Aether In a Box

Setting Up Aether-in-a-Box

Aether-in-a-Box (AiaB) provides an easy way to deploy Aether’s SD-CORE components and run basic tests to validate the installation. This guide describes the steps to set up AiaB.

AiaB can be set up with a 4G or 5G SD-CORE. We use SimApp to configure the required subscribers & network slices in SD-CORE for testing core functionality.

Helm charts are the primary method of installing the SD-CORE resources. AiaB offers a great deal of flexibility regarding which Helm chart versions to install:

  • Local definitions of charts (for testing Helm chart changes)

  • Latest published charts (for deploying a development version of Aether)

  • Specified versions of charts (for deploying a specific Aether release)

AiaB can be run on a bare metal machine or VM. System prerequisites:

  • Ubuntu 18.04

  • Kernel 4.15 or later

  • Haswell CPU or newer

Clone Repositories

To initialize the AiaB environment, first clone the following repository using your Gerrit ID:

cd ~
git clone "https://gerrit.opencord.org/aether-in-a-box"

mkdir -p ~/cord
cd ~/cord
git clone "https://gerrit.opencord.org/sdcore-helm-charts"

Note

Only one version of the SD-CORE (4G or 5G) can be installed in AIAB environment at a time. The first time you build AiaB, it takes a while because it sets up the Kubernetes cluster. Subsequent builds will be much faster if you follow below steps to delete & redeploy SD-Core (4G/5G) without destroying the Kubernetes

Using 4G SD-CORE

To deploy 4G SD-CORE:

make test

To delete 4G SD-CORE deployment

make reset-test

The above step performs UE attach and data test. If you wish to update any images of SD-Core 4G components then edit file in ~/aether-in-a-box/sd-core-4g-values.yaml. After updating config in sd-core-4g-values.yaml you can reset deployment and run the test again.

Using 5G SD-CORE

To deploy 5G SD-CORE:

make 5gc

To deploy and test 5G SD-CORE:

make 5g-test

The above step uses gNBSim to perform Registration + UE-Initiated PDU Session Establishment + User Data Packets. To test other procedures, modify gnb.conf in ~/aether-in-a-box/sd-core-5g-values.yaml (refer gNBSim documentation gNB Simulator)

Developer Loop

Suppose you wish to test a new build of a 5G SD-CORE services. You can deploy custom images by editing ~/aether-in-a-box/sd-core-5g-values.yaml, for example:

images:
  tags:
    webui: omecproject/5gc-webui:master-7f96cfd

To upgrade a running 5G SD-CORE with the new image, or to deploy the 5G SD-CORE with the image:

make reset-5g-test # delete 5G deployment if it was already started before updating image
make 5gc  #now this deployment will use new webui image

Troubleshooting / Known Issues

If you suspect a problem, first verify that all pods are in Running state:

kubectl -n omec get pods

If the pods are stuck in ImagePullBackOff state, then it’s likely an issue with image name.

4G Test Fails

Occasionally make test (for 4G) fails for unknown reasons; this is true regardless of which Helm charts are used. If this happens, first try cleaning up AiaB and re-running the test. If make test fails consistently, then try to debug the issue by looking at spgwc, mme logs.

5G Test Fails

If make 5g-test fails consistently, then try to debug the issue by looking at logs at amf, smf.