Service Orchestration Overview

Service orchestration is the process of designing, configuring, validating, deploying, and monitoring a network service; for example, Layer 3 VPN (L3VPN) service. From the service orchestration perspective, a network service is any point-to-point, point-to-multipoint, or multipoint-to-multipoint connection. Paragon Automation provides an automated framework that manages the entire life cycle of a network service, right from design to deprovisioning the service from the network.

Service orchestration in Paragon Automation is model-driven and intent-based. That is, a network administrator can specify the requirements of a service in predefined service models or service designs that Paragon Automation provides in the service catalog. You use the service design to create a service instance. A service instance defines the sites, devices, connections, and other parameters of the service. Once you publish the service instance, a service order is created, which starts the service provisioning workflow. The workflow transforms the service intent into a network service instance and deploys that service instance to the network. The network service instance includes all the network resources that have been allocated to meet the goals of the service intent.

You can provision network services from the Paragon Automation GUI, the service orchestration cMGD CLI, or programmatically by using REST API.

Paragon Automation provides the following service and resource designs to onboard devices to the network and to provision network services on the onboarded devices:

• Infrastructure service design to onboard and deploy devices to the network.

• Routing, Layer 3, and Layer 2 resource designs to configure network resource pools for the infrastructure service.

• Topology and VPN resources designs to configure network resource pools for the L3VPN, EVPN, and L2 circuit services.

• L3VPN service design to provision and monitor L3VPN service in the network.

• L2VPN service design to provision and monitor EVPN service in the network.

• L2VPN-NSM service design to provision and monitor L2 circuit service in the network.

These service and resource designs are preinstalled when you install Paragon Automation.

Service Orchestration in Paragon Automation consists of the following elements:

• Service Catalog─A service catalog is a collection of predefined service designs that are available for the organization. Service designs are version-controlled and you can upgrade the service designs without having to upgrade the Paragon Automation cluster.

• Service Designs─Service orchestration in Paragon Automation is model-driven, that is, service orchestration is carried out through predefined service designs or models, which contain the specifications for a type of service.

• Service Instance─A service instance is a specific instance of a service design created for a customer. For example, a named instance of an L3VPN service created for a specific customer. Services are orchestrated from service instances.

• Resource Designs─Network resource pools for a service are defined based on predefined resource designs that contain specifications for types of resource pools.

• Resource Instance─A resource instance is a specific instance of a resource design that defines the configurations for a resource pool required to provision a service in the network.

• Placement─Process of allocating network resources for provisioning a service instance.

• Service Order─Process of creating, modifying, or deleting a service instance. You can view the status of a service order.

• Workflow─A workflow is a sequence of tasks that Paragon Automation executes to provision a service. You can monitor workflows and access logs that help you troubleshoot failed service orders.

To view a list of devices that support service provisioning, see Supported Devices and OS Versions.