YANG Data Model for Virtual Network Interfaces Management

Telecom operators rely on edge cloud infrastructure to deliver services to end users for low-latency. However, edge cloud resources are relatively limited. It is necessary to monitor resource consumption in real time to optimize service deployment and load balancing strategies. While telecom operators have control over both cloud and network domains, there are still gaps in achieving effective cloud-network coordination. This document defines a YANG data model for the management of VNIs (Virtual Network Interfaces), including vNIC and CNI, depending on the different ways of virtualization. It exposes the real-time VNI resources to network controller and service orchestrator in order to supervise the cloud resource states for dynamic adjustment of service function placement and load-balancing of service instances to ensure the SLO (Service Level Objective). The YANG modules in this document conform to the Network Management Datastore Architecture (NMDA) .

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [BCP 14] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here. The terminology for describing YANG data models is found in . The following conventions are used in this document. VNI: Virtual Network Interfaces, including vNIC and CNI. vNIC: virtual Network Interface Card, based on VM (Virtual Machine). CNI: Container Network Interface, based on container, like Kubernetes.

Tree diagrams used in this document follow the notation defined in .

This data model intends to expose the information of VNIs to the network controller and service orchestrator for a better coordination between cloud and network systems. Specifically, it collects the type of virtualization, the latency, bandwidth, utilization, priority, and packet loss rate of VNI of virtualized nodes in clouds. Generally, there are two mainstream approaches to virtualization in cloud environments, which are VM based on Openstacks and container based on Kubernetes. Based on the information of VNIs, the operators can not only optimize the service deployment and load-balancing strategies in edge clouds, but also dynamically adjust the route and flow between DCs and end users in order to ensure the SLO.

This document defines the YANG module "ietf-vni-mng", which has the following structure:

This section presents the VNI Management YANG module defined in this document.

file "ietf-vni-mng@2025-07-07.yang" module ietf-vni-mng { yang-version 1.1; namespace "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-vni-mng"; prefix vni-mng; organization "XXX"; contact "WG Web: WG List: Author: Fan Zhang "; description "This document defines a YANG data model for the management of VNIs (Virtual Network Interfaces), including vNIC and CNI, depending on the different ways of virtualization. It exposes the real-time VNI resources to network controller and service orchestrator in order to supervise the cloud resource states for dynamic adjustment of service function placement and load-balancing of service instances to ensure the SLO (Service Level Objective). The model is based on YANG 1.1 as defined in RFC 7950 and conforms to Network Management Datastore Architecture (NMDA) as defined in RFC 8342. Copyright (c) 2025 IETF Trust and the persons identified as authors of the code. All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, is permitted pursuant to, and subject to the license terms contained in, the Simplified BSD License set forth in Section 4.c of the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info). This version of this YANG module is part of RFC XXXX; see the RFC itself for full legal notices."; revision 2025-07-07 { description "Init revision"; reference "YANG Data Model for Virtual Network Interfaces Management"; } /* Data nodes */ container dc { description "Datacenter"; leaf dc-id { type string; description "Identifier for the datacenter"; } container nodes { description "Virtualized nodes (VMs or containers)"; list node { key "node-id"; description "List of virtualized nodes."; leaf node-id { type string; description "Identifier for the virtualized node."; } leaf node-type { type enumeration { enum vm { description "Indicates that the node is a Virtual Machine (VM) instance."; } enum container { description "Indicates that the node is a Container instance."; } } description "Specifies the type of the node."; } leaf allocatable-bandwidth { type uint64; units "bps"; description "The maximum allocatable bandwidth for the node's virtualized interface."; } leaf allocated-bandwidth { type uint64; units "bps"; description "The allocated bandwidth for the node's virtualized interface."; } leaf bandwidth-usage { type uint64; units "bps"; description "The current bandwidth usage on the node's virtualized interface."; } leaf priority { type uint8; description "Priority level of the node or its traffic, with lower values indicating higher priority."; } leaf latency { type uint64; units "ms"; description "Average one-way latency experienced by the node."; } leaf packet-loss-rate { type uint64; units "%"; description "The average packet loss rate observed on the node's virtualized interface."; } leaf ingress-bytes { type uint64; units "bytes"; description "Total number of bytes received by the node."; } leaf egress-bytes { type uint64; units "bytes"; description "Total number of bytes transmitted from the node."; } list policy { key "policy-id"; description "The service deployed on the node and its related policy."; leaf policy-id { type string; description "Identifier for the policy of the service deployed on the node."; } leaf service-id { type string; description "Identifier for the service deployed on the node."; } } } } } }

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      This document registers a URI in the IETF XML
      registry. Following the format in , the
      following registration is requested to be made:

      
        
      

      This document registers a YANG module in the YANG Module Names
      registry .

      
        
      
    

    
      TBD.

    

    
      The authors wish to thank xxx for their helpful comments.