5G Reference Architecture #3 “Everything Managed and Hybrid” Pattern

This post discusses the third 5G architecture pattern – where both the 5G Core is deployed on the cloud and the Radio Access Network (RAN) components are deployed on managed hardware. We will also examine how it solves the major usage scenarios defined for 5G by 3GPP while designing for the seven architecture domains we discussed in the previous blog.

The “Everything Managed and Hybrid” Pattern

Illustration – Logical architecture for 5G core control plane running in a cloud region and the RAN deployed on Managed hardware, as an extension of the cloud

This pattern of deployment is suitable for the following criteria –

1. As highlighted in the above blog post on hosting 5G Core on the cloud as a best practice, https://www.vamsitalkstech.com/5g/deep-dive-into-5g-core-architecture-in-the-cloud/, your needs for HA, fault tolerance, scalability can all be met by a hyperscaler deployment of most core 5GC components
2. For the Radio and 5G Core components such as UPF (User Plane Function), you would like a solution that can act as an extension of the hyperscaler so that you have the same API and access to services that are available in the region
3. You need to run interactive 5G applications that need low latency access to data or processing that needs to happen on-premise. Examples include Telco 5G Radio Access Network (RAN) and such Edge workloads as highlighted in previous blogs – https://www.vamsitalkstech.com/cloud/edge-computing-challenges-and-opportunities-featured-on-techtarget/
4. You have workloads that need to comply with data residency regulations. Most countries have data residency rules or national sovereignty mandates where national citizen information cannot either be put in the cloud or leave the premises where it was recorded. Outposts are suited for these types of use-cases which sometimes require a disconnected mode of operations.
5. Your workloads that require consistency of infrastructure operations from the cloud to the edge – same APIs, same services, and same DevOps patterns

Detailed Design

The detailed design of the above architecture as applied to AWS is shown above. The key features of this are –

1. A variety of applications and services are deployed on the AWS Region(s). These include OSS/BSS systems, the 5G Control plane (AMF, SMF, and UDM, etc), and an optional 5G Orchestrator (more on that in another post). Edge applications including the RAN and other MEC applications are deployed on Outposts.
2. The Outposts tier serves as a single compute type for VM/Bare Metal and Containerized deployments. EKS runs on every Outposts instance to enable unified deployment of Containers and VMs(future). The admin can centrally control resource allocation flexibility.
3. ​​Given that each Outpost capacity pool (a collection of up to 16 racks that behaves as a subnet of the VPCs running in the Region) is connected to and controlled by a given AWS Region, customers get the same APIs, tools, and operational practices. For instance, developers can create and use the same deployment pipeline to develop and deploy applications into both Outposts and your cloud-based environments. This enables the creation of hybrid architectures that go from the Cloud to on-premises. The Outposts-based edge cloud, is based on X86 but can be extended to support the ARM chipset and will support deploying accelerators such as GPUs and FPGAs (for applications that need high performance and can leverage hardware acceleration), for example. Gaming/Crypto mining/Connected Car etc
4. This pattern of deploying 5G applications can result in medium to high scalability as it scales to support millions of mobile users across a wide geographic footprint.
5. From a security standpoint, a shared responsibility model is best suited as covered in this previous blog – https://www.vamsitalkstech.com/kubernetes/how-does-kubernetes-security-in-the-cloud-work/

Conclusion

Running 5G Core in the cloud and Radio/MEC applications on managed on-premise hardware is expected to be the most popular deployment option for large global communication service providers (CSPs). The next blog post will discuss the next architecture pattern “Self Managed on-premise and hybrid” where the 5G Core runs in the cloud and the RAN on-premises on self-managed servers.