D1.4: Experimentation requirements and architecture specification final version
Creators: name: Apostolakis, Konstantinos
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2023

description: This deliverable reports on the final list of technical requirements; component specifications; and overall platform architecture driving the design of the 5G-EPICENTRE integrated solution. It corresponds to the second and final version of deliverable D1.3 “Experimentation requirements and architecture specification preliminary version”. The deliverable does not replace the precursor document, but rather complements it with information that corresponds to the progress made in Tasks T1.2 and T1.3 since the delivery of D1.3. Wherever specified however, the contents in this document shall take precedence over those in D1.3, thus reflecting the project’s evolutionary approach, and capacity of the Consortium to align to evolving needs and developments outside its control.The intention of this document is to provide a comprehensive overview of the facility technical specifications, along with a functional viewpoint of the architectural building blocks that will comprise the final platform to be delivered. Therefore, a high-level overview of the envisioned roles, responsibilities and interrelationships among platform components will be documented, to be used as guidelines for the final development of the individual technological components in the context of Work Packages 2-4.This document provides a thorough description of the methodology and tools used to verify and validate the platform stakeholders’ requirements, which have been previously analysed and classified into a comprehensive set of high-level functional and non-functional requirements in D1.3. New platform stakeholders (i.e., experimenters expected to utilise the platform for the purpose of experimenting with their solutions) have been consulted to inform the 5G-EPICENTRE platform design based on their needs and expectations regarding the elicited capabilities that the system should expose for 5G experimentation. In addition, the list of technical requirements has been verified, validated and re-prioritized, based on those stakeholders’ feedback. This insight has been utilised in order to re-imagine (wherever necessary) the original architectural model, to meet stakeholder intent.The document then presents the methodology to refine this architectural model, namely the various stages of the architecture re-design approach. These constitute a technology exploration step, informed further by the joint activities of the 5G-PPP ICT-41 projects with respect to the joint definition of the Network Applications ecosystem. This step was followed by a top-down re-design of the platform architecture, identifying both new and obsolete building blocks and functionalities, as well as tools and solutions for crucial system “must-have” features, that have evolved in parallel with project activities (e.g., mature Karmada management system for cross-orchestration of Kubernetes cluster resources becoming available in July 2021 – M7). The process was finally complemented by a bottom-up re-specification of both past and present functional blocks.Finally, four architectural viewpoints are defined, namely the functional view; information view; deployment view; and security view. The functional view specifies the roles and capabilities provided by the various functional blocks identified in the re-design process. The information view defines how information flows through the integrated system during common usage scenarios of the platform component stack. The deployment view provides insight on deployment of the hardware and software artefacts across available virtualised and bare-metal infrastructure. Finally, the security view incorporates a security perspective in terms of how the larger attack surface created by embracing a Kubernetes deployment environment can be addressed by design; as well as via dedicated Network Application solutions offered by the platform itself.The deliverable represents the final output of Task T1.2 and T1.3 of the 5G-EPICENTRE Work Package 1.