CNF certification for telecommunications from Red Hat

Virtual network functions (VNFs) represent an important step in the journey to greater agility for telecommunications service providers and their partners. But as telecommunications services become ever more demanding on network infrastructure, vendors need to address some of the fundamental limitations of VNFs and move to a more manageable, scalable, automated means of meeting customers’ needs.

Cloud-native Network Functions (CNFs, also known as Containerized Network Functions) deployed on Linux container infrastructure enable service providers to embrace the benefits of a cloud-native approach, which increases resource efficiency, reduces downtime, scales to meet demand, and accelerates application delivery.

When our future includes 5G and edge computing, having confidence in network deployment and operations will be critical. Container technology and microservices architecture represent an opportunity for vendors to deploy truly cloud-native applications that are resilient, observable and feature robust automation support. But this expanded technology approach also represents a challenge.

As containers have surged in popularity, the unregulated proliferation of containers within the enterprise means innovation can face operational obstacles. And simple migration of legacy codebases to a cloud-native environment doesn’t guarantee the high standards of security and supportability that telecommunications service providers and their partners require of each other. It is crucial that the CNF certification is rigorous, comprehensive, and based on a standard that Telcos and their ISVs can trust.

To address the need for a certification standard vendors can trust, Red Hat and Intel have created a cloud-based onboarding service in a lab testbed supporting both CNF and VNF environments. 

The lab has been designed to help mitigate the risks of testing and deploying CNFs through a broad scope of rigorous, comprehensive testing, including real-world scenarios specific to the demands exhibited by a service provider and expected from a CNF vendor, so telecommunications service providers are assured that they can run CNFs from partners on Red Hat OpenShift® with confidence.

The lab can also transition existing operational procedures from VNFs to more agile cloud-native methodologies and models across the open hybrid cloud. As a result, both telecommunications service providers and their partners know that the CNFs or other network functions have been tested and aligned with the platforms you trust.

Red Hat Partner Connect technology certification means that the applications you rely on are supportable and secure, reduce deployment time and complexity, minimize risks of incompatibility, ensure application performance is as expected, and address customer issues surrounding automation and troubleshooting much earlier in the integration process.

By engaging with Red Hat, CNF vendors with critical workloads that are virtualized today can prepare their applications for a cloud-native future. This can help customers more quickly achieve the full capabilities of 5G networks and edge computing. As a valued partner, we want to best support your Red Hat network function certification strategy. We know these can be substantial projects, but we have taken steps to simplify your journey from virtualized to containerized network functions to best meet our customer’s needs.

Red Hat offers CNF partners three options to integrate with Red Hat OpenShift, building upon the trusted foundation of containers and Kubernetes Operators to deliver telco customers value.

Vendor validated CNF certification

The vendor validated level offers interoperability verification of a CNF with Red Hat OpenShift by the application vendor, in collaboration with Red Hat. Further, the vendor commits to offer commercial support for the CNF on Red Hat OpenShift, backed by a collaborative support framework with Red Hat. The partner implements and operates a continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) environment and tests its CNF with Red Hat OpenShift, as changes in either product are developed and released.

• Continuously tested
• Collaborative support
• Engineered with Red Hat

Red Hat OpenShift Operator certification

Red Hat Openshift Operator certification delivers deeper integration with Red Hat OpenShift and is engineered with Red Hat, leveraging Red Hat Enterprise Linux® (RHEL) as a trusted container foundation. Customers can take advantage of all the benefits of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the Operator Framework to provide ongoing interoperability, security maintenance and life cycle alignment, as well as automated management of the CNF life cycle. Plus, certified partner operators can be featured in the Red Hat OpenShift OperatorHub and Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog where customers can discover certified operators for Red Hat OpenShift. 

• Continuously tested
• Collaborative support
• Engineered with Red Hat
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution rights
• Integration in OpenShift

Red Hat OpenShift CNF certification

Red Hat OpenShift CNF certification sets the highest standard for mission-critical network functions on Red Hat OpenShift. Building on Red Hat Operator certification, CNF certification extends the collaboration between Red Hat and its partners to apply best practices specific to telco deployments. The partner performs and passes a set of CNF-specific tests in its CI/CD environment or the integration lab offered by Red Hat and Intel, as changes in either product are developed and released.

Red Hat OpenShift CNF Certification benefits at a glance

Certified CNFs will get all the promotional benefits of certified operators, including the eligibility to be listed in the Red Hat Marketplace. In addition, they get assigned a certified CNF badge in the catalog and a corresponding CNF certification logo to use for their own product content.

• CNF functionality: CNF verified and fully supported by the partner on OpenShift 4.x
• Engineered with Red Hat: Container operating system base image (RHEL/UBI) is maintained and supported by Red Hat
• Integrated Lifecycle Management: CNF is deployed and maintained by a Red Hat Certified Operator
• Ongoing vulnerability protection: Continuous scanning to identify and fix CVEs in Red Hat’s components of the CNF
• Collaborative support: Partner and Red Hat establish direct workflow between support teams
• Engineering relationship: Red Hat Partner Connect fosters relationships with Red Hat engineering teams
• Continuously tested: Ongoing testing on supported OpenShift versions

Mark Longwell, Director of Alliances, Hybrid Platform Business Unit, Red Hat talks about Cloud/Containerized Network function and Virtualized Network Functions for telcos and communications service providers.

Red Hat’s Mark Longwell talks with Thomas Sennhauser of Intel about the new joint Intel Red Hat lab in New Mexico. 

Learn about the close collaboration between Intel and Red Hat and the new laboratory in New Mexico that allows customers to test and certify their workloads and solutions.

Discover how Red Hat and Intel are collaborating to enable organizations to connect to the world in new, flexible and secure ways.