CN111221618A

CN111221618A - Method and device for deploying containerized virtual network function

Info

Publication number: CN111221618A
Application number: CN201811408649.1A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 夏海涛
Original assignee: Huawei Technologies Co Ltd
Current assignee: Huawei Technologies Co Ltd
Priority date: 2018-11-23
Filing date: 2018-11-23
Publication date: 2020-06-02
Anticipated expiration: 2038-11-23
Also published as: CN111221618B; WO2020103925A1

Abstract

The embodiment of the application provides a deployment method and a device of a containerization Virtual Network Function (VNF), and the method comprises the steps of dividing a containerization VNF into a container runtime environment CRE and a containerization VNFC, and maintaining relationship information of the container VNFC and the container runtime environment CRE, so that when the containerization VNF is deployed, a VNFM performs differential deployment on components of the containerization VNF, and the deployment flexibility of the containerization VNF is enhanced.

Description

Method and device for deploying containerized virtual network function

Technical Field

The present application relates to the field of communications, and in particular, to a method and an apparatus for deploying a containerized virtual network function.

Background

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) refers to a virtualization technology in the Information Technology (IT) field that telecommunication network operators use for reference. The NFV standardization work mainly focuses on Network Services (NS), Virtual Network Functions (VNFs), and MANagement and organization of virtual resources (MANOs), and the function definition work in the MANO framework is completed by an interface and architecture (IFA) workgroup of an NFV industry Standards group under the European communications Standards Institute (ETSI), and the function architecture includes a Network Function Virtualization Orchestrator (NFVO) and a Virtual Network Function Manager (VNFM), and the NFVO and the VNFM cooperate together to realize the life cycle MANagement of the VNF.

In the VNF lifecycle management process, the VNFM performs consistent and undifferentiated lifecycle management on all Virtualized Network Function Components (VNFCs) constituting the VNF, that is, selects an appropriate virtual machine from a Virtual Machine (VM) resource pool allocated to the VNF, loads an image of the VNFC onto the virtual machine, completes configuration related to instantiation, and finally generates a VNFC instance. However, this approach is not suitable for the flexible and differentiated deployment of the components of the containerized VNF.

Disclosure of Invention

The embodiment of the application provides a deployment method and a deployment device for a containerized VNF, and the VNFM carries out differential processing on the components of the containerized VNF by adding relation information of the VNF on a Container Runtime Environment (CRE) and the containerized VNFC in a descriptor file (VNFD) of the VNF, so that the deployment elasticity of the containerized VNF is enhanced.

In a first aspect, a method for deploying a containerized virtual network function is provided, where a containerized virtual network function VNF includes a container runtime environment CRE and a containerized virtual network function component VNFC; the method comprises the following steps:

a Virtual Network Function Manager (VNFM) receives a VNF instantiation request message sent by a Network Function Virtualization Orchestrator (NFVO);

the VNFM acquires the relation information of the containerized VNFC and the CRE according to the VNF instantiation request message, and determines the target CRE deployed by the containerized VNF according to the relation information;

the VNFM instantiates the target CRE and sends information of a first virtual machine resource allocated to the instantiated target CRE to a container manager corresponding to the target CRE, wherein the first virtual machine resource is managed by the container manager;

the VNFM sends a software image loading request message to a container manager, wherein the software image loading request message is used for the container manager to load the image of the containerization VNFC into a container unit and arrange the container unit onto a first virtual machine resource managed by the container manager, and the container unit is a container computing resource for bearing the image operation of the containerization VNFC;

the VNFM sends a request message for containerization VNFC instantiation to the container manager, the request message for containerization VNFC instantiation being used for the container manager to perform the instantiation of the containerization VNFC. The deployment method of the VNFM for performing differential processing on the containerized VNF is achieved, and the flexibility of the containerized VNF deployment is enhanced.

With reference to the first aspect, in a first possible implementation manner of the first aspect, before the VNFM instantiates the target CRE, the method further includes:

and the VNFM receives information of a second virtual machine resource allocated by the NFVO for the instantiation target CRE, wherein the information of the second virtual machine resource comprises the identification of the virtual machine.

With reference to the first aspect, in a second possible implementation manner of the first aspect, the determining, according to the relationship information, a target CRE for containerization VNF deployment includes:

one or more target CREs deployed by the containerization VNFC are determined from the relationship information.

With reference to the first aspect or the first possible implementation manner of the first aspect, in a third possible implementation manner of the first aspect, the VNF instantiation request message includes an identification of a descriptor file VNFD of the containerization VNF; the VNFM acquires the relation information of the containerized VNFC and the CRE according to the VNF instantiation request message, and the relation information comprises the following steps:

and the VNFM acquires the relation information of the containerized VNFC and the CRE from the VNFD corresponding to the identifier of the VNFD.

With reference to the first aspect or the first possible implementation manner of the first aspect, in a fourth possible implementation manner of the first aspect, the VNF instantiation request message includes at least one of a deployment template identifier or an instantiation level identifier of a containerization VNF; the VNFM acquires the relation information of the containerized VNFC and the CRE according to the VNF instantiation request message, and the relation information comprises the following steps:

and the VNFM acquires the relation information of the containerized VNFC and the CRE according to at least one item of the deployment template identification or the instantiation level identification.

In a second aspect, a method for deploying a containerized virtual network function is provided, where a containerized virtual network function VNF includes a container runtime environment CRE and a containerized virtual network function component VNFC, and an instance of the CRE is deployed in an NFV infrastructure; the method comprises the following steps:

the VNFM sends information of a first virtual machine resource allocated to the target CRE to a container manager corresponding to the target CRE, and the first virtual machine resource is managed by the container manager;

sending a software image loading request message to a container manager corresponding to a target CRE by a VNFM, wherein the software image loading request message is used for loading an image of a containerized VNFC into a container unit by the container manager and arranging the container unit onto a first virtual machine resource managed by the container manager, and the container unit is a container computing resource for carrying out image operation of the containerized VNFC;

With reference to the second aspect, in a first possible implementation manner of the second aspect, determining a target CRE of a containerization VNF deployment according to the relationship information includes:

With reference to the first aspect or the first possible implementation manner of the first aspect, in a second possible implementation manner of the first aspect, the VNF instantiation request message includes an identification of a descriptor file VNFD of the containerized VNF; the VNFM acquires the relation information of the containerized VNFC and the CRE according to the VNF instantiation request message, and the relation information comprises the following steps:

With reference to the first aspect or the first possible implementation manner of the first aspect, in a third possible implementation manner of the first aspect, the VNF instantiation request message includes at least one of a deployment template identifier or an instantiation level identifier of a containerization VNF; the VNFM acquires the relation information of the containerized VNFC and the CRE according to the VNF instantiation request message, and the relation information comprises the following steps:

In a third aspect, a method for deploying a containerized virtual network function is provided, the method including:

the method comprises the steps that a container manager receives information of a first virtual machine resource sent by a Virtual Network Function Manager (VNFM);

the method comprises the steps that a container manager receives a software image loading request message sent by a VNFM;

the container manager loads the mirror image of the containerization VNFC to a container unit according to the software mirror image loading request message, and arranges the container unit on a first virtual machine resource, wherein the container unit is a container computing resource for bearing the mirror image operation of the containerization VNFC;

the container manager receives a request message of containerization VNFC instantiation sent by the VNFM;

the containerization manager completes instantiation of the containerization VNFC according to the request message for instantiation of the containerization VNFC.

With reference to the third aspect, in one possible implementation, the method further includes:

the container manager sends a reply message to the VNFM that the containerized VNFC is instantiated.

In a fourth aspect, a method for deploying a containerized virtual network function is provided, where a containerized virtual network function VNF includes a container runtime environment CRE and a containerized virtual network function component VNFC; the method comprises the following steps:

a virtual machine network function manager (VNFM) receives a first Virtual Network Function (VNF) instantiation request message sent by a Network Function Virtualization Orchestrator (NFVO);

the VNFM acquires the relation information of the containerized VNFC and the CRE according to the instantiation request message of the first VNF, and determines the target CRE deployed by the containerized VNF according to the relation information;

the VNFM receives information of a first virtual machine resource sent by the NFVO, wherein the information of the first virtual machine resource is information of a virtual machine resource which is distributed for instantiating the containerization VNFC and managed by a container manager;

the VNFM sends information of the first virtual machine resource to the container manager;

the VNFM sends a first software image loading request message to the container manager, wherein the first software image loading request message is used for the container manager to load the image of the containerization VNFC deployed on the instantiated target CRE into a container unit and arrange the container unit onto a first virtual machine resource managed by the container manager, and the container unit is a container computing resource for carrying the image operation of the containerization VNFC;

With reference to the fourth aspect, in a first possible implementation manner of the fourth aspect, the determining a target CRE of a containerization VNF deployment according to the relationship information includes:

With reference to the fourth aspect or the first possible implementation manner of the fourth aspect, in a second possible implementation manner of the fourth aspect, the first VNF instantiation request message includes an identification of a descriptor file VNFD of the containerization VNF; the method for acquiring the relationship information of the containerized VNFC and the CRE by the VNFM according to the first VNF instantiation request message comprises the following steps:

In combination with the fourth aspect or the first possible implementation manner of the fourth aspect, in a third possible implementation manner of the fourth aspect, the first VNF instantiation request message includes at least one of a deployment template identification or an instantiation level identification of the containerization VNF; the method for acquiring the relationship information of the containerized VNFC and the CRE by the VNFM according to the first VNF instantiation request message comprises the following steps:

With reference to the fourth aspect, or any one of the foregoing possible implementation manners of the fourth aspect, in a fourth possible implementation manner of the fourth aspect, before the virtual machine network function manager VNFM receives the first virtual network function VNF instantiation request message sent by the network function virtualization orchestrator NFVO, the method further includes:

the VNFM instantiates the target CRE.

With reference to the fourth possible implementation manner of the fourth aspect, in a fifth possible implementation manner of the fourth aspect, the VNFM instantiates the target CRE, which includes:

the VNFM receives a second VNF instantiation request message sent by the NFVO, wherein the second VNF instantiation request message comprises a target CRE instance identifier;

the VNFM instantiates the target CRE instance to identify the corresponding target CRE.

In a fifth aspect, a method for deploying a containerized virtual network function is provided, the method comprising:

the network function virtualization orchestrator NFVO sends a first virtual network function VNF instantiation request message to a virtual network function manager VNFM; the first VNF instantiation request message is for the VNFM to acquire a target containerization runtime CRE of the containerization VNF deployment;

the NFVO allocates information of a first virtual machine resource to the VNFC, wherein the first virtual machine resource is managed by the container manager;

the VNF0 sends information of a first virtual machine resource to the VNFM, where the information of the first virtual machine resource is used for the VNFM to load an image of the containerized VNFC deployed on the instantiated target CRE into a container unit, and to program the container unit onto the first virtual machine resource managed by the container manager, and the container unit is a container computing resource that carries the image of the containerized VNFC to run. The deployment method of the VNFM for performing differential processing on the containerized VNF is achieved, and the flexibility of the containerized VNF deployment is enhanced.

With reference to the fifth aspect, in a first possible implementation manner of the fifth aspect, the first VNF instantiation request message includes an identification of a descriptor file VNFD of the containerization VNF.

With reference to the fifth aspect, in a second possible implementation manner of the fifth aspect, the first VNF instantiation request message includes at least one of a deployment template identification or an instantiation level identification of the containerization VNF.

With reference to the fifth aspect or any one of the foregoing possible implementation manners of the fifth aspect, in a third possible implementation manner of the fifth aspect, the method further includes:

and the NFVO sends a second VNF instantiation request message to the VNFM, wherein the second VNF instantiation request message comprises a target CRE instance identifier and is used for instantiating the target CRE corresponding to the target CRE instance identifier.

In a sixth aspect, an apparatus is provided, where the apparatus has a function of implementing a virtual machine network function manager VNFM in the foregoing method. The function can be realized by hardware, and can also be realized by executing corresponding software by hardware. The hardware or software includes one or more modules corresponding to the functions described above.

In a seventh aspect, a device is provided, where the device has a function of implementing the network function virtualization orchestrator NFVO in the foregoing method. The function can be realized by hardware, and can also be realized by executing corresponding software by hardware. The hardware or software includes one or more modules corresponding to the functions described above.

In an eighth aspect, an apparatus is provided, which has the function of implementing the container manager in the above method. The function can be realized by hardware, and can also be realized by executing corresponding software by hardware. The hardware or software includes one or more modules corresponding to the functions described above.

In a ninth aspect, there is provided an apparatus comprising a processor and a memory, the memory being configured to store a program, the processor being configured to read the program for execution, and the program, when executed, being capable of implementing the method of any one of the possible implementations of the first to fifth aspects.

A tenth aspect provides a computer program product comprising instructions for causing a computer to perform the method of any of the possible implementations of the first to fifth aspects when the computer program product is run on a computer.

In an eleventh aspect, a computer-readable storage medium is provided, on which a computer program is stored, which, when executed by a processor, implements the method in any of the possible implementation manners of the first aspect to the fifth aspect.

Based on the provided deployment method and device of the containerized VNF, the deployment of the containerized VNF is further realized by adding the relationship information of the VNF to the Container Runtime Environment (CRE) and the containerized VNFC in the descriptor file (virtualized network function descriptor, VNFD) of the VNF, the deployment method of the VNFM for performing differential processing on the containerized VNF is realized, and the flexibility, i.e., the flexibility, of the containerized VNF deployment is enhanced.

Drawings

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of an ETSI NFV MANO standard architecture provided by an embodiment of the present application;

fig. 2 is a schematic diagram of a deployment use case of a container service according to an embodiment of the present application;

fig. 3 is a schematic diagram of an internal structure of a containerization VNF according to an embodiment of the present disclosure;

fig. 4 is a schematic flowchart of a deployment method of a containerized VNF according to an embodiment of the present application;

figure 5 is a schematic diagram of an internal structure of another containerization VNF provided by embodiments of the present application;

fig. 6 is a schematic flowchart of another deployment method of a containerized VNF according to an embodiment of the present application;

fig. 7 is a schematic flowchart of another deployment method of a containerized VNF according to an embodiment of the present application;

fig. 8 is a schematic flowchart of instantiation of a container runtime environment in a containerized VNF deployment according to an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 9 is a schematic structural diagram of a VNFM according to an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 10 is a schematic diagram of another container manager provided in an embodiment of the present application;

fig. 11 is a schematic structural diagram of an NFVO provided in an embodiment of the present application;

fig. 12 is a schematic structural diagram of an apparatus for containerized virtual network function deployment according to an embodiment of the present application.

Detailed Description

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) refers to a telecommunication network operator, by using virtualization technology in the field of information technology for reference, and performs software and hardware decoupling on the realization of part of telecommunication network functions in a general server, switch and memory, thereby realizing rapid and efficient deployment of Network Services (NS), and achieving savings in investment cost and operation cost. Virtualization technology implements telecommunication network functions in a software manner, can run on general server hardware, can be migrated, instantiated, deployed at different physical locations of the network as needed, and does not require installation of new equipment.

The standardization work of NFV mainly focuses on management and orchestration of network services, virtual network functions and virtual resources, and the functional definition work in MANO framework is performed by NFV interface and architecture group working group under european communication standards institute, and its functional architecture is shown in fig. 1.

The NFVO is used to implement management and processing of a Network Service Descriptor (NSD), a virtual network function forwarding graph (VNF forwarding graph, VNFFG), management of a network service lifecycle, and implement lifecycle management of a VNF and management functions of virtual resources in cooperation with a VNFM.

The VNFM is used to implement lifecycle management of the VNF, including instantiation of the VNF, elastic Scaling of VNF instances (including Scaling out/up and Scaling in/down), healing of VNF instances (healing), and termination of VNF instances.

The Virtual Infrastructure Manager (VIM) is responsible for infrastructure layer hardware resources, management (including reservation and allocation) of virtualized resources, monitoring and fault reporting of virtual resource states, and providing a virtualized resource pool to the upper layer application.

An operation and business support system (OSS/BSS) refers to an operation and maintenance system OSS/BSS of an operator.

The Element Manager (EM) performs functions of traditional fault management (fault management), configuration management (configuration management), user management (accounting management), performance management (performance management), and security management (security management) on the VNF, where fault management, configuration management, user management, performance management, and security management are abbreviated as FCAPS.

A Virtualized Network Function (VNF) corresponds to a Physical Network Function (PNF) in a conventional non-virtualized network, such as a virtualized EPC node (including a Mobility Management Entity (MME), a Serving Gateway (SGW), a packet data gateway (PGW), and the like). The functional behavior and state of the network function are independent of virtualization, and NFV technology requires that VNF and PNF have the same functional behavior and external interface.

A VNF consists of one or more VNF components (VNFCs) of a lower functional level. Therefore, one VNF may be deployed on multiple Virtual Machines (VMs), each VM carrying a function of one VNFC, and the VNF may also be deployed on one VM.

The NFV infrastructure (NFVI) is composed of hardware and virtual resources and virtualization layers. From the VNF perspective, the virtualization layer and the hardware resources in combination are one complete entity that can provide the required virtual resources.

A container is an operating system level virtualization technique. A container is an abbreviation of container as a service (CaaS), which is a specific type of platform as a service (PaaS) service. The container isolates different processes through operating system isolation techniques, such as CGroup and NameSpace under Linux. The container technology is different from hardware virtualization (hypervisor) technology, and has no virtual hardware, no operating system inside and only a process. Due to the characteristics of the container technology, the container is lighter in weight and more convenient to manage compared with a virtual machine. For the convenience of management, in the container's run state, a common set of management operations is defined, such as: start, stop, pause, delete, etc., to perform unified life cycle management on the containers.

The Container Service deployment in ETSI NFV standard is shown in fig. 2, wherein Container Infrastructure Service (Container Infrastructure Service) may also be referred to as Container Service, and Container Infrastructure Service Management (Container Infrastructure Service Management) may also be referred to as Container Service Management. In the deployment use case of fig. 2, both the container service and the container service management are located in the PaaS layer, or may be independent of the PaaS layer and become an infrastructure service layer of the PaaS layer. The container service may be directly invoked by the VNF, or may be invoked by a public service or a proprietary service (e.g., PaaS service) invoked by the VNF. The registration and discovery functions of the container service are placed in the container infrastructure service management, and the standardization has the basic goal of integrating the functions of the container service management into the NFV MANO architecture functions to realize the corresponding lifecycle management functions on the container service called by the VNF when the NFV MANO performs lifecycle management on the containerized VNF.

The standard architecture and the container service deployment use case of the NFV MANO are described above, and the deployment method of the containerized VNF provided by the embodiment of the present application is described below.

In order to meet the requirement of flexible Deployment of a containerized VNF, an embodiment of the present application provides a Deployment method of a containerized VNF, where a Deployment template (Virtual Deployment Unit, VDU) of different VNF components is added to a Virtual network function descriptor file (VNFD) of the containerized VNF for performing differential description, so as to implement Deployment of a component of the containerized VNF by a VNFM in a differentiated manner, and enhance the flexibility of Deployment of the containerized VNF.

In one embodiment of the present application, as shown in fig. 3, the containerization VNF is divided into two parts: a container runtime environment and a containerized VNFC, both components of the VNF (each as a different VNF component) are instantiated using the VDU definition in the VNFD, but with different content definitions in the respective VDU. A Container Runtime Environment (CRE) is a program that creates and runs containers based on an online acquired image (image), such as Kubelet in the kubernets system. The mirror image is a single file made of a series of software files according to a certain format, is similar to a ZIP package file, and can package all relevant information of software operation. The containerization VNF may be deployed in multiple container runtime environments, each managed by a corresponding container manager (CaaS Mgt).

The containerized VNFC image is encapsulated in the containerized VNFC, and in a specific container runtime environment, a corresponding container manager (CaaS Mgt) allocates corresponding computing resources, storage resources, and network resources to the containerized VNFC image, and finally, instantiation of the VNFC is completed.

The containerization VNFC may be referred to as a container application (container application or application provider), the container application runs on a container runtime environment, and the containerization VNFC image constitutes a container image. The loading of the image of the container runtime environment into the virtual machine is part of the VM image.

The preconditions for containerization VNF deployment by this embodiment are: VDUs having different contents are defined in the VNFD of the containerization VNF for the container in-progress environment and the containerization VNFC, respectively.

In the VDU definition corresponding to the container runtime environment, the description of the constraint of the attributes of software image description swimageDesc and NFVI is enhanced. Wherein the swImageDesc specifies an image of the container runtime environment loaded into the virtual machine as part of a Virtual Machine (VM) image. The NFVI constraints specify constraints on the VMs of the load container runtime environment, such as: location, capacity, etc. of the VM.

In the VDU definition corresponding to the containerization VNFC, the description of the attributes of the software image description swimageDesc and the container runtime environment constraint (CRE constraint) is enhanced. Wherein the swImageDesc specifies a mirror image (as a container mirror image) of the containerization VNFC. The container runtime environment constraints specify constraints on the VNFC instance containerization runtime environment CRE deployed using the VDU, such as: the VNFC instance is deployed on a specified CRE.

In this embodiment, the containerization VNF is divided into two parts: the container runtime environment CRE and the containerized VNFC may be understood as dividing the containerized VNF into two different VNFCs, namely the CRE and the containerized VNFC, i.e. the CRE is also considered as one VNFC. In this case, the method of containerization VNF deployment is shown in fig. 4.

It should be noted that "first" and "second" are only used to distinguish messages or information, and the messages or information themselves are not limited.

Fig. 4 is a schematic diagram of a deployment method of a containerization VNF according to an embodiment of the present application. As shown in fig. 4, the method may include the steps of:

s101, the VNFM receives a VNF instantiation request message sent by the NFVO.

The VNFM receives a VNF instantiation request message sent by the NFVO to request deployment of the containerized VNF.

Optionally, in an embodiment, the VNF instantiation request message includes an identification of a descriptor file VNFD of the containerization VNF, so that a subsequent VNFM acquires relationship information of the containerization VNFCs and CREs from the VNF descriptor file.

Optionally, in another embodiment, the VNF instantiation request message includes at least one of a deployment template (deployment browser) or an instantiation level identifier of the containerized VNF, so that a subsequent VNFM acquires relationship information of the containerized VNFCs and CREs.

And S102, the VNFM acquires the relation information of the containerization VNFC and the CRE according to the VNF instantiation request message, and determines the target CRE deployed by the containerization VNF according to the relation information.

In one embodiment, when the VNF instantiation request message includes an identifier of a VNFD of the containerization VNF, the VNFM determines the VNFD according to the identifier of the VNFD, and acquires relationship information between the containerization VNFC and the CRE from the VNFD.

In another embodiment, when the VNF instantiation request message includes at least one of the deployment template identifier or the instantiation level identifier of the containerization VNF, the VNFM obtains the relationship information between the containerization VNFCs and the CREs according to at least one of the VNFM identifier or the instantiation level identifier.

The relationship information between the containerized VNFCs and the CREs includes information on which CREs the containerized VNFCs can be deployed on, in other words, information specifying which specified CREs the containerized VNFCs can be deployed on, for example, the containerized VNFCs can be deployed on CREs such as kubernets, OpenShift, Azure, and the like.

Optionally, in one embodiment, the containerized VNFCs may be deployed on one or more CREs.

S103, the VNFM instantiates the target CRE and allocates a first virtual machine resource managed by the container manager for the instantiated target CRE.

After the VNFM determines the target CRE, the VNFM sends a virtual resource allocation request message to the NFVO, and obtains, from the VIM through the NFVO, a virtual machine resource allocated for instantiating the target CRE, that is, a second virtual machine resource, including a computing resource, a storage resource, and a network resource. The VNFM receives, from the NFVO, information of a second virtual machine resource allocated for the instantiation target CRE, the information of the second virtual machine resource including an identification of the virtual machine. And the VNFM initiates a software image loading request to the VIM through the NFVO, and loads the determined image of the target CRE to the allocated virtual machine. And the VNFM completes the related configuration of the instantiation of the target CRE, and finally completes the instantiation of the target CRE.

After the instantiation of the target CRE is completed, the VNFM allocates a first virtual machine resource managed by a container manager (CaaS Mgt) for the instantiated target CRE, and sends information of the first virtual machine resource to the container manager (CaaS Mgt).

S104, the VNFM sends the information of the first virtual machine resource to the container manager. The information of the first virtual machine resource may include an identification of at least one virtual machine allocated to the containerization VNFC.

S105, the VNFM sends a software image loading request message to the container manager.

The software loading request message is used for the container manager to load the image of the containerization VNFC into the container unit and arrange the container unit on the first virtual machine resource managed by the container manager so as to further complete the instantiation of the containerization VNFC. Wherein a container unit is a container computing resource that carries the containerized VNFC image operation, that is: the image of the VNFC is loaded as a container image onto a set of container units (as computing resources) that are smaller grains of computing resources that are sliced over the node resources (e.g., virtual machine VMs) on which they are located. A container unit may map to a kubernets object "container group" (Pod).

S106, the container manager loads the image of the containerized VNFC deployed on the instantiated target CRE onto the first virtual machine resource.

Namely, the containerized VNFC image is loaded on the virtual machine corresponding to the information of the first virtual machine resource.

S107, the VNFM sends a request message to the container manager for instantiation of the containerized VNFC.

The request message for instantiation of the containerization VNFC is used for the container manager to complete instantiation of the containerization VNFC.

S108, the container manager instantiates the containerized VNFC.

In this embodiment, the instantiation of the containerized VNFC is triggered by the VNFM and performed by the container manager. After the container manager completes instantiation of the containerized VNFC, a response message of instantiation of the containerized VNFC is returned to the VNFM.

Optionally, in this embodiment, as shown in fig. 4, the method may further include:

s109, the VNFM sends a response message of VNF instantiation to the NFVO.

Optionally, in this embodiment, it may also be the EM that triggers the VNFM to perform containerization VNF deployment, in other words, the VNF instantiation request message received by the VNFM may be sent by the NFVO or the EM. When the VNF instantiation request message received by the VNFM is sent by the EM, after the containerized VNF deployment is completed, the VNFM sends a response message of VNF instantiation to the EM, and notifies the EM of completion of the containerized VNF deployment.

By using the deployment method of the containerized VNF provided in this embodiment, the CRE in the containerized VNF and the containerized VNFC are regarded as different VNFCs, and the relationship information between the CRE and the containerized VNFC is added to the VNFD of the containerized VNF to distinguish different VNFC deployments, thereby enhancing the flexibility of the containerized VNF deployment, that is, the flexibility of the containerized VNF deployment. While improving the efficiency of containerized VNF deployment.

The present embodiments also provide an internal structure of a containerization VNF, as shown in fig. 5. The containerization VNF shown in fig. 5 also divides the containerization VNF into two parts: the container runtime environment CRE and the containerized VNFC, but different from fig. 3, in fig. 5, the CRE instance is pre-deployed in a Network Function Virtualization Infrastructure (NFVI), and when a containerized VNF instantiation request message is received, instantiation of the containerized VNFC is directly performed to complete an instantiation process of the containerized VNF, which is specifically shown in fig. 6.

Fig. 6 is a schematic flowchart of another deployment method of a containerization VNF according to an embodiment of the present application. The method comprises the following steps:

s201, the VNFM receives a VNF instantiation request message sent by the NFVO.

And S202, the VNFM acquires the relation information of the containerization VNFC and the CRE according to the VNF instantiation request message, and determines the target CRE deployed by the containerization VNF according to the relation information.

S203, the VNFM sends information of the first virtual machine resource allocated to the instantiated target CRE to the container manager corresponding to the target CRE, where the first virtual machine resource is managed by the container manager corresponding to the target CRE.

S204, the VNFM sends a software image loading request message to the container manager.

S205, the container manager loads the image of the containerized VNFC deployed on the instantiated target CRE onto the first virtual machine resource.

S206, the VNFM sends a request message for instantiation of the containerized VNFC to the container manager to request the container manager to complete instantiation of the containerized VNFC.

S207, the container manager instantiates the containerized VNFC and sends a response message of the containerized VNFC instantiation to the VNFM.

s208, the VNFM sends a response message of VNF instantiation to the NFVO to notify the NFVO to complete deployment of the containerized VNF.

In the process of containerized VNF deployment in this embodiment, because the CRE is deployed in the NFVI in advance, there is no step in fig. 5 to instantiate the target CRE corresponding to S103 in fig. 4, except for the other steps in fig. 5: s201 to S208 are the same as the descriptions of S101, S102, S104 to S108 in fig. 4, and are not repeated herein for brevity.

The embodiment of the present application further provides another deployment method of a containerized VNF, as shown in fig. 7. The difference between the deployment method of the containerization VNF and fig. 4 is that, in this embodiment, the CRE in the containerization VNF and the containerization VNFC are regarded as two different types of VNFs, the VNFDs of the two types of VNFs are respectively defined, and the dependency relationship of the deployment of the containerization VNFC on the containerization runtime environment, that is, the relationship information between the containerization VNFC and the CRE, is specified between the VNFDs.

In the VNFD definition corresponding to the container runtime environment, a functional description with an attribute of swImageDesc is enhanced, where the swImageDesc specifies that the VNF uses a description of software images (including images of the container runtime environment) that are loaded to virtual machines, referred to as Virtual Machine (VM) images.

In the VNFD definition corresponding to the containerized VNFC, a function description with an attribute of dependentcred descriptor is newly added, and the dependentcred descriptor specifies a constraint on environment CRE when performing a VNFC instance container deployed using the VNFD, for example: a containerized VNFC instance is deployed on a designated CRE.

Furthermore, the deployment of the containerized runtime environment is independent of the deployment of the containerized VNFCs, in other words, the deployment of the containerized runtime environment is independent of the deployment of the containerized VNFCs, wherein the deployment of the containerized runtime environment includes CRE image loading and CRE instantiation. And the VNFM is no longer involved in the process of allocating virtual machine resources, which is instead done by the NFVO. Here the virtual machine resources are allocated for a target CRE specified for deploying the containerization VNFCs. The virtual machine resources allocated by the NFVO are managed by a container manager (CaaS Mgt).

Fig. 7 is a schematic flowchart of another deployment method of a containerization VNF according to an embodiment of the present application. As shown in fig. 7, the method may include the steps of:

s301, the NFVO sends a first VNF instantiation request message to the VNFM.

Optionally, in an embodiment, the first VNF instantiation request message includes an identifier of a descriptor file VNFD of the containerized VNF, so that after the subsequent VNFM receives the first VNF instantiation request message, relationship information between the containerized VNFC and the CRE is obtained from the corresponding VNFD according to the identifier of the VNFD.

Optionally, in another embodiment, the first VNF instantiation request message includes at least one of a deployment template identifier or an instantiation level identifier of the containerization VNF, so that after the subsequent VNFM receives the first VNF instantiation request message, the relationship information between the containerization VNFCs and CREs is obtained according to at least one of the deployment template identifier or the instantiation level identifier.

S302, the VNFM acquires relationship information between the containerization VNFCs and the CREs according to the first VNF instantiation request message, and determines the target CRE deployed by the containerization VNF according to the relationship information.

In an embodiment, when the VNFD identification of the containerization VNF is included in the first VNF instantiation request message, the VNFM reads relationship information between the containerization VNFC and the CRE from the VNFD corresponding to the VNFD identification, and further determines the target CRE for deployment of the containerization VNF according to the correspondence between the VNFC and the CRE.

In another embodiment, when the VNF instantiation request message includes at least one of the deployment template identifier or the instantiation level identifier of the containerization VNF, the VNFM obtains the relationship information between the containerization VNFCs and the CREs according to the at least one of the deployment template identifier or the instantiation level identifier.

The relationship information between containerization VNFCs and CREs may be that the containerization VNFCs are deployed on one or more specified CREs, in other words, a specific containerization VNFC may be deployed on one or more specified CREs, for example, the containerization VNFCs may be deployed on CREs such as kubernets, OpenShift, Azure, and the like.

When the VNFM acquires the relationship information of the containerized VNFC and the CRE, the target CRE where the containerized VNFC can be deployed is determined according to the relationship information.

S303, the NFVO obtains information for allocating a first virtual machine resource managed by a container manager (CaaS Mgt) to the instantiated containerized VNFC.

The NFVO sends a virtual resource allocation request to the VIM, and requests the VIM to allocate corresponding virtual machine resources to the instantiated containerized VNFC, wherein the virtual machine resources comprise computing resources, storage resources, network resources and an identifier of at least one virtual machine allocated to the containerized VNFC; and acquiring the information of the virtual machine resources from the VIM. The information on the virtual machine resource described here is information on the first virtual machine resource.

S304, the NFVO sends the information of the first virtual machine resource to the VNFM.

The information of the first virtual machine resource comprises a virtual machine identifier. And after receiving the information of the first virtual machine resource, the VNFM sends the resource information of the first virtual machine to the container manager. In other words, after receiving the identifier of the virtual machine, the VNFM sends the identifier of the virtual machine to the container manager, so that the corresponding virtual machine resource is addressed according to the identifier of the virtual machine in the following process.

S305, the VNFM sends information of the first virtual machine resource to the container manager.

S306, the VNFM sends a first software image loading request message to the container manager.

When the VNFM receives the information of the first virtual machine resource sent by the NFVO, a first software image loading request message is sent to the container manager to request that the containerized VNFC image deployed on the instantiated target CRE is loaded into the container unit, and the container unit is arranged on the first virtual machine resource managed by the container manager, in other words, the container unit is arranged on the virtual machine corresponding to the identifier of the virtual machine. Wherein the container unit is a container computing resource that carries a mirrored run of the containerized VNFC.

S307, the container manager loads the image of the containerized VNFC deployed on the instantiation target CRE onto the virtual machine.

S308, the VNFM sends a request message for containerization VNFC instantiation to the container manager.

S309, the container manager instantiates the containerized VNFC.

Optionally, in this embodiment, as shown in fig. 7, the method further includes:

s310, the VNFM sends a response message of VNF instantiation to the NFVO to notify the NFVO of completing deployment of the containerized VNF.

Optionally, in this embodiment, it may also be the EM that triggers the VNFM to perform containerized VNF deployment, in other words, the EM sends a VNF instantiation request message to the VNFM. When the VNFM receives the VNF instantiation request message, operations S320 to S370 are performed, and after the instantiation of the containerization VNFC in S370 is completed, the VNFM sends a response message of VNF instantiation to the EM to notify the EM of completing the deployment of the containerization VNF.

By using the deployment method of the containerized VNF provided in this embodiment, the CRE in the containerized VNF and the containerized VNFC are regarded as different types of VNFs, and the dependency relationship of the VNFD corresponding to the CRE is added to the VNFD of the containerized VNFC, so that differential deployment is performed on the CRE and the containerized VNFC, and the flexibility (flexibility) of the containerized VNF deployment is enhanced. While improving the efficiency of containerized VNF deployment.

Optionally, in this embodiment, as shown in fig. 7, before the NFVO or EM sends the first VNF instantiation request message to the VNFM, the method may further include:

the VNFM instantiates the target CRE.

In fig. 7, before performing S301 to S310, the instantiation of the target CRE has been completed, and the relationship information of the containerization VNFC and the target CRE is set in the VNFD of the containerization VNF.

Optionally, in one embodiment, a specific process of instantiating the target CRE is as shown in fig. 8. As shown in fig. 8, the process of instantiating the target CRE may include the following steps:

s401, the NFVO sends a second VNF instantiation request message to the VNFM.

To request the VNFM to complete instantiation of the target CRE. The second VNF instantiation request message includes the target CRE instance identification. In this embodiment, the target CRE may be considered as a VNF.

S402, the NFVO allocates the information of the second virtual machine resource for the target CRE.

After the NFVO sends a second VNF instantiation request message to the VNFM, allocating virtual machine resources for the instantiation CRE, which specifically comprises the following processes: and the NFVO sends a virtual resource allocation request message to the VIM, so that the VIM allocates virtual machine resources, namely second virtual machine resources, to the instantiation target CRE after receiving the virtual resource request message. The information of the second virtual machine resource includes an identification of at least one virtual machine assigned to the target CRE.

The NFVO obtains the information of the virtual machine resources allocated by the VIM for the instantiation target CRE, and executes S403.

S403, the NFVO sends a second software image loading request message to the VIM.

The second software image loading request message is used for the VIM to load the image of the target CRE to the virtual machine corresponding to the identification of the virtual machine.

S404, the VNFM completes instantiation of the target CRE.

S402 and S403 are completed, and after receiving the second VNF instantiation request message sent by the NFVO, instantiation of the target CRE is performed. S405 is performed after the instantiation of the target CRE is completed.

S405, the VNFM sends a response message of VNF instantiation to the NFVO to notify the NFVO of completing the deployment of the target CRE.

In this embodiment, S402 and S403 may be performed before S401. When the VNFM receives the second VNF instantiation request message sent by the NFVO, instantiation of the target CRE is performed.

It should be noted that, in this embodiment, the sequence numbers of the processes do not mean the execution sequence, and the execution sequence of the processes should be determined by the functions and the internal logic of the processes, and should not limit the implementation process of the embodiment of the present invention.

Fig. 4, fig. 6, fig. 7, and fig. 8 describe a deployment method of a containerization VNF, and the following describes an apparatus provided in an embodiment of the present application with reference to fig. 9, fig. 10, and fig. 12.

Fig. 9 is a schematic structural diagram of an apparatus for containerized virtual network function deployment according to an embodiment of the present application. The apparatus is a deployment of a VNFM for containerization of VNFs, wherein a containerization VNF includes a container runtime environment CRE and a containerization virtual network function component VNFC. As shown in fig. 9, the apparatus may include a receiving unit 510, a processing unit 520, and a transmitting unit 530.

A receiving unit 510, configured to receive a VNF instantiation request message sent by a network function virtualization orchestrator NFVO;

the processing unit 520 is configured to acquire relationship information between the containerization VNFC and the CRE according to the VNF instantiation request message, and determine a target CRE deployed by the containerization VNF according to the relationship information;

a sending unit 530, configured to instantiate the target CRE and send information of a first virtual machine resource allocated to the instantiated target CRE to a container manager corresponding to the target CRE, where the first virtual machine resource is managed by the container manager;

a sending unit 530, further configured to send a software image loading request message to the container manager, where the software image loading request message is used for the container manager to load an image of the containerization VNFC into a container unit, and arrange the container unit onto a first virtual machine resource managed by the container manager, where the container unit is a container computing resource that carries an image operation of the containerization VNFC;

the sending unit 530 is further configured to send a request message for instantiation of the containerized VNFC to the container manager, where the request message for instantiation of the containerized VNFC is used by the container manager to perform instantiation of the containerized VNFC. The deployment method of the VNFM for performing differential processing on the containerized VNF is achieved, and the flexibility of the containerized VNF deployment is enhanced.

Optionally, in an embodiment, the receiving unit 510 is further configured to receive information of a second virtual machine resource allocated by the NFVO for the instantiation target CRE, where the information of the second virtual machine resource includes an identifier of a virtual machine.

Optionally, in an embodiment, the processing unit 520 determines the target CRE of the containerization VNF deployment according to the relationship information, including:

processing unit 520 determines one or more target CREs deployed by the containerization VNFCs from the relationship information.

Optionally, in one embodiment, the VNF instantiation request message includes an identification of a descriptor file VNFD of the containerized VNF; the processing unit 520 obtains relationship information between the containerization VNFCs and the CREs according to the VNF instantiation request message, and includes:

the processing unit 520 obtains the relationship information between the containerization VNFC and the CRE from the VNFD corresponding to the identifier of the VNFD.

Optionally, in another embodiment, the VNF instantiation request message includes at least one of a deployment template identification or an instantiation level identification of the containerized VNF; the processing unit 520 obtains relationship information between the containerization VNFCs and the CREs according to the VNF instantiation request message, and includes:

the processing unit 520 obtains relationship information between the containerization VNFCs and the CREs according to at least one of the deployment template identifiers or the instantiation level identifiers.

As for the implementation and the beneficial effects of the units of the apparatus in the foregoing embodiment, reference may be made to the method and the beneficial effects of performing containerization VNF deployment by a VNFM in fig. 4, which are for brevity and will not be described herein again.

An embodiment of the present invention further provides a device for deploying containerized virtual network functions, as shown in fig. 9, where the device is a VNFM and is used for deploying containerized VNFs, where a VNF includes a container runtime environment CRE and a containerized virtual network function component VNFC, and a CRE instance is deployed in an NFVI; the VNFM units are configured to perform the following operations:

a sending unit 530, configured to send information of a first virtual machine resource allocated to the target CRE to a container manager corresponding to the target CRE, where the first virtual machine resource is managed by the container manager;

a sending unit 530, further configured to send a software image loading request message to a container manager corresponding to the target CRE, where the software image loading request message is used for the container manager to load an image of the containerization VNFC into a container unit, and arrange the container unit onto a first virtual machine resource managed by the container manager, where the container unit is a container computing resource that carries an image operation of the containerization VNFC;

Optionally, in one embodiment, the VNF instantiation request message includes at least one of a deployment template identification or an instantiation level identification of the containerized VNF; the processing unit 520 obtains relationship information between the containerization VNFCs and the CREs according to the VNF instantiation request message, and includes:

As for the implementation and the beneficial effects of the units of the apparatus in the foregoing embodiment for solving the problems, reference may be made to the method for performing containerization VNF deployment by a VNFM in fig. 6, and for brevity, the details are not repeated herein.

Fig. 10 is a schematic structural diagram of a container manager according to an embodiment of the present application. As shown in fig. 10, the container manager includes a receiving unit 610 and a processing unit 620.

A receiving unit 610, configured to receive information of a first virtual machine resource sent by a virtual network function manager VNFM;

a receiving unit 610, further configured to receive a software image loading request message sent by the VNFM;

the processing unit 620 is configured to load the image of the containerization VNFC to a container unit according to the software image loading request message, and arrange the container unit onto the first virtual machine resource, where the container unit is a container computing resource that carries an image operation of the containerization VNFC;

a receiving unit 610, further configured to receive a request message of instantiation of a containerized VNFC sent by the VNFM;

the processing unit 620 is further configured to complete instantiation of the containerized VNFC according to the request message for instantiation of the containerized VNFC.

Optionally, in an embodiment, the container manager further comprises a sending unit 630, configured to send a response message of the containerization VNFC instantiation to the VNFM.

For the above embodiments, reference may be made to the method and the advantageous effects of the container manager performing containerization VNFC deployment in fig. 4 and fig. 6, and for brevity, detailed descriptions thereof are omitted here.

An embodiment of the present invention further provides a device for deploying containerized virtual network functions, as shown in fig. 9, where the device is a VNFM and is used for deploying containerized VNFs, where a containerized VNF includes a container runtime environment CRE and a containerized virtual network function component VNFC. The VNFM units are configured to perform the following operations:

a receiving unit 510, configured to receive a first virtual network function VNF instantiation request message sent by a network function virtualization orchestrator NFVO;

the processing unit 520 is configured to acquire relationship information between the containerization VNFC and the CRE according to the first VNF instantiation request message, and determine a target CRE deployed by the containerization VNF according to the relationship information;

a receiving unit 510, further configured to receive information of a first virtual machine resource sent by the NFVO, where the information of the first virtual machine resource is information of a virtual machine resource managed by a container manager and allocated for instantiating a containerization VNFC;

a sending unit 530, configured to send information of the first virtual machine resource to the container manager;

a sending unit 530, further configured to send a first software image loading request message to the container manager, where the first software image loading request message is used for the container manager to load an image of the containerization VNFC deployed on the instantiated target CRE into a container unit, and arrange the container unit onto a first virtual machine resource managed by the container manager, where the container unit is a container computing resource that carries an image operation of the containerization VNFC;

the sending unit 530 is further configured to send a request message for instantiation of the containerized VNFC to the container manager, where the request message for instantiation of the containerized VNFC is used by the container manager to perform instantiation of the containerized VNFC.

Optionally, in one embodiment, the first VNF instantiation request message comprises an identification of a descriptor file, VNFD, of the containerized VNF; the processing unit 520 obtains relationship information between the containerization VNFCs and the CREs according to the first VNF instantiation request message, and includes:

Optionally, in another embodiment, the first VNF instantiation request message includes at least one of a deployment template identification or an instantiation level identification of the containerization VNF; the processing unit 520 obtains relationship information between the containerization VNFCs and the CREs according to the first VNF instantiation request message, and includes:

Optionally, in an embodiment, the processing unit 520 is further configured to instantiate the target CRE.

The processing unit 520 instantiates a target CRE, including:

the receiving unit 510 is further configured to receive a second VNF instantiation request message sent by the NFVO, where the second VNF instantiation request message includes a target CRE instance identifier; and the processing unit 520 instantiates the target CRE instance to identify the corresponding target CRE.

For the implementation and the advantageous effects of each unit of the apparatus in this embodiment to solve the problem, reference may be made to the method for performing containerized VNF deployment by a VNFM in fig. 7 and 8, and for brevity, the details are not repeated herein.

Fig. 11 is a device for containerized virtual network function deployment according to an embodiment of the present disclosure, where the device is a network function virtualization orchestrator NFVO, and the NFVO may include a sending unit 710 and an allocating unit 720.

A sending unit 710, configured to send a first virtual network function VNF instantiation request message to a virtual network function manager VNFM; the first VNF instantiation request message is for the VNFM to acquire a target containerization runtime CRE of the containerization VNF deployment;

an allocating unit 720, configured to allocate information of a first virtual machine resource to the instantiated containerized virtual network function VNFC, where the first virtual machine resource is managed by the container manager;

the sending unit 710 is further configured to send, to the VNFM, information of a first virtual machine resource, where the information of the first virtual machine resource is used for the VNFM to load an image of the containerized VNFC deployed on the instantiated target CRE into a container unit, and arrange the container unit onto the first virtual machine resource managed by the container manager, and the container unit is a container computing resource that carries an image operation of the containerized VNFC.

Optionally, in an embodiment the first VNF instantiation request message comprises an identification of the descriptor file VNFD of the containerized VNF.

Optionally, in one embodiment, the first VNF instantiation request message includes at least one of a deployment template identification or an instantiation level identification of the containerization VNF.

Optionally, in an embodiment, the sending unit 710 is further configured to send a second VNF instantiation request message to the VNFM, where the second VNF instantiation request message includes a target CRE instance identifier, and is used to instantiate a target CRE corresponding to the target CRE instance identifier.

For a brief description, details of the implementation and the advantageous effects of each unit of the apparatus for solving the problem in this embodiment may be referred to as a method for performing containerization VNF deployment by the NFVO in fig. 7 and 8, and are not repeated herein.

The embodiment of the present application further provides a device for deploying containerized virtual network functions, as shown in fig. 12, the device is suitable for devices and the like capable of deploying container technologies, and is not limited to a Central Processing Unit (CPU). As shown in fig. 12, the apparatus may include: a memory 810 and a processor 820.

The memory 810 may be connected to the processor 820 via a bus. The memory 810 may be a non-volatile memory such as a hard disk drive and a flash memory, with a software program and a device driver in the memory 810. The software program is capable of performing various functions of the methods performed by the VNFC, the container manager, and the NFVO of fig. 4, 6, 7, and 8 of the present application; the device drivers may be network and interface drivers.

The memory 810 is used to store programs. The processor 820 is configured to execute software programs that, when executed, enable the methods performed by the VNFC, the container manager, and the NFVO of fig. 4, 6, 7, and 8.

Since the embodiments and the advantageous effects of the devices of the apparatus for solving the problems in the above embodiments can be referred to as the method embodiments and the advantageous effects, detailed descriptions thereof are omitted.

Embodiments of the present application also provide a computer program product comprising instructions that, when executed on a computer, cause the computer to perform the methods performed by the VNFC, the container manager, and the NFVO of fig. 4, 6, 7, and 8.

Embodiments of the present application further provide a computer-readable storage medium, on which a computer program is stored, and when the computer program is executed by a processor, the method performed by the VNFC, the container manager, and the NFVO in fig. 4, 6, 7, and 8 is implemented.

In the various embodiments of the invention described above, implementation may be in whole or in part via software, hardware, firmware, or any combination thereof. When implemented in software, may be implemented in whole or in part in the form of a computer program product. The computer program product includes one or more computer instructions. When loaded and executed on a computer, cause the processes or functions described in accordance with the embodiments of the invention to occur, in whole or in part. The computer may be a general purpose computer, a special purpose computer, a network of computers, or other programmable device. The computer instructions can be stored on a computer readable storage medium or transmitted from one computer readable medium to another, for example, from one website, computer, server, or data center to another website, computer, server, or data center via wire (e.g., coaxial cable, fiber optic, Digital Subscriber Line (DSL)), or wireless (e.g., infrared, wireless, microwave, etc.). The computer-readable storage medium can be any available medium that can be accessed by a computer or a data storage device, such as a server, a data center, etc., that incorporates one or more of the available media. The usable medium may be a magnetic medium (e.g., floppy Disk, hard Disk, magnetic tape), an optical medium (e.g., DVD), or a semiconductor medium (e.g., Solid State Disk (SSD)), among others.

The above description is only for the specific embodiments of the present invention, but the scope of the present invention is not limited thereto, and any person skilled in the art can easily conceive of the changes or substitutions within the technical scope of the present invention, and all the changes or substitutions should be covered within the scope of the present invention. Therefore, the protection scope of the present invention shall be subject to the protection scope of the appended claims.

Claims

1. A method for deploying containerized Virtual Network Functions (VNFs), wherein the VNFs comprise a Container Runtime Environment (CRE) and a VNFC; the method comprises the following steps:

the VNFM sends a software image loading request message to the container manager, wherein the software image loading request message is used for the container manager to load the image of the containerization VNFC into a container unit and to program the container unit onto a first virtual machine resource managed by the container manager, and the container unit is a container computing resource for bearing the image operation of the containerization VNFC;

the VNFM sends a containerization VNFC instantiation request message to the container manager, wherein the containerization VNFC instantiation request message is used for the container manager to execute instantiation of the containerization VNFC.

2. The method in accordance with claim 1, prior to the VNFM instantiating the target CRE, further comprising:

and the VNFM receives information of a second virtual machine resource allocated by the NFVO for instantiating the target CRE, wherein the information of the second virtual machine resource comprises an identifier of a virtual machine.

3. The method according to claim 1, wherein the determining the target CRE for the containerization VNF deployment according to the relationship information comprises:

and determining one or more target CREs deployed by the containerization VNFC according to the relationship information.

4. The method according to claim 1 or 2, wherein the VNF instantiation request message comprises an identification of a descriptor file, VNFD, of a containerized VNF; the obtaining, by the VNFM according to the VNF instantiation request message, relationship information of the containerization VNFCs and CREs includes:

5. The method of claim 1 or 2, wherein the VNF instantiation request message comprises at least one of a deployment template identification or an instantiation level identification of the containerized VNF; the obtaining, by the VNFM according to the VNF instantiation request message, relationship information of the containerization VNFCs and CREs includes:

6. A method for deploying containerized virtual network functions, wherein a containerized virtual network function VNF comprises a container runtime environment CRE and a containerized virtual network function component VNFC, wherein an instance of said CRE is deployed in a network function virtualization infrastructure NFVI; the method comprises the following steps:

the VNFM sends a software image loading request message to a container manager corresponding to the target CRE, wherein the software image loading request message is used for the container manager to load an image of the containerized VNFC into a container unit and to program the container unit onto a first virtual machine resource managed by the container manager, and the container unit is a container computing resource for bearing image operation of the containerized VNFC;

7. The method according to claim 6, wherein the determining the target CRE for containerization VNF deployment according to the relationship information comprises:

8. The method according to claim 6 or 7, wherein the VNF instantiation request message comprises an identification of a descriptor file VNFD of the containerized VNF; the obtaining, by the VNFM according to the VNF instantiation request message, relationship information of the containerization VNFCs and CREs includes:

9. The method of claim 6 or 7, wherein the VNF instantiation request message comprises at least one of a deployment template identification or an instantiation level identification of the containerized VNF; the obtaining, by the VNFM according to the VNF instantiation request message, relationship information of the containerization VNFCs and CREs includes:

10. A method for deploying containerized virtual network functions, the method comprising:

the container manager receives a software image loading request message sent by the VNFM;

the container manager loads the image of the containerization VNFC to a container unit according to the software image loading request message, and programs the container unit to the first virtual machine resource, wherein the container unit is a container computing resource for bearing the image operation of the containerization VNFC;

11. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

the container manager sends a response message of containerization VNFC instantiation to the VNFM.

12. A method for deploying containerized Virtual Network Functions (VNFs), wherein the VNFs comprise a Container Runtime Environment (CRE) and a VNFC; the method comprises the following steps:

the VNFM receives information of a first virtual machine resource sent by the NFVO, wherein the information of the first virtual machine resource is information of a virtual machine resource which is allocated for instantiating the containerization VNFC and managed by a container manager;

the VNFM sending information of the first virtual machine resource to a container manager;

the VNFM sends a first software image loading request message to the container manager, wherein the first software image loading request message is used for the container manager to load an image of a containerized VNFC deployed on the instantiated target CRE into a container unit and to orchestrate the container unit onto a first virtual machine resource managed by the container manager, and the container unit is a container computing resource carrying the image operation of the containerized VNFC;

13. The method according to claim 12, wherein the determining the target CRE for the containerized VNF deployment according to the relationship information comprises:

14. The method according to claim 12 or 13, wherein the first VNF instantiation request message comprises an identification of a descriptor file, VNFD, of a containerized VNF; the obtaining, by the VNFM according to the first VNF instantiation request message, relationship information of the containerization VNFCs and CREs includes:

15. The method of claim 12 or 13, wherein the first VNF instantiation request message comprises at least one of a deployment template identification or an instantiation level identification of the containerization VNF; the obtaining, by the VNFM according to the first VNF instantiation request message, relationship information of the containerization VNFCs and CREs includes:

16. The method according to any of the claims 12 to 15, wherein before the virtual machine network function manager VNFM receives the first virtual network function VNF instantiation request message sent by the network function virtualization orchestrator NFVO, the method further comprises:

the VNFM instantiates the target CRE.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the VNFM instantiates the target CRE, comprising:

18. A virtual network function manager, VNFM, for deploying a containerized virtual network function, VNF, comprising a container runtime environment, CRE, and a containerized virtual network function component, VNFC; the VNFM includes:

a receiving unit, configured to receive a VNF instantiation request message sent by a network function virtualization orchestrator NFVO;

the processing unit is used for acquiring the relation information of the containerization VNFC and the CRE according to the VNF instantiation request message and determining the target CRE deployed by the containerization VNF according to the relation information;

a sending unit, configured to instantiate the target CRE and send information of a first virtual machine resource allocated to the instantiated target CRE to a container manager corresponding to the target CRE, where the first virtual machine resource is managed by the container manager;

the sending unit is further configured to send a software image loading request message to the container manager, where the software image loading request message is used for the container manager to load an image of the containerization VNFC into a container unit, and to program the container unit onto a first virtual machine resource managed by the container manager, where the container unit is a container computing resource that carries an image operation of the containerization VNFC;

the sending unit is further configured to send a request message for instantiation of the containerized VNFC to the container manager, where the request message for instantiation of the containerized VNFC is used by the container manager to perform instantiation of the containerized VNFC.

19. The VNFM of claim 18,

the receiving unit is further configured to receive information of a second virtual machine resource allocated by the NFVO for instantiating the target CRE, where the information of the second virtual machine resource includes an identifier of a virtual machine.

20. The VNFM of claim 18, wherein the processing unit determines a target CRE for containerized VNF deployment based on the relationship information, comprising:

and the processing unit determines one or more target CREs deployed by the containerization VNFC according to the relationship information.

21. The VNFM of claim 18 or 19, wherein the VNF instantiation request message comprises an identification of a descriptor file, VNFD, of a containerized VNF; the processing unit acquires the relationship information of the containerization VNFC and the CRE according to the VNF instantiation request message, and the relationship information comprises the following steps:

and the processing unit acquires the relation information of the containerization VNFC and the CRE from the VNFD corresponding to the identifier of the VNFD.

22. The VNFM of claim 18 or 19, wherein the VNF instantiation request message comprises at least one of a deployment template identification or an instantiation level identification of the containerized VNF; the processing unit acquires the relationship information of the containerization VNFC and the CRE according to the VNF instantiation request message, and the relationship information comprises the following steps:

and the processing unit acquires the relation information of the containerized VNFC and the CRE according to at least one item of the deployment template identifier or the instantiation level identifier.

23. A virtual network function manager, VNFM, for deploying a containerized virtual network function, VNF, comprising a container runtime environment, CRE, and a containerized virtual network function component, VNFC, the CRE instance being deployed in a network function virtualization infrastructure, NFVI; the VNFM includes:

a sending unit, configured to send information of a first virtual machine resource allocated to the target CRE to a container manager corresponding to the target CRE, where the first virtual machine resource is managed by the container manager;

the sending unit is further configured to send a software image loading request message to a container manager corresponding to the target CRE, where the software image loading request message is used for the container manager to load an image of a containerization VNFC into a container unit, and to program the container unit onto a first virtual machine resource managed by the container manager, where the container unit is a container computing resource that carries an image operation of the containerization VNFC;

24. The VNFM of claim 23, wherein the processing unit determines a target CRE for containerized VNF deployment based on the relationship information, comprising:

25. The VNFM of claim 23 or 24, wherein the VNF instantiation request message comprises an identification of a descriptor file, VNFD, of a containerized VNF; the processing unit acquires the relationship information of the containerization VNFC and the CRE according to the VNF instantiation request message, and the relationship information comprises the following steps:

26. The VNFM of claim 23 or 24, wherein the VNF instantiation request message comprises at least one of a deployment template identification or an instantiation level identification of the containerized VNF; the processing unit acquires the relationship information of the containerization VNFC and the CRE according to the VNF instantiation request message, and the relationship information comprises the following steps:

27. A container manager, the container manager comprising:

the virtual network function manager VNFM is used for sending information of the first virtual machine resource to the receiving unit;

the receiving unit is further configured to receive a software image loading request message sent by the VNFM;

the processing unit is used for loading the mirror image of the containerization VNFC to a container unit according to the software mirror image loading request message and arranging the container unit on the first virtual machine resource, wherein the container unit is a container computing resource for bearing the mirror image operation of the containerization VNFC;

the receiving unit is further configured to receive a request message for instantiation of a containerized VNFC sent by the VNFM;

the processing unit is further configured to complete instantiation of the containerized VNFC according to the request message for instantiation of the containerized VNFC.

28. The container manager according to claim 27, further comprising a sending unit configured to send a response message of the containerization VNFC instantiation to the VNFM.

29. A virtual machine network function manager, VNFM, for deploying a containerized virtual network function, VNF, comprising a container runtime environment, CRE, and a containerized virtual network function component, VNFC; the VNFM includes:

a receiving unit, configured to receive a first virtual network function VNF instantiation request message sent by a network function virtualization orchestrator NFVO;

the processing unit is used for acquiring relationship information of the containerization VNFC and the CRE according to the first VNF instantiation request message, and determining a target CRE deployed by the containerization VNF according to the relationship information;

the receiving unit is further configured to receive information of a first virtual machine resource sent by the NFVO, where the information of the first virtual machine resource is information of a virtual machine resource managed by a container manager and allocated for instantiating the containerization VNFC;

a sending unit, configured to send information of the first virtual machine resource to a container manager;

the sending unit is further configured to send a first software image loading request message to the container manager, where the first software image loading request message is used for the container manager to load an image of a containerized VNFC deployed on the instantiated target CRE into a container unit, and to orchestrate the container unit onto a first virtual machine resource managed by the container manager, where the container unit is a container computing resource that carries an image operation of the containerized VNFC;

30. The VNFM of claim 29, wherein the processing unit determines a target CRE for containerized VNF deployment based on the relationship information, comprising:

31. The VNFM of claim 29 or 30, wherein the first VNF instantiation request message comprises an identification of a descriptor file, VNFD, of a containerized VNF; the processing unit acquires the relationship information of the containerization VNFC and the CRE according to the instantiation request message of the first VNF, and comprises the following steps:

32. The VNFM of claim 29 or 30, wherein the first VNF instantiation request message comprises at least one of a deployment template identification or an instantiation level identification of the containerization VNF; the processing unit acquires the relationship information of the containerization VNFC and the CRE according to the instantiation request message of the first VNF, and comprises the following steps:

33. The VNFM of any one of claims 29 to 32,

the processing unit is further configured to instantiate the target CRE.

34. The VNFM of claim 33, wherein the processing unit instantiates the target CRE comprising:

the receiving unit is further configured to receive a second VNF instantiation request message sent by the NFVO, where the second VNF instantiation request message includes a target CRE instance identifier;

and the processing unit instantiates the target CRE instance to identify the corresponding target CRE.

35. An apparatus comprising a processor and a memory, the memory being configured to store a program, the processor being configured to read and execute the program, the program when executed being capable of performing the method of any one of claims 1 to 17.

36. A computer program product comprising instructions for causing a computer to perform the method of any one of claims 1 to 17 when the computer program product is run on the computer.

37. A computer-readable storage medium, characterized in that a computer program is stored on the computer-readable storage medium, which computer program, when being executed by a processor, carries out the method according to any one of claims 1 to 17.