In our ongoing series of blogs related to the 4th ETSI Plugtests held in June 2019, today we want to highlight the successful testing done between the Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewall (vNGFW) and our Aarna Networks ONAP Distribution (ANOD) 2.0. Palo Alto participated in the VNF category of the Plugtests and ANOD in the MANO category.
Palo Alto Networks K2-Series 5G-ready next-generation firewalls, powered by PAN-OS®, adopts a preventive security approach to provide robust and comprehensive end-to-end security strategy for mobile network deployments. Designed to handle growing throughput needs due to increasing amounts of application-, user-, and device-generated data, the K2-Series offers amazing performance and threat prevention capabilities to stop advanced cyberattacks and secure mobile network infrastructure, subscribers, and services.
K2-Series family of firewalls integrates cloud-based threat intelligence powered by machine learning and AI techniques for rapid, real-time response to threats across networks on a global scale. Gain complete visibility and granular control with automated security enforcement across all network interfaces including RAN, Roaming, S(Gi), Cellular IoT (NB-IoT) and non-3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) access.
Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) a Linux Foundation Networking open source project, includes the functionality of a MANO solution, as described by ETSI, in terms of NFVO and VNFM, but goes beyond that by providing a real-time policy driven closed loop automation framework for service assurance. In addition, ONAP contains an inventory service and a simple-to-use design studio.
ANOD is Aarna Networks’ 100% pure play commercially supported distribution of ONAP. It includes an enhanced version of the ONAP installer called A-OOM (Aarna ONAP Operations Manager) that reduces 3-4 weeks of installation time to just half-a-day. ANOD also comes with basic or premium support so that you can use ONAP with confidence.
Specifically from the Plugtests point of view, ONAP has a detailed set of VNF requirements that include packaging requirements as well. The VNF descriptor can either be in OpenStack Heat template or TOSCA. The testing used the Palo Alto vNGFW packaged using a Heat VNF descriptor. Using this VNF package, we were able to onboard the VNF to ONAP’s design studio. Next we created a Network Service (NS) consisting of that same VNF. ONAP then deployed the entire NS onto a commercial cloud vendor’s OpenStack platform.
Do you have a VNF but are not sure how to interoperate with ONAP? Check out our VNF Onboarding for ONAP whitepaper.
Learn more about Palo Alto Networks’ 5G security at https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/security-for/network/5g-mobile-networks
