Installing SBA Gateway in Hybrid Deployments

SBA Gateway requires a Kubernetes cluster. Some bare metal deployments select a gradual transition to 5G by integrating SBA Gateway with the existing bare metal MATRIXX deployment. To do this, SBA Gateway can be installed as its own Helm release, in its own namespace.

In hybrid deployments where Charging Function (CHF) is deployed in Kubernetes and connected to a bare metal ActiveMQ Gateway, you must ensure that the AMQP connector is enabled and that the transport.transformer-jms parameter is present. For example:

<transportConnector name="amqp-jms" uri="amqp://0.0.0.0:5672?maximumConnections=1000&amp;wireFormat.maxFrameSize=104857600&amp;transport.transformer=jms"/>

Note: This configuration is applied on the ActiveMQ Gateway.

Hybrid deployments of this type have the following characteristics:

High availability (HA) is achieved with a Kubernetes cluster at each site.
SBA Gateway (the CHF and associated Network CDR microservices, if required) are installed in the Kubernetes cluster.
At each site, the CHF is connected to the Traffic Routing Agent (TRA-RT) and ActiveMQ Gateway instances at that site.
A load-balancer or virtual IP address (VIP) is used for CHF connections to TRA-RT and ActiveMQ Gateway instances. The CHF can connect to multiple TRA-RT instances, but a load balancer or VIP is preferred, and the CHF requires a load balancer or VIP to connect to multiple ActiveMQ Gateway instances.

These characteristics might vary because of deployment-specific details.

Figure 1 shows an example of this type of deployment. Arrows show the direction of connection-establishment. For example, for the ActiveMQ Gateway, the CHF initiates the connection, but messages flow from the Charging Server to the ActiveMQ Gateway and the CHF.

Figure 1. SBA Gateway in a Hybrid Deployment

A Helm values file for installing SBA Gateway alone requires the following:

Topology information for describing sub-domains. (A placeholder in the following example.)
Disabling of non-SBA Gateway components. (Essentially deploying MATRIXX with nothing but SBA Gateway enabled.)
Configuration of Traffic Routing Agent (TRA RT/DR) and an ActiveMQ Gateway.

Note: The following configuration example installs MATRIXX with only SBA Gateway enabled. For more information about third-party software and other requirements, see the discussion about installing cloud native MATRIXX in MATRIXX Installation and Upgrade.

global:
 
  # Topology should be supplied as information about Sub Domains are requried
  topology: {}
  
  # Disable Storage that is not required
  storage:
    logging:
      # Should the Shared Logging Storage PVC and PV be created. These are only needed once per Namespace
      createPersistentVolumeClaim: false
      createPersistentVolume: false
    coredump:
      createPersistentVolumeClaim: false
      createPersistentVolume: false
    routingCacheCheckpoint:
      createPersistentVolumeClaim: false
      createPersistentVolume: false
 
# Don't create the Topology configuration
topology:
  config:
    create: false
 
# Disable the Engine, TRA and other components that are not required
engine:
  enabled: false
pricing-controller:
  enabled: false
tra:
  enabled: false
activemq:
  enabled: false
gateway-proxy:
  enabled: false
rsgateway:
  enabled: false
payment-service:
  enabled: false
event-streamer:
  enabled: false
notifier:
  enabled: false
snmp-exporter:
  enabled: false
matrixxbct:
  enabled: false
mymatrixx:
  enabled: false
 
 
# SBA 5GC CHF
sba-5gc-chf:
  enabled: true
  connections:
    # Connection to the TRA DR/RT
    tra:
      host: tra_host_name
    # Connection to the ActiveMQ Broker
    activemq:
      host: activemq_host_name

Install SBA Gateway in the matrixx-chf namespace from the MATRIXX Helm chart with a command similar to the following:

helm install helm_release_name matrixx/matrixx --version version --namespace matrixx-chf -f sba_values_file.yaml