CI/CD Requirement Analysis and Deployment Suggestions in Telecom Field

In the field of IT software development, the deployment pipeline characterized by continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) is being applied and practiced. The core is to speed up software development and iteration, and continuously deliver products to users to give full play to their product value.

With the introduction of automation and digital technologies into telecom networks in recent years, the CI/CD concept is also being accepted in the telecom field. Similar automation frameworks and design ideas are put forward in an attempt to continuously build and deploy telecom network elements (NEs) in an automated way to meet the changing needs of business development.

Requirements for Building CI/CD Platform

According to statistics, more than one-third of operators around the world are considering automated network planning and deployment, and building the CI/CD platform is regarded as a very important measure that is being gradually applied in projects.

For example, international operators have put forward their requirements for CI/CD and automation testing in multinational branch projects. The main idea of their implementation is to introduce the CI pipeline, interconnect with the xTesting framework, integrate vendors' testing tools or open-source testing tools to automatically test NEs and correct problems, and verify the integration solution and NE version. This reduces the integration risks of pushing NEs to the actual commercial environment.

An operator in China is also actively exploring the application of CI/CD mode in the project. It considers building the continuous integration-continuous testing-continuous delivery (CI-CT-CD) pipeline based on the self-developed automatic platform, interconnecting with open-source tools and vendors' automatic deployment and testing tools, and integrating, testing and deploying network functions virtualization infrastructure (NFVI) and virtual network function (VNF).

Many operators worldwide have made requirements for CI/CD and automated testing solution. Their core requirements focus on the CI integration and verification phase, building an automated testing framework, integrating the vendors' automated deployment and testing tools, and completing the integration and verification of NEs.

New Features of CI/CD in Telecom Field

According to the requirements of operators for CI/CD construction, several main features of the CI/CD solution in the telecom field can be summarized:

• The version can be released and managed uniformly. Once a change occurs, the integration and testing process can be triggered automatically.
• The integration pipeline can be orchestrated to implement automatic task control during the integration phase and perform integration actions as required.
• The automatic testing framework can be established to satisfy the automatic tests of the system under test in various application scenarios.
• Data collection and analysis can be integrated to facilitate fault location and develop and update the NE functions in a timely manner.

ZTE End-to-End CI/CD Solution

ZTE has developed the end-to-end CI/CD solution based on its own digital integration framework (Fig. 1). Through the idea of software defined integration, the solution separates the orchestration domain from the execution domain. The orchestration domain focuses on orchestration of the CI/CD pipeline, while the execution domain continues to enrich integration tools and NE assets according to application scenarios to meet the customization needs of different NEs in different scenarios.

ZTE's end-to-end CI/CD solution is implemented as follows:

• Develop, test and construct codes for NEs on the ZTE side according to the requirements of the project, pack the codes into an image package, put it into the project version repository, and synchronize it with the artifactory or APP store of the operator through VPN for unified NE version management.
• Orchestrate the CI/CD pipeline automatically at the orchestration layer according to the requirements of the project, and automatically trigger or manually enable the continuous integration process to call in the tasks orchestrated as required once detecting that a new version of package needs to be updated in the APP store or artifactory.
• In the continuous integration phase, use different testing frameworks in accordance with the NE type. Import the image package under test, call in the automatic deployment tool iDeploy, LLD files and configuration files to deploy NEs such as NFVIs, VNFs, CNFs, and MANO, call in automation testing tools such as inspector, MAT, HATT and TNF as required, import the corresponding test cases and test scripts, complete test operations necessary for service launch such as functions, performance, security, stability, and service dial-up tests, and output the test reports. The test operations in this phase are completed in the test environment or pre-production environment. Determine whether or not to pass the test results through manual inspection or a quality evaluation mechanism set by the system. If not, continue troubleshooting and testing until the test results are passed.
• In the continuous deployment phase, the NEs under test can be continuously delivered in the operators' production environment. In most cases, operators have several commercial resource pool nodes, which make networking more complex and have larger traffic. The CI/CD solution will introduce more complete automatic design, deployment, testing, and O&M monitoring tools to assist the NEs in continuous delivery and implement service launch and monitoring management.

Suggestions on Deploying CI/CD Platform

It is necessary for operators to build a CI/CD platform suitable for their own network development to realize continuous integration and continuous deployment of telecom networks. The CI/CD platform is an essential choice for the operators to achieve digital integration, build automatic and intelligent networks and improve the efficiency and quality of network construction.

ZTE deploys the CI/CD platform in the following phases:

• Phase I: Establish the integration test environment, introduce vendors' testing tools or open-source automation testing tools, improve automation level, provide pre-integration testing capabilities, and identify and reduce integration risks as soon as possible.
• Phase II: Establish the continuous integration pipeline, break tool silos, interconnect with the vendor's artifactory, continuously introduce the vendor's automatic deployment and configuration tools, form an automatic tool chain, cultivate continuous integration capabilities, and speed up the efficiency of version iteration.
• Phase III: Establish the continuous deployment pipeline, make available the production environment network, interconnect with automatic orchestration, testing, and O&M monitoring tools at commercial nodes, implement end-to-end NEs deployment, testing and monitoring in production environments, and support rapid commercial network deployment.
• Phase IV: Construct the digital integration center, adopt Microservice, containerized orchestration and AI technologies and architecture to continuously build a closed loop of DevOps capabilities in the telecom field, promote unified and efficient digital integration of the devices of multiple vendors, and achieve consistent integration and management of NE versions of multiple vendors in different environments. This helps to fully improve digital intelligence of network construction.

The construction of a CI/CD platform depends on the continuous development of telecom automation technologies and the support of operators' network construction and O&M management capabilities. ZTE is willing to work with operators worldwide to actively explore the path to network construction automation and jointly build a new future of digital integration.