The Role of Functional Programming in Management and Orchestration of Virtualized Network Resources

Abstract

This is part II of the follow-up lecture notes of the lectures given by the authors at the Three “CO” (Composability, Comprehensibility, Correctness) Winter School held in Košice, Slovakia, in January 2018, and Summer School held in Budapest, Hungary, in June 2019. In this part we explain the recent network evolution and the concept of virtualization, focusing on the management and orchestration of virtualized network resources. Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is a new paradigm for changing the way networks are built and operated. Decoupling software implementation from network resources through a virtualization layer introduces a need for developing sets of NFV management and orchestration (MANO) functions. We discuss how this new point of view is highly inspired by the functional programming concepts. We provide examples and exercises on Open Stack virtual technology, and also discuss the challenges and problems inspired by the telecommunication industry. Focus is on the Reliable operation of Management and Orchestration functions of Virtualized resources. These notes provide an introduction to the subject, with the goal of explaining the necessity for new knowledge and skills in the area of network programming. We introduce students to the main problems and the network design principles, methods, and techniques used for their solution. The worked examples and exercises serve students as the teaching material, from which they can learn how to use functional programming to effectively and efficiently coordinate management and orchestration functions in distributed complex systems using NFV.