Adaptive Service Assurance correlates quality KPIs with Amazon CloudWatch telemetry, EXFO said
Network testing and monitoring solution vendor EXFO on Monday announced that its Adaptive Service Assurance (ASA) solution is available through Amazon Web Services (AWS). The product makes it easier for Communication Service Providers (CSPs) to monitor and troubleshoot 5G service and network cloud assurance, according to EXFO.
“Network complexity is driven by 5G standalone cloud-native network functions, service-based architectures, multi-access edge compute, network slicing, and 5G private networks. As a result, networks are generating additional performance, fault and telemetry data that can be overwhelming, making it difficult to identify and respond to service degradations,” explained EXFO.
EXFO claims ASA is suitable as a service assurance system for multi-domain deployments including 5G infrastructure, MEC, OTT video monitoring, private networks and QoS- and QoE-optimized transport.
Mark Nixon, SVP of ASA at EXFO, said in a statement that the offering on AWS will help service providers manage networks through increasingly complicated 5G network deployments. “We look forward to continued work with AWS to help ensure that 5G and private network service providers have ultra-fast, ultra-reliable connections for emerging 5G services,” Nixon added.
EXFO’s ASA solution generates real-time performance data that correlates Quality of Experience (QoE) and Quality of Service (QoS) key performance indicators (KPIs) with telemetry data produced by Amazon CloudWatch, the monitoring and management service provided by AWS. CloudWatch collects monitoring and operational data as logs, metrics, and events, then visualizes that data using automated dashboards to give operators a unified view of the AWS resources, applications and services they are running. Those AWS environments can include Kubernetes-based deployments through Amazon EKS Anywhere, using various AWS service options including AWS Regions, AWS Local Zones, AWS Wavelength for MEC, AWS Outposts and AWS Snowball for 5G private network environments.
EXFO announced ASA in June. Operators using the new solution can examine the operational span of their entire networks, right down to the silicon, EXFO claimed. The goal is to speed time to resolution and eliminate domain-specific fault denial altogether. Underpinning the solution is support for Intel’s data center-grade Xeon server processors. The processors combine on-board artificial intelligence (AI) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) accelerators with Intel’s platform telemetry tech. Intel noted that it’s using the Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s OpenTelemetry project to provide a standard industry implementation for this functionality.
“81% of operators surveyed expect 5G networks will be more difficult to troubleshoot than 4G networks. Similarly, 69% of operators agreed that fault detection and correlation are more difficult in cloud-native networks, with 74% of them citing a lack of sufficient cloud-specific assurance tools forcing them to rely on manual processes,” said the company.
In February, EXFO announced a new collaboration with Red Hat, focused on adaptive service assurance for 5G. Specifically, EXFO’s Nova Active μ-Verifier service assurance solution is now available as a Red Hat-certified container, which can be deployed on Red Hat’s OpenShift platform in hybrid cloud environments.
