The relay race of cloud migration is continuing to evolve. Network function virtualization (NFV) kicked this race off, by lowering costs by moving from an appliance-based network to software-based equivalents. For the next leg of the race we see cloud-native architectures and containers increase efficiency, performance, resiliency, security and agility. While many service providers continue to see great success with virtual machines (VMs), most are now working to deploy containers on bare metal, without the added layer of virtualization, to better compete in the marketplace.
As these technologies improve, the radio access network (RAN) is also undergoing its own evolution. Service providers are scaling their networks to support increased demand and operators are looking towards disaggregation of the RAN via vendor Open RAN solutions, like those from Altiostar, for more freedom of choice, standardization and a decoupling of hardware and software.
Driving innovation through our trusted ecosystem
Virtualizing and disaggregating RANs give communication service providers (CSPs) the freedom to work with new suppliers, boost innovation and differentiation and utilize new operating models. Network operators can also reduce their investment while lowering operating expenses (OpEx), as well as increasing flexibility and automation. To help aid this progress, Red Hat and Altiostar have expanded our work together so that virtualized and containerized RAN can be deployed with infrastructure, application and service automation. Altiostar has helped Red Hat develop the necessary components for running virtualized and containerized RAN and creating the necessary automation framework to support commercial deployment and reduce OpEx for operators. This collaboration delivers:
• The introduction of our infrastructure and workload automation framework for a container-based RAN reference architecture that allows a consistent approach to a disaggregated RAN - for both our customer and partner ecosystem
• Full RAN functionality using cloud-native network functions (CNF) infrastructure from Red Hat and Open vRAN software from Altiostar
• Cooperation on certification, integration and interoperability of Altiostar’s 4G and 5G based virtualized RAN (vRAN) and cloud RAN (cRAN) products with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenShift
https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/...uture-ran?sc_cid=701f2000001ORkmAAG |