overview/deployment_environment.rst

VOLTHA Deployment Environment
=============================

All the components in the VOLTHA project are containerized and the default
deployment environment is ``kubernetes``.

Generally VOLTHA is installed in one of two setups:

- A physical ``kubernetes`` cluster, generally used for production deployments.
- A virtual ``kind`` cluster, generally used for development.

Regardless of the chosen environment the deployment process is the same,
more on this later, and the installation can be managed in the same way.

Managing a VOLTHA deployment
----------------------------

VOLTHA components on top of ``kubernetes`` are managed via ``helm`` charts.
For more information about ``helm`` please refer to the `Official Documentation
<https://helm.sh>`_.
For the sake of this guide all you need to know is that an
``helm`` chart describes all the information required to deploy a component on top of
``kubernetes``, such as: containers, exposed ports and configuration parameters.

A VOLTHA deployment is composed, at its very minimum, by:

* Infrastructure

   * A ``kafka`` cluster (can also be a single node)
   * An ``etcd`` cluster (can also be a single node)
   * ``ONOS`` (single or multi instance)
   * [Optional] ``radius`` (for EAPOL based authentication)
* ``VOLTHA``

   * ``voltha-core`` and ``ofAgent`` (contained in the same ``helm`` chart)
* Adapters

   * [one or more] adapter pair(s) (OLT adapter + ONU Adapter)

.. figure:: ../_static/voltha_cluster_overview.png
   :alt: VOLTHA Component Diagram
   :width: 100%

   VOLTHA Kubernetes deployment

Note that the ``Infrastructure`` components can be deployed outside of the
``kubernetes`` cluster.

You can read more about VOLTHA deployments in:

- :doc:`lab_setup`
- :doc:`pod_physical`
- :doc:`dev_virtual`

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 1
   :hidden:
   :glob:

   ./lab_setup.rst
   ./pod_physical.rst
   ./dev_virtual.rst

Tooling
-------

To simplify the installation of VOLTHA we provided a tool called ``kind-voltha``.
You can read more on :doc:`kind-voltha <../kind-voltha/README>` in its own documentation.