Cisco Cisco Virtual Managed Services 1.02 Troubleshooting Guide
6. Elastic Services Controller (ESC)
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6.2 Overview
The Elastic Service Controller performs the role of the Virtual Network Functions Manager (VNFM) in the
VMS Architecture. ESC receives requests from the NSO to create service chains that consist of networks,
subnets, and VMs to be deployed in OpenStack. It also monitors the VNF instances for availability via their
management interface and can reboot or redeploy VNFs if needed. ESC sends notifications to the NSO when
the VNFs and the entire service chain are ready. In the vMS Architecture, ESC utilizes NETCONF protocol for
northbound communication to NSO, and uses REST API calls southbound to OpenStack.
VMS Architecture. ESC receives requests from the NSO to create service chains that consist of networks,
subnets, and VMs to be deployed in OpenStack. It also monitors the VNF instances for availability via their
management interface and can reboot or redeploy VNFs if needed. ESC sends notifications to the NSO when
the VNFs and the entire service chain are ready. In the vMS Architecture, ESC utilizes NETCONF protocol for
northbound communication to NSO, and uses REST API calls southbound to OpenStack.
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Cisco Elastic Services Controller (ESC) is a Virtual Network Functions Manager (VNFM) and it
performs life cycle management of Virtual Network Functions (VNFs).
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ESC provides agentless VNF management by provisioning the virtual services and monitoring their
health.
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ESC promotes agility, flexibility, and programmability in Network Function Virtualization (NFV)
environments.
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ESC provides flexibility to define rules for monitoring and associated actions that are triggered based
on the outcome of these rules.
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In the event of a VNF failure, ESC also supports automatic VNF recovery.
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Complex services include multiple VNFs that are orchestrated as a single service with dependencies
between them. These multiple VNFs are managed as a single entity.
Key ESC Features
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Provides end-to-end dynamic provisioning and monitoring of virtualized services.
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Provides customization across different phases of life cycle management; while monitoring the VNF,
service advertisement, and custom actions.
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Provides agentless monitoring with an integrated Monitoring Actions (MONA) engine. The monitoring
engine provides simple and complex rules to monitor VNFs
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Deploys or removes VNFs based on the monitoring errors and threshold conditions detected as part
of healing (also called as recovery).
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Supports multi-tenant environments.
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Supports REST and NETCONF/YANG interfaces to provide better hierarchical configuration and data
modularity.
ESC Architecture
Cisco Elastic Services Controller (ESC) is built as an open and modular architecture, that allows OSS and
multi-vendor support. It performs life cycle management of the VNFs, that is, VNF on-boarding, configuring
the VNFs, monitoring them, and making VNF level life cycle decisions such as healing and scaling based on
multi-vendor support. It performs life cycle management of the VNFs, that is, VNF on-boarding, configuring
the VNFs, monitoring them, and making VNF level life cycle decisions such as healing and scaling based on