In this section:

From the ground up, Ribbon DSC 8000 hardware is built on Ribbon’s own hardware and operating systems. These systems are highly reliable and scalable. With Ribbon equipment, future growth is as simple as seating new cards and adding a license key, resulting in an operation that requires zero downtime.

Multiple Ribbon applications can be co-hosted in the same enclosure, providing cost savings. These applications include Diameter Signaling Controller (DSC), Signaling Transfer Point (STP), and Signaling Gateway (SG).

DSC 8000 Hardware Overview

The DSC 8000, based on the Enhanced MicroTCA specification along with high-performance processing and high-speed IP-based fabric switching, is a highly tuned carrier-grade platform for Diameter and SS7 routing. This platform is equipped with one mandatory control shelf (shelf 1) and up to three optional expansion shelves (shelves 2, 3, and 4), depending on your networking requirements (see the following figure).

Note

The cabinet housing the DSC 8000 shelf(s) is not included with this platform and should be ordered separately. For information about ordering the cabinet, contact Ribbon Sales (refer to Sales).

DSC 8000 with One Management and Three Expansion Shelves

Each shelf is an 8U General Purpose Packet-Switched platform that provides a carrier-grade, standards-based, high-availability solution built on the uTCA and Advanced Mezzanine Card (AMC) specifications. Each shelf features 18 node slots and a redundant infrastructure for fabric, management, power, and cooling. Beyond its high-availability features, each DSC 8000 shelf is highly modular, scalable, and serviceable.

This DSC 8000 has been designed for Network-Equipment Building System (NEBS) compliance. This platform supports redundant DC input power, 160W/slot power capability, and a backplane with 40GbE per slot.

The DSC 8000 chassis meets AMC cooling and pressure drop requirements at all AMC slots and provides cooling for up to 160W maximum power dissipation at each of these slots [120W per front card and 40W per MicroTCA. 4 Rear Transition Module (µRTM)].

For information about the DSC 8000 mechanical, electrical, and mechanical specifications, refer to DSC 8000 Specifications.

For more information about the DSC 8000 hardware, refer to the DSC 8000 Hardware Installation Guide.


DSC SWe Overview

The DSC Software Edition (SWe) is the same robust software available on the DSC 8000 but instead, is deployed as a virtual instance within a carrier Network Function Virtualization (NFV) cloud environment.

As carriers evolve into NFV cloud-based infrastructure, it is a key requirement to be able to intelligently migrate and adapt the signaling infrastructure. Ribbon is committed to designing NFV compatible software platforms to enable this change. Ribbon is actively involved in the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) NFV Industry Specification Group (ISG) and Management and Orchestration (MANO) working groups along with Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV) Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), OpenFlow, OpenDaylight and OpenStack organizations to stay abreast of the latest advances in the virtualization space. 

The DSC SWe includes Virtual Network Function (VNF) management through the Ve-VNFM HTTP REST API interfaces that run between the DSC SWe (VNF) and third-party VNF Managers (VNFM) such as those provided in the Samsung NFV Orchestrator solution.

The Ribbon virtualization strategy for the DSC SWe is defined for flexibility in server technology and the service provider virtual environments.   

In addition, it is aligned within OpenStack cloud-based orchestration environments for instantiation and configuration of the VNFs. Ribbon has also developed a VNFM to provide application orchestration and communication abstraction to higher-level service orchestration environments.   

The VNFM and the Ribbon Insight Element Management System (EMS) provide the basis for cloud management of the Ribbon virtualization and cloud scale-out strategy. The philosophy is to make the management simplified for the user, masking the underlying complexities associated with cloud applications. The unified management view of the cloud allows for simplified logical cluster views of the VNF application nodes for registration, configuration, status monitoring, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and thresholding for rules-based actions. The VNFM and EMS software is designed to work with the entire Ribbon virtualized portfolio, minimizing the operational complexity when deploying and operating Ribbon solutions.

The metadata values from OpenStack to the DSC SWe VMs are supported. This data includes generic values, which are automatically included by OpenStack (UUID, hostname, SSH public keys), and specific DSC SWe data that is used to initialize each VM. For detailed information about this feature, refer to VM Initialization Data - Metadata.

The DSC SWe provides the DSC software running on Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) hardware (see the following figures).    

DSC SWe Installed on KVM and VMware Hosts


The DSC SWe has been designed for deployment using a dual server configuration with a virtual slot scheme. Using this scheme:

  • virtual slot 1 contains the required Routing and Management VM1
  • virtual slot 2 contains the required Routing and Management VM2

The slots can be created anywhere on COTS hardware based on the virtual slot definition and customer configuration.

Optional VMs are available with routing functionality (Routing VMs) depending on the licensing configuration. Additional hosts may be required depending on the capacity of the host.

For more information about the DSC SWe, refer to the DSC SWe (on KVM) Software Installation Guide, DSC SWe (on VMware) Software Installation Guide and DSC SWe (on OpenStack) Software Installation Guide.


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