Administrators guide

Fenix

Fenix should be deployed to the infrastructure controller or manager node and be used for any cloud infrastructure maintenance, upgrade, scaling or life-cycle operations.

VNF and VNFM

In the NFV use case, the VNF and VNFM need to support Fenix to optimize the workflows and to guarantee zero impact to VNF during different infrastructure operations. This means instance and instance group constraints and the interaction with Fenix. Operations are most optimal when the VNF can be scaled according to its current utilization level. This allows for the smallest possible maintenance window, with zero impact on the VNF service.

Infrastructure Admin UI

Infrastructure admin UI needs to support Fenix. UI needs to be able to call the Fenix admin APIs and preferably listen to Fenix admin events. UI should be able to call different infrastructure maintenance and upgrade workflows with needed parameters. APIs and events also give the possibility to have detailed information about the workflow progress and to troubleshoot possible errors. In complex clouds, errors can be still simple and quickly corrected even manually. In this kind of special case, the UI can also support updating Fenix workflow session to continue exactly where it failed. Explained in GET /v1/maintenance/{session_id}/detail

Integration

The above-mentioned UI, VNF and VNFM are currently not in the scope of Fenix. The implementation should be in other open-source projects or own proprietary solutions. Currently, at least OpenStack Tacker is looking to support Fenix.

For testing the integration of Fenix, there is tools directory including definitions of sample VNFs, VNFM and admin UI. There are also instructions on how to test Fenix example workflows. These tools give an idea of what needs to be supported and how to integrate Fenix in the production environment. Note that tools only give what needs to be in the VNFM and VNF side for Fenix testing purposes. They do not try to have a standard implementation like VNFD or other needed interactions on VNF side. What is standard, is the interfacing against Fenix.