The Blue Planet platform consists of a set of tools and applications designed to facilitate the development and deployment of container-based networking applications. The Blue Planet platform provides a collection of related applications and services called solutions. These solutions, such as Blue Planet Orchestration for multi-domain service orchestration (MDSO) and network functions virtualization orchestration (NFVO), are delivered as independent containers that include all application dependencies, are run without the extra load of a hypervisor, and contain a REST-based interface for communications between the platform and application.

Using the Blue Planet Dashboard, you can use orchestration to allocate and coordinate both physical and virtual resources and services into repeatable workflows across multiple technologies and domains. Orchestration may consist of the following:

Using Blue Planet network orchestration software you can expand and accelerate the delivery of new services across both virtual and physical domains. The micro-services architecture of Blue Planet simplifies the task of adding third-party or open-source services, such as multi-domain service orchestration to an orchestrated domain.

Blue Planet micro-services architecture supports end-to-end service orchestration in both Ciena and non-Ciena domains. To provision network elements, you require the appropriate resource provider/resource adapter (RA); software plug-ins that provide seamless connectivity between the Blue Planet platform, the micro-service software, and the third-party resource adapters/network elements.

Blue Planet models managed entities as resources. These entities include physical ports, VLAN IDs, host IP addresses, E-Line services, virtual machines, physical servers, OpenStack Neutron subnets, logical disk volumes, VNFs, and many more.

You can add an existing or create a new RA and register it in a central registry or directory service. A resource user can instantiate the RA from the central registry, and then combine individual resources into composite resources to form hierarchical structures. This guide does not describe this functionality. For information about the DevOps Exchange and the DevOps Toolkit, see the Ciena community portal.

Use the Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications (TOSCA)-based service templates to help program your resources regardless of whether they are physical, virtual, or cross-domain. For detailed feature information, see the Blue Planet MDSO and NFVO Solutions Release Notes in the Ciena portal.