An ETSI-compliant Architecture for the Element Management System: The Key for Holistic NFV Management

The Element Management System (EMS) is defined by the ETSI NFV reference architecture as responsible for the instrumentation of Virtualized Network Functions (VNF). The EMS acts as a gateway to each function, executing monitoring and control requests received from the VNF Manager (VNFM) and Operation and Business Support Systems (OSS/BSS). Surprisingly, the EMS has been either entirely ignored or only employed in very restricted settings. In this work, we propose an ETSI-compliant architecture that allows the development of EMS solutions that can be used to manage arbitrary VNF instances while abstracting particular protocols and technologies, thus enabling the interoperability among heterogeneous systems (VNF, VNFM, and OSS/BSS). The architecture was implemented as the Holistic, Lightweight, and Malleable EMS Solution (HoLMES). Evaluation results are presented showing the overhead of using HoLMES as a gateway for typical management operations. The slight increase in execution times is a fair price to pay for the benefits that the holistic solution represents in terms of the effectiveness of NFV management.