Introduction
In Akraino's R1 release the Network Cloud (NC) family provides for the automated deployment of three different types of edge pod:
- Rover
- Unicycle with an OVS-DPDK data plane for guest VMs
- Unicycle with a SR-IOV data plane for guest VMs
The deployment process is based on a two tier hierarchical model incorporating a Regional Controller (RC) which is responsible for the deployment of any number of independent Rover and/or Unicycle pods at one or multiple edge locations within its region of control. In a large geographic deployment multiple RCs would be deployed to subdivide into a multi-region deployment.
Servers
Build Server
The Build Server node is built using a pre-provisioned VM. Full details are contained in the Validation Labs section of the NC's R1 documentation.
Regional Controller
The Regional Controller (RC) node may be built using either a bare metal server or in a pre-provisioned VM. Full details of the servers and VM deployment options are contained in the Validation Labs section of the NC's R1 documentation.
Rover
Rover edge pods consists of a single node deployed on a bare metal server. Full details of the servers are contained in the Validation Labs section of the NC's R1 documentation.
Unicycle
Unicycle edge pods consists of 3 to 7 nodes deployed on bare metal servers consisting 3 controller nodes (1 genesis and 2 master nodes) and 0 to 4 worker nodes. Full details of the servers are contained in the Validation Labs section of the NC's R1 documentation.
Switching Subsystem
The switching subsystem is considered a 'black box' in the R1 NC release providing a set of L1, L2, L3 and BGP networking services. As such any selection of switching hardware can be used that provides the necessary services described in detail in the R1 documentation Network Architecture.
In R1 the provisioning of the switching subsystem is considered a pre-requisite that is completed before the deployment of a Build Server, a Regional Controller and Rover and/or Edge pods. The R1 release does not configure the switching subsystem.