In this section:
With the wide adoption of cloud and virtualization technologies (NFV), the physical network functions (PNF) become virtual network functions (VNF) running on virtualized infrastructure manager (VIM) (like Openstack), Ribbon has virtualized SBC, PSX and EMS. While NFV adoption will ultimately result in Capex/Opex reduction for operators, this also presents some challenges. To address these concerns, a SIP-aware front-end Load-Balancer (SLB) is available for SBC and PSX. SLB as a front-end means that a single IP address is exposed towards peer operators. SLB in turn distributes the traffic among back-end call-processing VMs. Ultimately, SLB has its own capacity limits and deployments need to make use of DNS, should the traffic requirements demand more than one SLB instance (SLB is in HA mode and hence it is actually more than one HA pair). However, as long as a single SLB (HA pair) addresses the traffic equivalent to a single site traffic (and hence that equivalent number of back-end call-processing VMs), there is no need to return to using DNS for SLB. Instead, if the traffic goes beyond what a SLB can handle, the solution is to create a new SLB with a new IP and expose that to the peer.
The following are the advantages of this architecture: The SBC must be configured to mark it as "behind" the SLB.
clearDBs.sh
script, and then reconfigure the SBC SWe instance.
SLB as a Front-end for N:1 HA S-SBC
The SLB is deployed as front-end for Ribbon S-SBC. The Ribbon S-SBC can be deployed as an Access SBC and/or Peering SBC.
Typical S-SBC VNF Front-ended by an SLB VNF
SLB Front-ending Multiple S-SBC VNFs