Metaswitch provides a modern management solution that employs NETCONF and YANG for control of all Integrated Control Plane products. It presents the configuration and management interface in a YANG format suitable for end users and abstracts away complexities of the low-level configuration model. It provides a transactional interface, handling any sequencing requirements of the control plane protocols and rolling back configuration in the event of failure.
The solution uses a JSON over TCP interface, which makes it easy to integrate with any YANG-based Management Agent. It is also pre-integrated with the industry leading Management Agent, Tail-f's ConfD Premium, to provide a powerful CLI and NETCONF/RESTCONF interfaces.
In addition, Metaswitch continues to support integration with a range of legacy management systems using industry-standard and custom MIBs.
DC-YMM (YANG Model Manager)
The YANG Model Manager (DC-YMM) is responsible for mapping between the high-level configuration model used at the command line and the low-level configuration model used by Metaswitch products.
DC-YMM:
- maps configuration requests from the NETCONF Server into the set of low-level configuration requests required by Metaswitch products to apply that configuration
- injects the set of configuration requests into the ICP as a single transaction
- maps responses to configuration requests and reports these responses back to the NETCONF Server
- maps requests for read-only state from the NETCONF Server and issues the set of GET requests required to obtain the full set of state from the product code
- maps GET responses from the product code and returns high level read-only state to the NETCONF Server
- maps notifications from the product code to notifications defined in the high-level YANG models
- maps remote procedure calls (RPCs) from the NETCONF Server to the management requests required by product code to carry out the required action(s)
- maintains a database of interface identifier to interface index mappings (using information supplied by the LIM) and uses these mappings to convert between the interface identifiers used at the command line and the indices used by the product code.
In the Metaswitch Evolved Management Solution, multiple YANG models are used to define the management schema.
High-level YANG
The high-level YANG models describe the high-level configuration interface for the Metaswitch Integrated Control Plane. These YANG models are used to generate the end user interfaces such as the CLI. They are based on IETF, OpenConfig and other standard YANG models.
Low-level YANG
The low-level YANG models are YANG representation of the internal Metaswitch Integrated Control Plane management interface. These YANG models typically present details of the Metaswitch Integrated Control Plane that are not suitable to be exposed to an end user. DC-YMM maps between the low and high-level YANG models.
Custom YANG
You can optionally define further YANG models to manage your own components.
DC-CTM (Configuration Transaction Manager)
DC-CTM is used to configure Metaswitch products. It implements a transactional IPS interface.
DC-CTM:
- processes configuration transactions from DC-YMM and ensures that the set of configuration is applied successfully or, in the case of a failure of any part of that configuration, the system is returned to the same state as prior to the transaction being applied.
- sequences the individual configuration requests which make up a transaction in such a way that any ordering restrictions required by the Metaswitch components are met. For example, it may toggle the administrative status of a row, or deactivate and reactive parent configuration rows to allow a change to take place
- maintains a copy of the configuration held by product code, which it can replicate to a backup.
- injects the configuration cache into product code rapidly on graceful restart.
Management Agent (ConfD)
The Management Agent provides the master database for configuration on the device. It provides the northbound interfaces, assumed to include at least NETCONF. The Metaswitch solution is fully integrated with ConfD Premium from Tail-f – the industry leading Management Agent.
The Management Agent:
- provides the NETCONF Server API for configuration
- validates requests against YANG models
- processes requests for GETs (SHOW commands) on configuration
- inject requests to configure product code and to retrieve state as described in the high-level YANG models
- processes requests to receive notifications as described in the high-level YANG models
- replicates the master copy of the configuration to provide high availability
- interfaces to authentication and access control (such as RADIUS and TACACS+).
Management User Interfaces
The Management Agent exposes northbound interfaces for NETCONF, RESTONF, Web, and SNMP clients. It also provides an industry standard Command Line Interface (CLI) based on the Metaswitch YANG models.
You can optionally customize the CLI using annotations to the YANG files.
DC-LIM (Local Interface Manager)
DC-LIM (Local interface Manager) manages all interfaces in the system, including physical interfaces and virtual interfaces (such as LDP tunnels).
It provides the Interface Discovery Interface (IDI) which is used by DC-YMM to obtain the following information.
- It provides a mapping between interface names and the interface identifiers used by the control plane so that interface names can be used at the user interface.
- For virtual interfaces, it provides a pre-allocated interface index when this is required by DC-YMM (for example, where a configuration transaction contains both an LDP tunnel and a pseudowire that uses that tunnel).
System Manager
System Manager is an N-BASE process that provides a unified means of controlling the system. System Manager receives instructions from the Management Stub and configures the Metaswitch products and stubs as required.
JSON Management Stub (AMJ)
The JSON Management Stub is responsible for receiving JSON transaction requests which are mapped to internal interfaces.
Differentiators
The Metaswitch Evolved Management Solution provides maximum flexibility for configuring Metaswitch's industry-leading protocol stacks.
Expressive configuration, comprehensive insights
YANG is a highly expressive data modeling language that can simplify configuration and provide operators with a comprehensive view of network state.
- Easy automation
- Unlike SNMP, NETCONF groups configuration changes into transactions. This makes it easy to support automation using simple tools such as Ansible.
- Industry backing
NETCONF and YANG have been embraced by major standards bodies such as the IETF and ONF, as well as many vendors. They are also central to many open source SDN projects such as OpenDaylight and Tungsten Fabric.
Seamless integration
Complete integration with all current and future Metaswitch Integrated Control Plane products allows you to deploy new protocols and features quickly and easily, reducing time-to-market and development costs.
Open APIs
Open APIs for easy integration with a wide range of third-party OAM applications. YANG is supported by many different tools that allow operators to easily manipulate configuration.
- Full YANG support
- The Metaswitch solution is based on coherent native YANG models, rather than adding limited YANG support to a legacy solution. The CLI, NETCONF and RESTCONF interfaces are all generated from Metaswitch YANG models.
- Customizable and extensible
Easy customization to match the user experience of your existing products and support a range of management tools and methodologies.
High performance
Innovative design by the same engineers who create our industry-leading protocol implementations ensures maximum responsiveness for the most demanding networks.
Best-of-breed management
Our partnership with Tail-f allows you to provide an industry-standard CLI, ConfD Premium, that your customers will already know how to use.
Informed by real world expertise
Metaswitch's custom implementation of the ConfD Premium CLI is generated from our YANG models, and benefits from our experience in control plane protocol software by providing the configuration and show commands that operators need.
Verified by the EANTC
Metaswitch's solution has been verified in a multi-vendor interoperability test of Layer 3 VPN configuration using NETCONF and YANG.
Flexible deployment options
Disaggregated architecture allows you to take the complete solution for zero integration effort, or just the components you need.
Highly available
The same support for Graceful Restart, Fault Tolerance, and Hot Software Upgrade as the Integrated Control Plane products, for maximum availability.
Scalable
The software can be distributed across multiple processors and across multiple cores and threads in a hugely flexible way. The same portable product code executes without modification from low‑end single-processor systems through to high port density systems with multiple cards and multiple processors – providing a truly scalable solution.