NFV Management and Orchestration (MANO)

Accelerate your migration to NFV with Open Source MANO (OSM)

Automate deployment and operations of network functions, and benefit from reduced operational costs, by using an open source implementation of ETSI NFV MANO. To improve the stability of deployments and provide telcos with a production-grade platform, Canonical delivers a pure upstream OSM distribution — Charmed OSM. As a key contributor to the Open Source MANO project, we are excited to help you on your NFV journey.

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Discover Canonical’s contribution to OSM ›

What is Open Source MANO?

OSM is an open-source implementation of the ETSI NFV MANO (MANagement and Orchestration) stack. It was founded by ETSI and is fully aligned with ETSI NFV Information Models. Open Source MANO allows Telecommunications Service Providers (TSPs) to move from traditional, legacy networking services to cloud-native network functions and accelerates their NFV transformation.

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An open platform for NFV orchestration

OSM assists with network functions onboarding and orchestration in physical, virtual, containerised and hybrid environments, as required in modern telco networks.

  • Cost savings from Day‐0 to Day‐N

    Providing a simple approach to network functions onboarding and orchestration, Open Source MANO helps to reduce both time and resources, and thus, assists with bringing costs down.

  • Operability first

    Unlike other MANO projects, Open Source MANO focuses on operability first, providing value by using publicly available, open‐source tools.

  • Carrier‐grade

    With almost 4 years of active development and constantly growing adoption, Open Source MANO is mature and meets the requirements of commercial NFV networks.

  • Industry‐supported

    Hosted by ETSI and supported by leading carrier‐1 TSPs including Telefonica, BT and Telenor. The community has recently announced 2-year support for OSM LTS releases.

    Learn more about OSM LTS ›

  • Multi‐cloud environments

    Designed for physical, virtual, container and hybrid network functions.

    Learn more about Multi-cloud

  • Multi‐vendor workloads

    Designed for both open‐source and proprietary‐source applications.

    Learn more about Multi-vendor orchestration

To have a deep dive of OSM architecture and OSM installation, please see the video tutorials.

Why Charmed OSM?

Charmed OSM is an Open Source MANO distribution, developed and maintained by Canonical, which uses Juju charms to simplify its deployments and operations. Charmed OSM enables TSPs to easily deploy pure upstream Open Source MANO in highly available, production‐grade and scalable clusters.

Industry‐aligned and fully compliant with upstream

Charmed OSM is based on the official container images maintained by the upstream OSM community. Being one of the key contributors to the upstream Open Source MANO project, Canonical’s Charmed OSM roadmap is fully aligned with the requirements of the community.

Simplified deployments and operations

Using Juju charms for Open Source MANO deployments and operations simplifies the overall adoption process and lets you benefit from a model‐driven, declarative approach. With Charmed OSM, telcos can spin up their Open Source MANO stack quickly and focus on network functions themselves.

Predictable release cadence and upgrade path

Canonical releases a new version of Charmed OSM within two weeks of each upstream Open Source MANO release. You can upgrade between consecutive releases.

Production grade deployments for Telcos

Canonical’s Charmed OSM distribution can be deployed in a highly available mode which is resilient against failures and allows telcos to meet their availability goal and making charmed OSM their prime choice.

Charmed OSM for Telcos

Enterprise support

The Ubuntu Advantage support package provides important security patches, up to 24×7 support and production‐grade SLAs. This support is valid for up to 2 years after the launch of every OSM LTS release.

Learn more about OSM LTS ›

Availability of managed services

Operating complex software clusters at a promised level of availability is difficult, even when using Juju charms. We understand that and provide managed services for Charmed OSM in response. Simply transfer the operational risk and let Canonical’s experts operate your charmed Open Source MANO cluster for you.

Stable and secure

By running on Ubuntu LTS and going through a rigorous testing process at the development phase, Charmed OSM provides production‐grade stability and meets the security requirements of modern telecommunications networks.

Onboarding network functions

Charmed OSM provides a platform to easily migrate your traditional telco functions to virtualized and cloud-native environments. It also ensures the easy integration of your network function with other existing components.

Onboard your network functions

The introduction of Charmed OSM into the market emphasises OSM’s momentum in the telco industry. Charmed OSM, deployed with Juju, fully automates the installation process and drastically simplifies ongoing OSM operations.

Ramon Armada, NFV Solution Director at Altran

Platform Integration

Any Kubernetes

Being vendor‐neutral, Charmed OSM can run on any Kubernetes platform. Simply spin up your Kubernetes cluster and deploy Charmed OSM on top of it. For cloud‐native workload deployments by OSM, you can use juju bundles or helm charts to onboard on any kubernetes.

Flexible VIM options

Charmed OSM supports multiple VIMs (Virtual Infrastructure Managers): OpenStack, VMware VIO, AWS, Azure and GCP. Other VIMs are constantly being added.

Charmed applications

As a collection of Juju charms, Charmed OSM can be easily integrated with other charmed applications. This allows native cooperation between Charmed OSM and other applications and results in time savings, and thus, reduces the operational costs as well.

Charmed OSM integration capabilities

Charmed OSM in action

Development stack

The development stack for Charmed OSM is a toolset that allows you to experiment with Open Source MANO directly on your workstation. It consists of:

  • MicroK8s – a small Kubernetes on your workstation that will host the Charmed OSM installation.
  • MicroStack – a small OpenStack on your workstation to use as a VIM for Charmed OSM.
  • Charmed OSM core bundle – a minimal Open Source MANO installation.

For more information about the development stack watch the video: Just one machine to get started with OSM or read the tutorial: Getting started with Charmed OSM.

Production stack

For production environments, where stability, availability and scalability are the key drivers, Canonical provides a production‐grade stack consisting of:

  • Charmed Kubernetes – highly available and scalable Kubernetes cluster for Charmed OSM hosting purposes.
  • Charmed OpenStack – a highly available and scalable OpenStack cluster that will be used as the VIM.
  • Charmed OSM HA bundle – a highly available and scalable Open Source MANO cluster.

Learn more about Canonical’s solutions for telcos

Interested in trying Charmed OSM?

Tell us your NFV story and talk to a Canonical telco expert.

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Try it yourself

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Canonical is a key contributor to the upstream Open Source MANO project, and an owner of the main OSM components: N2VC (Network Service to VNF Communication), RO (Resource Orchestrator) and TSC member.

Latest OSM news from our blog ›

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Further reading