Microsoft has announced the launch of its next-generation hybrid cloud platform "Azure Operator Nexus"

A hybrid carrier-grade cloud platform called Azure Operator Nexus was created to meet the unique requirements of operators running network operations like packet core, virtualized radio access networks (vRAN), subscriber data management, and billing policies. The functionality of Azure Operator Nexus, a first-party Microsoft product, is enhanced by the addition of critical features from important Microsoft technologies like Mariner Linux, Hybrid AKS, and Arc while maintaining compatibility with Microsoft Services for security, lifecycle management, observability, DevOps, and automation.

It has already been made available to our main client, AT&T, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly good. We are now working with operators for prospective global deployments in a selected manner. In this blog post, we give a general overview of the service from conception to deployment and talk about the advantages clients can anticipate, including investigation and analysis of the total cost of ownership (TCO).

The Azure Operator Nexus is built on the knowledge gained by a sizable telecom provider that spent the last seven years virtualizing more than 75% of its network and solving the scale issues associated with network-function virtualization. Operator Nexus was developed as a result of this extensive networking and virtualization knowledge to:

Deliver the network function runtime that permits the fast-packet processing required to meet the carrier-grade-network demands of network functions supporting tens of millions of subscribers. Huge Pages, CPU pinning, CPU isolation, Multiple Network Attachments, SR-IOV & OVS/DPDK host coexistence, SR-IOV trusted mode capabilities, flexible, fine-grained VM sizing, NUMA alignment to avoid UPI performance penalties, optimized container support, and complex scheduling support across failure domains are a few examples of requirements the platform meets.

By using rigorous test automation, you can guarantee the reliability, security, and quality that network-function workloads demand.

Deliver lifecycle automation to manage cloud instances and workloads from creation through minor updates and configuration changes to major upgrades such as VM and Kubernetes upgrades. This is achieved through a unified, declarative framework that enables reduced operating costs, high-quality performance, and minimal impact on mission-critical running network workloads. In addition to

Operator Nexus, Microsoft also introduced two of his new artificial intelligence services (AIOps): Azure Operator Insights and Azure Operator Service Manager. Operator Insight is a machine learning-based service that helps operators analyze vast amounts of network operational data and troubleshoot potential issues. Service Manager, on the other hand, helps generate insights about network configuration.

One of the important thing advantages of a hybrid cloud infrastructure is its capacity to offer harmonized observability for each infrastructure and application. This way you can effortlessly screen and troubleshoot any troubles which can arise, making sure structures are strolling easily and efficiently. The platform collects logs, metrics, and strains from community characteristic virtualization infrastructure (NFVI) and community functions (NFs). It additionally gives a wealthy analytical, AI/ML-primarily based totally toolset to increase descriptive and prescriptive analytics. Our purpose with this observability structure is to safely carry all operator facts right into an unmarried facts lake wherein it may be processed to offer a global-community view and harvested for operational and commercial enterprise insights.

By running communication workloads on our AI-enabled, carrier-grade, hybrid cloud platform, Microsoft Azure assists operators in modernizing networks, as we have seen here. The future-proof, adaptable Azure Operator Nexus infrastructure promotes simplicity, scalability, and cost-effectiveness. It was designed from the ground up to handle workloads in a way that is observable, secure, and resilient while also meeting the specific performance requirements of operators. 

The Azure hybrid cloud platform significantly simplifies the provisioning of new network services by constructing and maintaining private cloud infrastructures for operators. By coordinating and optimizing the deployment of network applications and functions on the operator's premises or the public cloud, this is accomplished. A highly automated, self-optimizing, software-defined network that is capable of healing, protecting, and provisioning itself is the outcome.