ETSI set to host second in its series of NFV Plugtests events

Sophia Antipolis, 6 September 2017

ETSI has shown continued commitment to driving the progression of Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) technology through our efforts to ensure that widespread interoperability is supported.

Following on from the success of our previous NFV interoperability Plugtests^TM gathering, we now announce the dates of the next event.

This latest NFV Plugtests event will be held at ETSI, in Sophia Antipolis, France, between 15 and 19 January. Once again the primary objective will be to provide a valuable opportunity for extensive multi-party interoperability testing to be carried out. Representatives from vendors and several open source communities will be able to evaluate the level of interoperability of their implementations and confirm that they adhere to the NFV specifications that are being defined by ETSI. Supporting open source communities include ETSI OSM (Open Source MANO), OPNFV, OpenStack and Open Baton.

The five day interoperability session will deal with all key components of NFV deployments, including virtual network functions (VNFs), NFV infrastructure (NFVI), Virtual Infrastructure Managers (VIMs) and management and orchestration (MANO) solutions. Over the course of the week a series of comprehensive interoperability test sessions will be embarked upon. These will cover the combining together of various different VNFs, NFV MANO solutions and NFV platforms.

Extending the scope of what was undertaken at the previous NFV Plugtests event, which took place earlier this year in Leganés, Spain, the sessions will encompass further important aspects that are now emerging. These will include multi-site operation, network path, enhanced platform awareness, fault and performance management and NFV application programming interfaces to name a few.

A vital aspect of this latest event will be the continuous and ubiquitous testing environment that attendees will have access to as they join the NFV Plugtests Programme. This exciting innovation, based on the ETSI Hub for Interoperability and Validation (HIVE), will enable remote integration and pre-testing for the event, but also further collaborative testing and validation activities such as remote interoperability testing, PoCs, demos or API validation during and between NFV Plugtests events.

ETSI OSM will in parallel organize an OSM Hackfest which will support on-boarding activities focusing on Day 0/1/2 operations (install, configure, optimize) that leverage the latest capabilities offered by the OSM platform.