MAPLE: An integrated environment for process modelling and enactment for NFV systems

Abstract

The Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) paradigm is making way for the rapid provisioning of network services (NS). Defining a process for the design, deployment, and management of network services and automating it is therefore highly desirable and beneficial for NFV systems. The use of model-driven orchestration means has been recently advocated in this context. As part of this effort, we propose a process enactment approach with NFV systems as the target domain. We provide support for automated process execution with a megamodel-based enactment approach. An integrated process modelling and enactment environment, MAPLE, has been built into Papyrus for this purpose. Process modelling is carried out with UML activity diagrams. The enactment environment transforms the process model to a model transformation chain, and then orchestrates it with the use of megamodels. We demonstrate our environment by enacting a NS design process.