Private 5G/LTE Helm Charts
A 5G/LTE core solution for deployment on Kubernetes using Helm using network functions from the wonderful Open5GS project. The ambition with the p5g project is to serve as vehicle for experimenting with 5G/LTE for deployment on premises in private settings such as in factories, logistics centers, warehoses, health-care and process industries where a combination of people and machine communication is desired and where using Kubernetes for the workload orchestration is desired - not only for the 5G/LTE aspects but also for other applications supporting the mission of the organization.
It is assumed that radio base stations will be configured to attach to the IP adress of the nodes labeled in .Values.epcGroups. On each such node, SCTP at port 36412 and UDP at 2152 will be port-mapped into the MME and SGW pods at that node. The MME, SGW and PGW are deployed as unique StatefulSets (replicas: 1) and Services (clusterIP: none). Each MME and PGW are also associated with unique Diameter ID's. The HSS and PCRF are Deployments using a Service with a cluster IP. Currently the HSS and PCRF are singletons but they should be possible to scale out. The mongo database is currently only deployed on one node - it is envisioned that the DB should be deployed using a standalone Helm chart. The web user interface is deployed as a Deployment with the service using a load balancer IP adress. It is envisioned that the webUI will eventually reside behind Ingress.
All configuration of the EPC is performed through the values.yaml file.
- A Kubernetes cluster with the SCTP alpha feature flag enabled. The chart has been tested on Kubernetes v1.18.
- S1AP (36412) and GTP-U (2152) ports available on nodes labeled in
.Values.epcGroups. - A loadBalancer deployed with the cluster for reaching the webui. The chart has been tested with Metallb.
- A directory path as specified in
.Values.mongodb.directorycreated on node with hostname.Values.mongodb.hostName. - Helm v3.2.4
- kubectl configured to access the cluster
Currently, the setup as been subject to limited testing using the OAI soft eNB/UE. Stability with the OAI suite has been an issue on the current setup.
For entering the EPC parameters in values.yaml and how to enter UE inforamation into the webUI please refer to the documentation in the file as well as Open5GS.