Remote Delivery of Network Cloud Digital Integration for China Mobile

To enable the digital transformation of thousands of industries with 5G, China Mobile launched the phase-3 project of centralized network cloud resource pool construction in October 2021. This project planned to add nine service nodes and two independent service areas (Beijing and Xinjiang) to the original network, covering hardware devices and software products from ZTE, Inspur, H3C, Ruijie and Maipu. As an important partner of China Mobile, ZTE undertook the system integration of 29 resource pools and 15,300 computing servers in this project. To solve the pain points of large-scale network cloud construction, short delivery time, decentralized offices, and multi-vendor equipment integration, ZTE, capitalizing on its domestic and overseas engineering experience, innovatively proposed the remote delivery solutions based on the auto integration center (AIC) digital integration platform.

Steps: Remote Design + Remote Deployment

Based on the digital integration platform, ZTE proposed a remote integration delivery solution (Fig. 1). The delivery team can be divided into remote delivery team and on-site delivery team. The two teams jointly develop and deliver the integration solution based on the AIC platform. Remote team members can access the AIC platform through the cloud, and design network solutions offline and online. Based on the automatic remote deployment function of the AIC platform, the remote delivery team can also work with the local delivery team to deploy the solution with one click, enabling more diversified integration delivery scenarios and a more convenient and flexible delivery mode.

During the project implementation, the remote delivery center based on the ZTE digital integration platform can be connected with the network under the on-site delivery environment on the condition that the customer's network security compliance requirements are met. In addition, the remote design and debugging team were created, pulling together the experts who will complete the LLD design of resource pool integration remotely through the AIC platform, and import the LLD design into the deployment tool to realize automated and remote deployment and configuration. The remote integration mode makes the resource pool design more unified and accurate, reduces the skill requirements for on-site front-line engineers, and makes the resource pool deployment smoother and faster, and solves problems timely to ensure the efficient integration delivery.

Software-Defined Integration

The ZTE digital integration platform uses the B/S architecture, with the process orchestration tool for software-defined integration at its core. Based on a deep understanding of the requirements of industry customers in the NFV construction process, ZTE has introduced digital methods to specify the work contents of five scenarios in the NFV network construction process including integration design, integration

deployment, integration test, integration acceptance and integration management. An integration target task is broken down into several minimum executable units, which are cascaded into a complete pipeline through orchestration. This pipeline can be periodically executed in accordance with the predefined scheduling policy, and task reports can be output, thus implementing highly automated continuous integration or continuous deployment tasks.

The process orchestration tool invokes different integration tools based on different integration tasks. At present, the execution layer contains a series of integration tools that can meet the end-to-end automation requirements of integration processes, such as integration planning, design, deployment, check, service configuration and test. In addition, the platform also accumulates integration process assets and integration capabilities into the asset library and capability library respectively while executing integration tasks. The asset library includes various resources, such as ICT infrastructure, tool library, expert team, management processes and regulations. The capability library includes the project library, model library, template library, solution library, instruction library, test case library, experience library, standard library, and O&M library.

At present, the digital integration platform enables the end-to-end automated operations of network planning and design, deployment and check and test acceptance with no manual intervention involved, and there is no need to distinguish between local and remote services, achieving globally equidistant services.

Improving Delivery Efficiency Significantly

In the delivery of China Mobile's phase-3 network cloud resource pool integration, the resource pool in Baoding, Hebei Province was ZTE's first SDN network resource pool that completed the software integration acceptance test. It includes 500 ZTE computing servers, 108 ZTE storage servers, 114 ZTE top of rack (TOR) servers, six ZTE end of rack (EOR) servers, two SDNGWs, as well as export devices and security devices. ZTE integration team entered the site on November 1, 2021. Based on the ZTE AIC digital integration platform and the one-click remote delivery mode, the team quickly completed the integration of the resource pool network, CEPH, and virtual layer, the multi-vendor MANO&EMS deployment, the integration of MANO with the virtual layer as well as the silent instantiation of APPs. On November 14, the team completed the resource pool system integration and check, which lasted ten workdays.

In the multi-vendor equipment networking environment involving ZTE, Inspur, H3C, and Ruijie, the overall integration efficiency increases by 70% compared with the traditional delivery mode. The efficiency of LLD integration for software integration increases by 75%, the software and hardware integration efficiency by 50%, the L-type platform integration efficiency by 60%, the EMS resource pool integration efficiency by 66.6% and the NE instantiation integration efficiency by 75%. This delivery mode has also been successfully applied to other resource pool construction practices of China Mobile.

The remote delivery of network cloud integration for China Mobile is the first-of-its-kind practice of ZTE in the field of digital integration. The innovative remote delivery mode breaks through the single delivery scenario with the network delivery quality and efficiency greatly improved. In the future, ZTE will work with China Mobile to continuously innovate and explore in the field of remote delivery of integration service.