Wind River introduces Kubernetes-based cloud native offering for complex 5G vRAN network edge needs

Wind River announced Wind River Cloud Platform, its high-performance, production grade Kubernetes-based offering for managing edge cloud infrastructure. Optimized for the network edge, the platform addresses the service provider’s complex challenges of deploying and managing a physically distributed, cloud native vRAN infrastructure.

Cloud Platform leverages the OpenStack Foundation’s open source project StarlingX to deliver the foundation for a geographically distributed managed solution able to simplify Day 1 and Day 2 operations by providing single-pane–of-glass (SPoG), zero-touch automated management of thousands of nodes, no matter their physical location. 

The platform provides orchestration of fully automated software updates and upgrades across a geo-distributed cloud, with rollback capabilities. Unlike enterprise-class IT platforms, Cloud Platform is an out-of-the-box open source solution designed specifically for edge compute that delivers ultra-low latency with deterministic performance. This is critical for high-availability, performance sensitive 5G virtualized radio infrastructure, as well as advanced applications such as autonomous vehicles.

Cloud Platform scales from a single compute node at the network edge to enable ultra-low cost deployments, up to thousands of nodes to meet the needs of high-value applications as they grow. Remote nodes can survive control plane disconnection and continue to operate and re-synchronize upon reconnection. 

All control functions can exist at all sites. Remote sites can be zero-touch enrolled and replicated across thousands of sites with fully automated deployment of known-good configurations.

Cloud Platform’s common virtualization architecture can enable service providers to create a single approach to cloud infrastructure across far edge, near edge, regional, and core data center site elements within a planned 5G deployment topology. The distributed infrastructure can be managed as a single high-availability cloud, and do so with both containers and VMs co-existing seamlessly.

“Wind River has been a long-standing contributor to open source projects. We are excited to have Wind River as a member of CNCF and we look forward to their contributions and collaboration to drive container technology to the edge,” said Dan Kohn, executive director of Cloud Native Computing Foundation. “With Wind River Cloud Platform, Wind River is helping to further advance technologies such as Kubernetes at the edge.”