KPIMON xApp Deployment

Here we are going to deploy KPIMON xApp as an example of xApp deployment. Please follow the steps to see the results.

Note

The near-RT RIC installation has to be completed before proceeding with the following sections.

Hosting the config Files

As indicated in the Genral guidelines to Deploy an xApp section , we first need to host the config file (xApp descriptor) provided in the web server we have created already. Follow the instructions to create a Web server and continue with next steps

Create a symlink from the xapp’s config file (in this case kpimon).This can be replaced by another symlink in the future. Reload Nginx once this has been done.

sudo cp ric-scp-kpimon/scp-kpimon-config-file.json /var/www/xApp_config.local/config_files/
sudo systemctl reload nginx

Now, you can check if the config file can be accessed from the newly created server. Place all files you want to host in the config_files directory

export MACHINE_IP=`hostname  -I | cut -f1 -d' '`
curl http://${MACHINE_IP}:5010/config_files/scp-kpimon-config-file.json

We host the config file on the web server to make it possible for the onboarder to download and use it for deployment.

Creating KPIMON xApp Docker image

Now, we create a docker image of the KPIMON xApp using the given docker file.

cd ric-scp-kpimon
sudo docker build . -t xApp-registry.local:5008/scp-kpimon:1.0.1

xApp Onboarder Deployment

Warning

Before Deploying the xApp, it is essential to have the 5G Network Up and Running. Otherwise the subscription procedure will not be successful.

Get Variables

First, we need to get some variables of RIC Platform ready. The following variables represent the IP addresses of the services running on the RIC Platform.

export KONG_PROXY=`sudo kubectl get svc -n ricplt -l app.kubernetes.io/name=kong -o jsonpath='{.items[0].spec.clusterIP}'`
export APPMGR_HTTP=`sudo kubectl get svc -n ricplt --field-selector metadata.name=service-ricplt-appmgr-http -o jsonpath='{.items[0].spec.clusterIP}'`
export ONBOARDER_HTTP=`sudo kubectl get svc -n ricplt --field-selector metadata.name=service-ricplt-xapp-onboarder-http -o jsonpath='{.items[0].spec.clusterIP}'`

Check for helm charts

Get helm charts and check if the current xApp is one of them. If there is no helm chart, then we are good to go. Otherwise, we have to use the existing chart or delete it and then proceed forward.

curl --location --request GET "http://$KONG_PROXY:32080/onboard/api/v1/charts"

Create a .url file

Next, we need to create a .url file to point the xApp-onboarder to the Ngnix server to get the xApp descriptor file and use it to create a helm chart and deploy the xApp.

vim scp-kpimon-onboard.url

Paste the following in the onboard.url file. Substitue the <machine_ip_addr> with the IP address of your machine. You can find this out through ifconfig.

{"config-file.json_url":"http://<machine_ip_addr>:5010/config_files/scp-kpimon-config-file.json"}

Save the file. Now we are ready to deploy the xApp.

Deploying the xApp

curl -L -X POST "http://$KONG_PROXY:32080/onboard/api/v1/onboard/download" --header 'Content-Type: application/json' --data-binary "@scp-kpimon-onboard.url"
curl -L -X GET "http://$KONG_PROXY:32080/onboard/api/v1/charts"
curl -L -X POST "http://$KONG_PROXY:32080/appmgr/ric/v1/xapps" --header 'Content-Type: application/json' --data-raw '{"xappName": "scp-kpimon"}'

Verifying xApp Deployment

There should be a ricxapp-scp-kpimon pod in ricxapp namespace

sudo kubectl get pods -A

We can check the xApp logs using

sudo kubectl logs -f -n ricxapp -l app=ricxapp-scp-kpimon

Since the E2 Node is already up and running and the Key Performance Metrics (KPM) RAN function is enabled by default, the xApp will be able to subscribe to the E2 Node and start getting INDICATION messages. The decoded message containing information about the metrics is stored in the kpimon.log within the pod. This can be viewed by,

sudo kubectl exec -it -n ricxapp `sudo kubectl get pod -n ricxapp -l app=ricxapp-scp-kpimon -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}'` -- tail -F /opt/kpimon.log

xApp Re-Deployment & Undeployment

To redeploy the xApp, on the near-RT RIC side, run the command

sudo kubectl -n ricxapp rollout restart deployment ricxapp-scp-kpimon

To Undeploy the xApp, first let’s get the IP address of the App Manager

export APPMGR_HTTP=`sudo kubectl get svc -n ricplt --field-selector metadata.name=service-ricplt-appmgr-http -o jsonpath='{.items[0].spec.clusterIP}'`
curl -L -X DELETE http://${APPMGR_HTTP}:8080/ric/v1/xapps/scp-kpimon

To remove the xApp descriptors from the Chart Museum, use the command

curl -L -X DELETE "http://${ONBOARDER_HTTP}:8080/api/charts/scp-kpimon/1.0.1"