf name is to be implemented. Template name would be “tmpl-<random-hex>-vnf-name”

REST API impact

‘Create VNF’ API will have a “vnf-template” field which will hold the template to be used for VNF.

‘Show VNFD’ API will have logic to drop “template” field based on whether “–all” flag is provided or not.

Security impact

None

Notifications impact

None

Other end user impact

Client and Horizon changes:

  1. Add “vnf-template” argument in “create vnf” command

  2. Implement preference logic giving priority to vnfd-template in case when both a template and vnfd id or name are specified

  3. Add “all” flag to “vnfd list” API to list inline templates too. This is applicable only to CLI and not Horizon

Performance Impact

None

Other deployer impact

None

Developer impact

None

Implementation

Assignee(s)

Primary assignee:

Janki Chhatbar <jchhatba@redhat.com>

Work items

  1. Add “vnf-template” and “all” argument to Tackerclient

  2. Implement logic to give priority to inline template

  3. Implement changes on server

  4. Add functional test cases

  5. Add usage guide on using this feature

  6. Update API reference guide at [1]

Dependencies

None

Testing

Add functional and unit tests for this functionality.

Documentation Impact

User-guide will be provided.

References

[1]. https://opendev.org/openstack/tacker/src/branch/master/api-ref/source/v1/vnfs.inc