Demystifying Service Based Architecture

( SBA) – A Different Perspective

Presented by
00 Month 0000
 Agenda

 Introduction
 Different Software Architectural styles
 Comparison between Service Oriented and Microservices Architecture
 What is Service Based Architecture(SBA)
 Microservices Framework
 SBA framework
 SBA for 5G
 Service Mesh
 Challenges and Way forward

2 19 September 2019
C2 General
 Evolution of Architectural Framework
SW & HW coupled Micro-service based

CP & UP coupled State separation

CP & UP decoupled
Inelastic
Elastic
Non scalable
Portable
Traditional Cloud Native
Architecture

CP & UP coupled Lift & shift

SW & HW separation

Virtualized
3 19 September 2019
C2 General
 Key Architecture Patterns

SBA is a balance
between SOA and
MSA. It is tilted
Monolithic more towards MSA.

Service Oriented
(SOA)

Micro service Based

(MSA)
Distributed Architecture

4 19 September 2019
C2 General
 Comparing SOA & MSA

Parameter SOA MSA

Service Tightly coupled Loosely coupled
Coupling
Component functionality reuse Bounded Context
Sharing
Exchange ESB for communication Less elaborate and simple messaging

Protocols Supports multiple message protocols lightweight protocols such as HTTP/REST

Database Uses Traditional relational databases Uses modern, non-relational databases

scope
Granularity Coarser service granularity Fine service granularity

interface layer middleware in SOA offers mediation and MSA has an API layer between services and
routing, message enhancement, message and service consumers
protocol transformation

5 19 September 2019
C2 General
 Service Based Architecture (SBA)

 Its more pragmatic, tries to keep micro services architecture but increases service granularity,
services are macro-services.
 Resolves transactional issues.
 Uses global data base in place of single-purpose service database
 Lightweight message broker in place of heavier integration bus used in SOA
 Distributed architecture against monolithic and layer based.
 All functions are not stateless.
 Orthogonality of functions and independent evolution.

6 19 September 2019
C2 General
 Cloud Native and Micro services

 Cloud native is an approach to build and run applications fully exploiting benefits of cloud
computing model , distributed architecture
 As per ETSI, VNFs can be built with re-usable components as opposed to a unique - and
potentially proprietary - block of functions.
 Cloud native VNFs are expected to function efficiently on any network Cloud, private, hybrid, or
Public
 As per CNCF (Cloud Native Computing Foundation), Cloud native technologies empower
organizations to build and run scalable applications in modern, dynamic environments such as
public, private, and hybrid clouds.
 Containers, service meshes, micro services, immutable infrastructure, and declarative APIs
exemplify this approach.

7 19 September 2019
C2 General
 Typical Micro-service Framework

 Micro-service communication
Service
Discovery  Messaging where possible
Micro Service
 Lightweight messaging ( Kafka)
JSON/HTTP2
Publish JSON/HTTP2  Publish/Subscribe
API  Eventual Consistency
API
Micro Service Micro Service
 Service Discovery ( more like
DNS)
Publish
 Direct calls where necessary via
Subscribe
lightweight protocols ( JSON/HTTP)
 Load Balancing
Micro Service Message  Scaling via Service Discovery
Hub  Caching

8 19 September 2019
C2 General
 SBA Framework
External Domain External External
Function B Function B

Exposure
Control

Internal Domain
NF 1 NF 2

Common Protocol Service

Common Data Storage Framework Discovery

NF 5 NF 4 NF 3

9 19 September 2019
C2 General
 SBA adoption for 5G Core
• NGMN alliance white paper on SBA IN 5G and 3GPP rel 15, SA2
• SBA for Control Plane
• Point to point interfaces for User plane
• Network Functions as Services , exposure through service based interfaces
• Service Framework , works around principles of –

Service Service Service

Registration Authorization Discovery

10 19 September 2019
C2 General
 5G Core SBA
Network Data layer

State
Management NRF UDSF UDR
Layer
REST API
Compute
SBI
and Storage
Message
separation
Bus REST API
Control
Layer AUSF AMF SMF PCF UDM

Control and
Data Plane
RAN separation
UE UPF DN

Data Forwarding layer

11 19 September 2019
C2 General
 Network Repository Function (NRF)

1. Register NF Service (API URI , API Profile) NRF 2. Discover the API endpoint of NF service Producer

3. HTTP/2 request to API URI invoking

NF Service specified HTTP method in OPENAPI
( SMF PDU NF Service
Session Consumer
Service)
4. HTTP/2 response

 Allows every NF to discover services offered by other NF

 It includes NF profiles ( address of instance), NF instance and NF service discovery
 Methods to query NRF for discovery of NF instances

C2 General
 NRF 2. PCF Discovers PCF
1. AMF registers Repository AMF Consumer
with NRF
1. 2.

SBA
3. 3. PCF requests
AMF service

AMF
Producer

Consumer/Producer methods and Publisher /Subscriber With Registration

13
C2 General
 States- possibilities

No state NF
• Doesn’t share UE state information
• UDM or AUSF

Stateless NF
• Hold UE state only for the duration of transaction
• UDM or AUSF

State efficient NF
• Holds UE state during periods of frequent activity
• e.g AMF ,SMF

Statelful NF
• Holds UE state permanently

14 19 September 2019
C2 General
 5G SBA Protocol Stack (Control Plane)-Different approaches
HTTP Oriented Diameter Oriented

JSON/ProtoBuf/Diameter AVP AVP

Diameter Oriented
HTTP1.1/HTTP2.0 Diameter

TLS QUIC (Optional) TLS/DTLS

TCP UDP TCP/SCTP

IP IP

HTTP is light weight and suitable for service invocation:

 HTTP 2.0 provides advanced features and is more efficient than HTTP 1.1;
 QUIC is well-defined for reliable and high efficient communication, but it depends on the maturity of IETF spec;
15
 JSON is acceptable, if efficiency is not strictly required; 19 September 2019
C2 General  Diameter AVP can be considered as HTTP payload, if high efficiency is required
 Network Data Layer (State Separation)

Network Data Layer-NDL

UDR (Unified Data Repository) Structured Data UDSF (Unstructured data Storage Function)

Subscription and Policies data Data for Exposure Application Data Dynamic Context Session Data

Nudr

Nudsf
UDM PCF NEF NF’s

16
C2 General
 Traditional Cloud Native 3-tier architecture (MSA)
VNF Service

 Load balance Requests to app containers

Protocol Load Balancer Services  Protocol Termination
 Dynamic Discovery of application containers
 Stateless Services

 Core Application/Business Logic

Application Services  Granularity of microservices depends on app.
 Native scale out and upgrade

 State separation layer

State Management Services  Supports different data storage technologies – memory
 caches to full scale DBs
 Can store structured and unstructured data.
17 19 September 2019
C2 General
 Service Mesh (Network overlay for layer 7)

• Networking abstraction layer above TCP/IP

• Handles the inter-service communication in MSA
• Reduces the complexity associate with a micro-service architecture

Load Balancing Health Checks Authentication Traffic Management Circuit breakdown and
& service discovery & routing failover policy

Fault injection Security Metrics and

Telemetry

18 19 September 2019
C2 General
 Challenges and way-forward

 Granularity of micro-service- SBA is balance between Micro-service based and SOA architecture.

 Separation of state, can introduce latency.

 Not suitable for chatty/transaction oriented applications. (Distribution tax)

 Decomposition of RAN protocol stack , particularly real-time layers will be a problem.

 In addition to PNF , VM VNF , cloud-native VNF will add further complexity.

 Management and Orchestration will be complex.

 Operators have to quickly move towards Automation , and do away with legacy OSS/BSS stack.

19 19 September 2019
C2 General
 Potential use cases
• 5G RAN
– Functional split of RAN, beyond C-RAN.
– 5G RAN proposes functional split along two dimensions-
– Split of CP and UP (Vertical)
– BBU split in CU ( Centralized Unit) and DU ( Distributed Unit) (Horizontal)
– Lower layer ( near real time ) protocols require dedicated resources.
– Higher layer ( asynchronous) protocols can go cloud native way.
• Deployment of AI in Edge cloud.
• Disaggregated SDN and T-SDN Control Plane ( RSA , QoT, OC defragmentation , IP controller,
etc)
• Middle boxes ( like WAN optimizer , Edge Firewall , Load balancer ) in SFC ( Service Function
Chaining).

20 19 September 2019
C2 General
 References and Inspirations

1. 5G-PPP Software Network Working Group From Webscale to Telco, the Cloud Native Journey july 2018.

2. Next Generation Network Architecture Devaki Chandramouli1, Subramanya Chandrashekar2, Andreas Maeder3,Tuomas
Niemela4, Thomas Theimer3 and Laurent Thiebaut5

3. Service-Based Architecture in 5G by NGMN Alliance

4. http://nealford.com/downloads/Comparing_Service-based_Architectures_by_Neal_Ford.pdf

21 19 September 2019
C2 General