ETSI has released the GS NFV-IFA 040 specification, which defines the Container Infrastructure Service Management (CISM) and Container Image Registry (CIR) functions required to manage and orchestrate OS containers within the NFV framework. This release is part of the NFV Release 4 suite, which also includes updated specifications for management orchestration requirements and VNF package descriptors to support cloud-native VNFs. The new standards establish essential management service interfaces and extend VNF descriptor information models to describe container infrastructure resources, enabling standardized integration of containerized workloads. Further work continues on extending NFV-MANO reference point interfaces and defining requirements for container cluster management and security.
Keywords: container orchestration, cloud-native VNFs, NFV-MANO, CISM, interoperability