Collecting vRAN KPIs with SlapOS

Recent versions of SlapOS Amarisoft software release can collect and send xlog data to remote data lakes using a common file format over fluentd protocol for KPI calculation, consolidation and AI.
  • Last Update:2024-02-20
  • Version:002
  • Language:en

Recent versions of ors-amarisoft are able to collect and send xlog data to any fluentd/fluentbit compatible data lake using a common file format.

This was achieved by adding a new parameter to SlapOS Amarisoft software release:

    "xlog_fluentbit_forward_host": {
      "title": "Address to Forward Xlog by Fluenbit",
      "description": "Address of Remote Fluentd or Fluentbit Server to Forward Xlog",
      "type": "string"
    },
    "xlog_fluentbit_forward_port": {
      "title": "Port to Forward Xlog by Fluentbit",
      "description": "Optional Port of Remote Fluentd or Fluentbit Server to Forward Xlog",
      "type": "string"
    },
    "xlog_fluentbit_forward_shared_key": {
      "title": "Shared Key to Forward Xlog by Fluentbit",
      "description": "Secret Key Shared with Remote Fluentd or Fluentbit Server for Authentication when Forwarding Xlog",
      "type": "string"
    }

 

Fluentbit configuration in SlapIOS Amarisoft software:

  [SERVICE]
      flush           5
  [INPUT]
      name            tail
      path            ${:logfile} # get enb.xlog automatically with the setting
      Read_from_Head  True
  [OUTPUT]
      name            forward
      match           *
      Host            ${:forward-host} # the value of xlog_fluentbit_forward_host
{%- if slapparameter_dict.get('xlog_fluentbit_forward_port') %}
      Port            ${:forward-port} # the value of xlog_fluentbit_forward_port
{%- endif %}
      Shared_Key      ${:forward-shared-key} # the value of xlog_fluentbit_forward_shared_key
      Self_Hostname   ${:forward-self-hostname} # get self-hostname automatically with the setting
      tls             on
      tls.verify      off

Selected operation data is collected by the xamari process running nearby Amarisoft enb process on the BBU. Operation data is then converted into a common format (enb.xlog) and sent by fluentbit to a remote server for further processing such as KPI calculation.

 

A complete example is explained in a notebook. It is a first example of standardisation of operation data of a vRAN infrastructure. A proof-of-concept implementation of a data lake capable of generating 3GPP KPIs from xlog files has been deployed with Wendelin big data hub.

Further standardisation may be needed for environment (ex. temperature). For resource usage (ex. CPU), SlapOS already proposes a standard file format of resource usage (RAM, CPU, disk) per process. However, those file formats are mutually inconsistent, making data sharing in a common data space difficult or impossible.

Ideally, we need a common way to share time sequences, no matter their properties. Possible candidates include:

  • HDF5 (exhaustive feature set, limited adoption)
  • Parquet (reduced feature set, well adopted)
  • ndarray (minimal feature set but native support in python, JS, C, C++, FORTRAN, etc. and widely adopted)
  • JSONL (a good replacement to CSV with schemas and native support in python, JS, etc.)
  • yet to be defined standard file format from IDSA as part of DIN SPEC 27070
  • etc.

Selecting a common standard will be part of next development steps of SlapOS.

References

Contact

  • Photo Jean-Paul Smets
  • Logo Nexedi
  • Jean-Paul Smets
  • jp (at) rapid (dot) space
  • Jean-Paul Smets is the founder and CEO of Nexedi. After graduating in mathematics and computer science at ENS (Paris), he started his career as a civil servant at the French Ministry of Economy. He then left government to start a small company called “Nexedi” where he developed his first Free Software, an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) designed to manage the production of swimsuits in the not-so-warm but friendly north of France. ERP5 was born. In parallel, he led with Hartmut Pilch (FFII) the successful campaign to protect software innovation against the dangers of software patents. The campaign eventually succeeeded by rallying more than 100.000 supporters and thousands of CEOs of European software companies (both open source and proprietary). The Proposed directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions was rejected on 6 July 2005 by the European Parliament by an overwhelming majority of 648 to 14 votes, showing how small companies can together in Europe defeat the powerful lobbying of large corporations. Since then, he has helped Nexedi to grow either organically or by investing in new ventures led by bright entrepreneurs.
  • Photo Lu Xu
  • Logo Nexedi
  • Lu Xu
  • lu (dot) xu (at) nexedi (dot) com