The control and operation of VM lifecycles has emerged as an extremely important element of NFV. Maintaining optimum network and function load, routing, lifecycle maintenance, troubleshooting – these are all aspects of orchestration and administration.

NVGgrid brings a versatile set of orchestration functions into a simple, intuitive User Interface (UI). Users can create templates of chained functions and quickly spin new instances of them to maintain performance as traffic increased. Likewise, maintain optimum network load by cleanly terminating instances.

Any orchestration and administration solution is only as good as the analytics that feeds it. NFVgrid uses the NFVgrid Analytics block, which also drives Synaptect’s stand-alone X-Barrier security solution. Our experience with Big Data acquisition and processing solutions stands behind our packet and log-level data gathering techniques as well as the algorithms used to glean workable insights and security information from them. The NFVgrid orchestration module uses this information for everything from automated lifecycle management to network optimization to security.

Telecommunications Providers services require low-latency as well as highly-granular analytics. With this in mind, we’ve streamlined the NFVgrid Analytics module wherever we could – from placing all the packet and log data on a single database to choosing what gets a 100% packet read to the way we process the data. Wherever possible, we promote speed.

NFVgrid makes it possible to detect low-level intrusions such as probes spread out over time. We also use a variety of exponential moving averages (EMA) to slice the same data in multiple ways. For instance, the analytics block utilizes both a day-of-the-week EMA as well as a runtime average to predict network behavior. Security-focused automated tools such as dynamic threshold determination, auto-scaling, and graph analysis and alarm management handle the rest, whether in the DC or on the network edge.

NFVgrid’s administration features rely heavily on automation to reduce costs and workload. For telecoms, the NFVgrid auto-detect feature does both. With auto-detect and pre-loaded software, rolling out a new remote site becomes a matter of installing the hardware, connecting the network cable, and turning on the power. Worker nodes appear on the network and updates and profiles are uploaded automatically.

Auto-detect is a needed feature, especially as telecoms providers move more computing out of the data center. Network edge devices are becoming increasingly prevalent and increasingly powerful. With the pace of change accelerating, swapping out old devices while still keeping critical legacy hardware creates an ever-growing divergence in on-board security across devices. NFVgrid also solves this through auto-detect, as even the pre-loaded version can be configured for micro-segmentation, so new hardware installations do not affect the equipment in place.