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I did some search about this question but couldn't clarify.

according to this post, I guess the NFVi can be used to run the virtual machine of switch, router, firewall, load-balancer and more for the general office environment? Is it the widely used scenario of NFVi?

I'm thinking about start a lab on vSphere for my company to research on how to implement the NFVi to the basic office environment.

Does the NFVi work in this way?

user53815
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1 Answers1

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An NFVI is a cloud optimized for service providers grade networking functions. For example, the networking layer of OpenStack use Open vSwitch, which was only capable of 4 Gb/s of throughput all the way back to 2014 instead of way more than 10 Gb/s as of today. The same can be applied to NSX for VMware vSphere, but I'm a bit less familiar with that one.

In my enterprise, which is a service provider, we use OpenStack to run 30% of the whole mobile network packet core, so stuff like PCRF, S-GW, P-GW, HSS...

To answer your question, an NFVI can be used to run anything, from a simple Linux distro hosting a web client to a Cisco IOS XR9000K or a vASA. If you're only interested in running Cisco devicey, you might want to look at their ENCS serie: a box with a GUI like GNS3 (more or less, see an example below) where you can map an interfaces of a VM to a physical interface of the box. It even has a well-documented API to push new topology from a script. enter image description here

Nakrule
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  • ok so the NFVi exists for cloud(virtualized) workloads, not for the common office networks or bare-metal server networks?? – user53815 Jul 23 '19 at 01:19
  • You can use it for both. There is nothing wrong buying a single blade with OpenStack to run you home netwoking infrastructure if you want to. – Nakrule Jul 30 '19 at 18:23
  • thanks Nakrule! nice explanation! i have a last question which is: does VMware provide products or functions to build NFVi? (i just need some examples to help myself understand this.) – user53815 Aug 01 '19 at 12:45
  • You can use VMware vSphere. – Nakrule Aug 12 '19 at 06:18