Red Hat Announces Deeper Certification Integration for NFV by offering VNF Certification for Telco Partners

The building blocks for NFV certification have been of keen interest to enterprises of all sizes spanning many phases of deployment with OpenStack. Over the past years, we have seen a wide variety of telecommunications providers entering the OpenStack space and building a more scalable infrastructure for their customers, from Huawei to Verizon. For partners looking to strengthen their NFV solution, Red Hat is pleased to announce the addition of a deeper, VNF (Virtualized Network Function) certification level to its existing NFV certification offering, available now for partners who are a part of Red Hat Connect for Technology Partners.

Even though VNF is already a building block in the setup of NFV (Network Function Virtualization), there are inherent differences that many vendors may face while certifying their solutions in these areas. Previous NFV certifications typically focused on the API and did not address architectural and underlying infrastructure certification. With Red Hat’s new VNF certification process, this can now happen. Red Hat’s OpenStack certifications are expanding to verify that providers of virtual network functions are taking full advantage of the platform, creating a solid foundation for customer deployments.

Customers running NFV solutions on Red Hat Openstack Platform need virtualized network functions that interoperate effectively with the infrastructure and create a solid foundation for deployments. With this expanded NFV certification, Red Hat is adding new testing to ensure compatibility and supportability, to reduce risks and increase efficiency of the solutions created by a vibrant partner ecosystem. NFV subject matter experts within Red Hat will perform an architectural review, evaluating each VNF implementation to assess interoperability with Red Hat’s NFV OpenStack platform, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux and KVM. This review process will harden the combined solution and establish collaborative engineering relationships between Red Hat and participating partners. Partners providing their own application runtime can validate that their VNF solution can be deployed as an appliance.

Since becoming a contributor to the OpenStack codebase in 2013, Red Hat has developed multiple commercial ecosystems around its open infrastructure platform, delivering enterprise features needed for mission-critical telco deployments through a strong network of partner technology providers. The certification process begins with our focus on the supported, trusted Red Hat Enterprise Linux - the base for any of Red Hat’s OpenStack solutions. Our commitment to  certified, supported ecosystems carries beyond Red Hat Enterprise Linux and has helped to pave the way for Red Hat Connect for Technology Partners, featuring an OpenStack zone for partners that has emerged as the industry's largest ecosystem in support of software, hardware, and commercial deployment solutions for OpenStack. Our growing list of partners engaged in NFV certification includes PLUMgrid, BigSwitch, Nuage Networks, Midokura, and Affirmed Networks. In addition Partners interested in adding a VNF certification to their NFV-certified solutions can visit the NFV Zone of Red Hat Connect to learn more.