Onboarding Network Functions

provides a platform to easily migrate your traditional telco functions to virtualized and cloud-native environments. It supports onboarding of all types of network functions:

  • Virtualized Network Functions (VNF)
  • Cloud-native Network Functions (CNF)
  • Physical Network Functions (PNF)

Start onboarding

Learn more on onboarding network functions ›

3 easy steps to onboard your network function

Onboarding is all about configuring the day 0, day 1, and day 2 operations. All the life cycle stages can be achieved by defining these operations properly in the OSM packages for the network functions. The includes:


Day 0

  • Create the network function descriptors as templates to instantiate/terminate the service.
  • Create packages for network services i.e. templates for images and configurations of the virtualized infrastructure using Enhanced Platform Awareness provided by OSM.
  • Integrate the cloud-init scripts in the descriptors for primary configurations like OS boot, SSH and user management.

Day 1

  • (proxy or native) as an operator for the network function.
  • Define the primitives/actions in charms that need to be performed right after the instantiation of service.
  • Integrate the configured charm in the OSM descriptors.

Day 2

  • Reconfigure when needed after the service is running
  • Monitor the specific metrics for the infrastructure
  • Scale on the basis of monitoring analysis
  • Operate to enable closed-loop automation


Lifecycle management

The goal of onboarding is to create a package that can fulfill the stages to manage the lifecycle of network services. The package should include network function instantiation, scaling in/out, healing or recovery, updating, operating and termination.


Network function VNF onboarding in OSM Hackfests

Canonical regularly participates in the and ETSI’s Centre for Testing and Interoperability. For events like Hackfests and NFV Plugtests Canonical also offers a partner cloud where multiple VNF vendors can deploy and test the interoperability of their Telco network functions. It is also available if VNF vendors want to test their network functions individually before migrating to production environments.

52 Participants, More than 100 Network Functions onboarded


The OSM#11 Hackfest was fully dedicated to Network Function onboarding to OSM release NINE and TEN bringing a new challenge to OSM users. Canonical members participated as mentors and helped the participants to deploy and onboard their network functions throughout the week (31st May - 4th June 2021). The hackfest challenged the participants and VNF vendors to build a package using NFV standardized descriptors, instantiation and Day-1, Day-2 operations. The following list of VNFs and CNFs were successfully onboarded:

  • Asterisk
  • CoreDNS VNF
  • FreeRadiusCNF
  • FreeRadiusVNF
  • NetNumber VNF
  • OPC UA
  • PowerDNS CNF
  • VyOS
  • NTNU


This upcoming hackfest (13th -17th September 2021) is bringing another exciting challenge to participate and improve your onboarding expertise. It will be remote and followed the same agenda from the and Canonical OSM experts will be there as mentors. This time, ETSI OSM and Open Air Interface are collaborating to show interoperability between open source 5G workload and OSM. It will include the onboarding of the following network functions

  • Access and Mobility Management Function ()
  • Session Management Function ()
  • User Plane Function ()
  • Network Repository Function ()

to get a hands-on experience with the deployment of 5G core network functions.

Follow this to discover our contributions in the previous hackfests.

Tell us about your network function

Canonical can help you automate your network function onboarding to Charmed OSM. Please choose the relevant options for your network functions to see how it can work for you.

Let us help you with onboarding

deployment support


  • Supported with Ubuntu Advantage
  • Availability of managed and professional services
  • ESM - Security updates for Ubuntu LTS for additional 3-5 years

Network function onboarding support


  • Support for automation of the network function
  • Onboarding it to Charmed OSM

Learn onboarding from scratch