VMware is releasing VMware Telco Cloud Platform 4.0—a major milestone for the company—solidifying numerous capabilities into a unified platform that gives users the flexibility to modernize their telecommunications network as they see fit.
To streamline the process of adoption and modernization, VMware by Broadcom is simplifying the implementation and deployment of VMware Telco Cloud products.
As such, beginning with this version of VMware Telco Cloud Platform, the automation capabilities vary by two packages: the VMware Telco Cloud Platform Essentials package and the VMware Telco Cloud Platform Advanced package.
The VMware Telco Cloud Platform Essentials package offers fast, easy way to deploy infrastructure and manage it with the following fundamental automation capabilities from VMware:
- Registration of pre-deployed clouds as virtual infrastructure
- CaaS Manager for lifecycle management (LCM) of Kubernetes clusters
- CaaS Dynamic Infrastructure Policies Integrator
- Infrastructure Automation
- Network Function Automation (VNFM) for VNFs only, not CNFs
- Role-Based Access Control
- Multi-Tenancy
- API Integration
The VMware Telco Cloud Platform Advanced package includes the automation capabilities in the Essentials package and adds the following capabilities to furnish a comprehensive automation and orchestration solution for core telecommunications networks:
- Multi-Cloud Support
- Network Function Automation, including VNFs, CNFs, LCM, designer, catalog, and Dynamic Infrastructure Policies as well as third-party VNFM support
- Network Service Automation (NFVO)
- Workflow Support, which runs pre- and post-instantiation workflows for network functions and services
- Workflow Hub
- Network Slicing
- GitOps support for lifecycle management of cloud-native applications
- Network Monitoring, Visibility, and Analytics
In addition, the VMware Telco Cloud Platform Advanced package provides comprehensive assurance capabilities to deliver multi-domain, multi-layer monitoring, visibility, and analytics in a unified dashboard.
To support the deployment and management of VNFs and CNFs, VMware Telco Cloud Platform 4.0 includes features from the latest versions of VMware vSphere, NSX, vSAN, Tanzu, and Cloud Director.
This release introduces several new features to simplify the lifecycle management of the platform for CNFs, including CaaS automation upgrades with Workflow Hub enhancements, and support for multiple versions of VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid.
Lifecycle management (LCM) improvements introduce feedback on CNF LCM operations and allows you to monitor CNF LCM operations for debugging.
This release also continues the additional one year support for a single Kubernetes version (1.27), allowing users to remain on a Kubernetes version for a longer period and plan for upgrading to a newer version.
There is now support for multiple Tanzu Kubernetes Grid releases (2.1.1 and 2.5). This feature allows users to continue to use Kubernetes 1.24.x clusters from the previous Tanzu Kubernetes Grid release (2.1.1) while being able to create new workload clusters with the new Kubernetes version from the new Tanzu Kubernetes Grid release (2.5).
Cluster rehoming enables selective upgrading of legacy Kubernetes workload clusters to the latest Kubernetes version. This feature avoids the need to upgrade all legacy workload clusters soon after the management cluster upgrade, providing flexibility on maintenance windows. Keeping the source management cluster (Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 2.1.1) allows support for all LCM/CRUD Operations on Kubernetes 1.24 clusters until end of life.
In addition, this release adds key security features, such as preventing network function deployment into a Kubernetes system namespace, providing granular security defaults at the user namespace level instead of system-wide.
Rapidly deploying flexible telecommunications networks that establish a fabric for innovation call for a multi-vendor approach.
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