Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SMART5GRID (Smart5Grid - Demonstration of 5G solutions for SMART energy GRIDs of the future)
Reporting period: 2021-01-01 to 2022-06-30
The main issue addressed by the Smart5Grid platform and specifically the Open Service Repository (OSR) is the difficulty and complexity in developing, testing and deploying modular 5G services and software applications on securely compartmentalized experimental infrastructure equal to the infrastructure used in real production environments. Delivering new services and new features on existing ones, is often slow and requires rigorous manual and multi-step testing processes. Developers of such software products use many different tools whose deployment and maintenance requires technical expertise, time and financial expenditure from their companies. The lack of an integrated suite of such tools adds a significant overhead on working for developing such services VNFs or NetApps. Access to existing applications, let alone access to their code, is very rare in niche markets such as the energy vertical industry.
Providing the right tools and solutions to the aforementioned issues will facilitate companies and organizations to become involved and contribute in a productive manner to build applications (NetApps) that implement features for the efficient, flexible and easier to manage smart energy grids.
The objective is creating a platform that will provide users with the ability to store, access, publish, test, and deploy such applications (NetApps) and all of their subcomponents (descriptor packages, software code, images). By joining the platform, the users shall have access to a suite of tools integrated in a way that facilitates developers of different skill levels to develop NetApps, while collaborating with other users, test their work on experimental infrastructure and have an overview of the actions that take place in the process. Also, they shall be able to access and reuse NetApps (or NetApp subcomponents) published and publicly accessible by other users.
Providing the right tools and solutions to the aforementioned issues will facilitate companies and organizations to become involved and contribute in a productive manner to build applications (NetApps) that implement features for the efficient, flexible and easier to manage smart energy grids.
The objective is creating a platform that will provide users with the ability to store, access, publish, test, and deploy such applications (NetApps) and all of their subcomponents (descriptor packages, software code, images). By joining the platform, the users shall have access to a suite of tools integrated in a way that facilitates developers of different skill levels to develop NetApps, while collaborating with other users, test their work on experimental infrastructure and have an overview of the actions that take place in the process. Also, they shall be able to access and reuse NetApps (or NetApp subcomponents) published and publicly accessible by other users.
In the phase of designing of the Smart5Grid Platform we have defined functional and non-functional requirements of the OSR and the Smart5Grid Platform User Interface (UI), the internal architecture of their software components, the application programming interfaces (APIs) to be used with external components and users and we have produced workflow diagrams that specify in detail all OSR and UI interactions.
The UI comprises of three main components, that is the front-end, the back-end and the database. The “View” of the application is the front-end web framework which communicates via REST API calls with the back-end server, acting as the Controller. The Model consists of the code in the back-end that implements the objects defined in the application. The Controller interacts with the Instances of the objects and such instances can be stored in the database.
(See attached Figure 1 - UI Architecture)
The OSR is the service responsible for the storage and management of all the NetApps and their included VNFs. It provides secure connection to authorized users, a code repository for the code of the applications, tracking of all changes, and log reporting to the users.
(See attached Figure 2 - OSR Architecture)
The A&A service is responsible for user authentication and role-based authorization on the operations provided by each OSR component.
(See attached Figure 3 - OSR Authentication & Authorization Service)
The NetApp/VNF Catalogue stores and links all NetApp and VNF information. NetApps and VNFs are stored in the Code Versioning Service, executable image files are stored in the Container and VM Image registries, and logs are stored in the Event Logging Service.
(See attached Figure 4 - OSR NetApp Catalogue)
(See attached Figure 5 - OSR Logging Service)
Working on the development of the Open Service Repository, AXON has created a laboratory environment to host the software components we needed to test and develop. This lab environment consists of several hardware nodes and networking equipment combined to provide virtual machines, containers, and all the DevOps paradigm tools to accelerate and facilitate the development process.
The supporting components deployed on this infrastructure, at the time of writing of this document, are the following: network storage, a container cluster to host most of the platform components, DevOps pipeline tooling, and a high available database. The main OSR components developed are the Authentication and Authorization service, the Code Versioning Service, the Container Registry Service, and a first version of the OSR Catalogue Service with partial functionality. The integration external to the OSR components (V&V platform and NetApp controller) is currently under active development.
The UI comprises of three main components, that is the front-end, the back-end and the database. The “View” of the application is the front-end web framework which communicates via REST API calls with the back-end server, acting as the Controller. The Model consists of the code in the back-end that implements the objects defined in the application. The Controller interacts with the Instances of the objects and such instances can be stored in the database.
(See attached Figure 1 - UI Architecture)
The OSR is the service responsible for the storage and management of all the NetApps and their included VNFs. It provides secure connection to authorized users, a code repository for the code of the applications, tracking of all changes, and log reporting to the users.
(See attached Figure 2 - OSR Architecture)
The A&A service is responsible for user authentication and role-based authorization on the operations provided by each OSR component.
(See attached Figure 3 - OSR Authentication & Authorization Service)
The NetApp/VNF Catalogue stores and links all NetApp and VNF information. NetApps and VNFs are stored in the Code Versioning Service, executable image files are stored in the Container and VM Image registries, and logs are stored in the Event Logging Service.
(See attached Figure 4 - OSR NetApp Catalogue)
(See attached Figure 5 - OSR Logging Service)
Working on the development of the Open Service Repository, AXON has created a laboratory environment to host the software components we needed to test and develop. This lab environment consists of several hardware nodes and networking equipment combined to provide virtual machines, containers, and all the DevOps paradigm tools to accelerate and facilitate the development process.
The supporting components deployed on this infrastructure, at the time of writing of this document, are the following: network storage, a container cluster to host most of the platform components, DevOps pipeline tooling, and a high available database. The main OSR components developed are the Authentication and Authorization service, the Code Versioning Service, the Container Registry Service, and a first version of the OSR Catalogue Service with partial functionality. The integration external to the OSR components (V&V platform and NetApp controller) is currently under active development.
OSR in its completion will provide users with a one-stop-shop solution with all the state-of-the-art tools used in the software industry combined to provide an easy-to-use platform. The integration of the OSR with the experimental platform will help developers, engineers and stakeholders deploy and test their applications in environments that simulate production-level conditions.
By the end of the project, we expect third parties to be using the OSR to develop and test NetApps. By attracting users from various organizations we aim at creating a community of people trying to solve similar problems in the energy vertical sector. NetApps offered as open-source code, through public collaboration will help companies fix bugs, add features, and improve the performance of their applications within a relatively short amount of time. Open-source NetApps will also help newcomers and SMEs get involved, gain experience and create new products in an industry traditionally considered hard to enter.
By the end of the project, we expect third parties to be using the OSR to develop and test NetApps. By attracting users from various organizations we aim at creating a community of people trying to solve similar problems in the energy vertical sector. NetApps offered as open-source code, through public collaboration will help companies fix bugs, add features, and improve the performance of their applications within a relatively short amount of time. Open-source NetApps will also help newcomers and SMEs get involved, gain experience and create new products in an industry traditionally considered hard to enter.