Analysis of end‐to‐end multi‐domain management and orchestration frameworks for software defined infrastructures: an architectural survey

Over the last couple of years, industry operators' associations issued requirements towards an end‐to‐end management and orchestration plane for 5G networks. Consequently, standard organisations started their activities in this domain. This article provides an analysis and an architectural survey of these initiatives and of the main requirements, proposes descriptions for the key concepts of domain, resource and service slicing, end‐to‐end orchestration and a reference architecture for the end‐to‐end orchestration plane. Then, a set of currently available or under development domain orchestration frameworks are mapped to this reference architecture. These frameworks, meant to provide coordination and automated management of cloud and networking resources, network functions and services, fulfil multi‐domain (i.e. multi‐technology and multi‐operator) orchestration requirements, thus enabling the realisation of an end‐to‐end orchestration plane. Finally, based on the analysis of existing single‐domain and multi‐domain orchestration components and requirements, this paper presents a functional architecture for the end‐to‐end management and orchestration plane, paving the way to its full realisation. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. The paper provides an analysis and an architectural survey of initiatives currently investigating the requirements of the management and orchestration plane for 5G networks. It also aims at proposing descriptions for the key concepts of domain, resource and service slicing as well as end‐to‐end orchestration. The paper proposes a reference architecture for the end‐to‐end orchestration plane on which the previous considered initiatives are mapped. Based on the analysis of existing single‐domain and multi‐domain orchestration components and requirements, the paper finally presents a functional architecture for the end‐to‐end management and orchestration plane, paving the way to its full realisation.