Subscriber Microservices Infrastructure Architecture

The Ultra Cloud Core (UCC) Subscriber Microservices Infrastructure (SMI) is a layered stack of cloud technologies that enable the rapid deployment of, and seamless life-cycle operations for microservices-based applications.

The SMI stack consists of the following:

  • SMI Cluster Manager—Creates the Kubernetes (K8s) cluster, creates the software repository, and provides ongoing LCM for the cluster including deployment, upgrades, and expansion.

  • Kubernetes Management—Includes the K8s primary and etcd functions, which provide LCM for the NF applications that are deployed in the cluster. This component also provides cluster health monitoring and resources scheduling.

  • Common Execution Environment (CEE)—Provides common utilities and OAM functionalities for Cisco Cloud native NFs and applications, including licensing and entitlement functions, configuration management, telemetry and alarm visualization, logging management, and troubleshooting utilities. Also, it provides consistent interaction and experience for all customer touch points and integration points in relation to these tools and deployed applications.

  • Common Data Layer (CDL)—Provides a high performance, low latency, stateful data store, designed specifically for 5G and subscriber applications. This next generation data store offers high availability in local or geo-redundant deployments.

  • Service Mesh—Provides sophisticated message routing between application containers, enabling managed interconnectivity, extra security, and the ability to deploy new code and new configurations in low risk manner.

  • NB Streaming—Provides Northbound Data Streaming service for billing and charging systems.

  • NF or Application Worker Nodes—The containers that comprise an NF application pod.

  • NF or Application Endpoints (EPs)—The NFs or applications and their interfaces to other entities on the network

  • Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)—Provides various APIs for deployment, configuration, and management automation.

The following figure depicts how these components interconnect to comprise a microservice-based NF or application.

SMI Components

For more information on SMI components, see Ultra Cloud Core Subscriber Microservices Infrastructure and the related-documentation at Deployment Guide > Overview chapter.