2.18. Glossary

API

Application Programming Interface

Barometer

OPNFV NFVi Service Assurance project. Barometer upstreams changes to collectd, OpenStack, etc to improve features related to NFVi monitoring and service assurance. More info on: https://opnfv-barometer.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

collectd

collectd is a system statistics collection daemon. More info on: https://collectd.org/

context

A context describes the environment in which a yardstick testcase will be run. It can refer to a pre-provisioned environment, or an environment that will be set up using OpenStack or Kubernetes.

Docker

Docker provisions and manages containers. Yardstick and many other OPNFV projects are deployed in containers. Docker is required to launch the containerized versions of these projects.

DPDK

Data Plane Development Kit

DPI

Deep Packet Inspection

DSCP

Differentiated Services Code Point

flavor

A specification of virtual resources used by OpenStack in the creation of a VM instance.

Grafana

A visualization tool, used in Yardstick to retrieve test data from InfluxDB and display it. Grafana works by defining dashboards, which are combinations of visualization panes (e.g. line charts and gauges) and forms that assist the user in formulating SQL-like queries for InfluxDB. More info on: https://grafana.com/

IGMP

Internet Group Management Protocol

InfluxDB

One of the Dispatchers supported by Yardstick, it allows test results to be reported to a time-series database. More info on: https://www.influxdata.com/

IOPS

Input/Output Operations Per Second A performance measurement used to benchmark storage devices.

KPI

Key Performance Indicator

Kubernetes

k8s Kubernetes is an open-source container-orchestration system for automating deployment, scaling and management of containerized applications. It is one of the contexts supported in Yardstick.

MPLS

Multiprotocol Label Switching

NFV

Network Function Virtualization NFV is an initiative to take network services which were traditionally run on proprietary, dedicated hardware, and virtualize them to run on general purpose hardware.

NFVI

Network Function Virtualization Infrastructure The servers, routers, switches, etc on which the NFV system runs.

NIC

Network Interface Controller

NSB

Network Services Benchmarking. A subset of Yardstick features concerned with NFVI and VNF characterization.

OpenStack

OpenStack is a cloud operating system that controls pools of compute, storage, and networking resources. OpenStack is an open source project licensed under the Apache License 2.0.

PBFS

Packet Based per Flow State

PROX

Packet pROcessing eXecution engine

QoS

Quality of Service The ability to guarantee certain network or storage requirements to satisfy a Service Level Agreement (SLA) between an application provider and end users. Typically includes performance requirements like networking bandwidth, latency, jitter correction, and reliability as well as storage performance in Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS), throttling agreements, and performance expectations at peak load

runner

The part of a Yardstick testcase that determines how the test will be run (e.g. for x iterations, y seconds or until state z is reached). The runner also determines when the metrics are collected/reported.

SampleVNF

OPNFV project providing a repository of reference VNFs. More info on: https://opnfv-samplevnf.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

scenario

The part of a Yardstick testcase that describes each test step.

SLA

Service Level Agreement An SLA is an agreement between a service provider and a customer to provide a certain level of service/performance.

SR-IOV

Single Root IO Virtualization A specification that, when implemented by a physical PCIe device, enables it to appear as multiple separate PCIe devices. This enables multiple virtualized guests to share direct access to the physical device.

SUT

System Under Test

testcase

A task in Yardstick; the yaml file that is read by Yardstick to determine how to run a test.

ToS

Type of Service

VLAN

Virtual LAN (Local Area Network)

VM

Virtual Machine An operating system instance that runs on top of a hypervisor. Multiple VMs can run at the same time on the same physical host.

VNF

Virtual Network Function

VNFC

Virtual Network Function Component