OpenStack Based Packet Control Unit Cloudification

With the increasing number of mobile devices in use, the huge amount of data keeps growing and brings tough challenges to the telecommunication operators. Operators expect to guarantee and improve their service quality at lower Capital Expenditures (CAPEX) and Operable Expenditures (OPEX). However, as the existing software is designed for the dedicated hardware infrastructure, it complicates the developing procedure of the software. Moreover, it also takes a long period to deliver the new version of products. In addition, the hardware resources cannot be allocated on-demand, which causes the waste of the resources. As the cloud computing could be the possible solution to solve the problems, the thesis introduces a cloud platform powered by OpenStack to facilitate the development of cloudified products. The OpenStack based cloud platform is deployed on the top of the physical hardware running the Linux operating system. According to the running condition of the Packet Control Unit (PCU), the target product to be cloudified, a testing environment is established based on the cloud platform. The PCU and its relevant components are provisioned and tested in the cloud. The cloudified PCU is demonstrated to be successful that it can run stably in the OpenStack based cloud environment. The whole cloud environment is virtualized, which means the software can be decoupled with the physical hardware. The new version of the software can be delivered fast and simply in the cloud. The centralized cloud resource pool can be elastically allocated on-demand. If more services provided by OpenStack can be utilized and a reconstruction of PCU software can be done in future works, a fully cloudifed product will be accomplished