The MME and SGSN now support the UDPC2 hardware. The maximum number of MME managers supported per chassis on ASR 5500 with DPC is 24, to support UDPC2 on ASR 5500 the maximum number of MME managers have been increased to 36.

The CLI command task facility mmemgr per-sesscard-density { high | normal } under the Global configuration mode is used to configure the density (number of MME managers) of MME managers per session card. The disadvantage of this command is it does not allow configuration of specific number of MME managers per card, but allows the operator to configure only high or normal density. This CLI is deprecated and new CLI commands are introduced to provide the operator with more flexibility to configure number of MME managers per active session cards (or per active session VM in case of VPC) and the total number of MME managers. The MME managers are now moved to Non-Demux card, therefore the number of managers depends on the number of session cards per chassis. The new CLI command enables the operator to spawn the maximum or desired number of MME managers even when the chassis is not fully loaded in the case of ASR 5K and ASR 5500 platforms. For VPC DI the operator can restrict max number of MME managers per chassis, if operator desires to scale with more session VMs without requiring additional MME managers.

In UDPC2, the number of Session Managers in ASR5500 is increased from 336 to 1008.

Note	The StarOS does not support an ASR5500 deployment with mixed usage of DPC and DPC2 cards. All session cards in one ASR5500 have to be of the same type.

Note	All product specific limits, capacity and performance, will remain same as compared to ASR5500 with DPC.

MME Scaling on DPC2 to 2xDPC

This feature enhancement provides improved CEPS (Call Events Per Second) and session capacity utilization for MME/SGSN on the ASR5500 DPC2 platform. It is observed that the current MME/SGSN deployments limit the maximum session/subscriber capacity utilization as the CPU reaches its maximum threshold for some proclets though sufficient memory is available in the system and in the proclet for additional sessions/subscribers. With this enhancement, the session utilization capacity is doubled (2X) on the ASR5500 DPC2 platform for a specific call model.

This feature has increased the limits for the following MME/SGSN specific proclets on ASR5500 DPC2 platform:

• The maximum number of MME managers per chassis has been increased to "48" on ASR5500 DPC2 platform.

• The maximum number of MME managers per Non-Demux card has been increased to "8" on ASR5500 DPC2 platform.

• The maximum number of IMSI managers per Demux card has been increased to "8" on ASR5500 DPC2 platform.

MMEMGR Scaling on DPC

In this feature enhancement, the load on the MME managers are distributed widely with the increase in the number of MME managers. This enhancement is most likely seen in a standalone MME deployment, where the difference in the usage of MME manager CPU and Session Manager CPU is apparent.

In previous releases, the number of MME managers for a platform is pre-defined and not configurable. The operator can now configure the desired number of MME managers defined for each platform. A new CLI command task facility mmemgrs max value is introduced to configure the number of MME managers. If the operator does not configure the desired number of MME managers, a default number of pre-defined MME managers will be configured on the chassis. The table below depicts the default and maximum number of MME managers per chassis for each platform:

In previous releases the number of MME managers for a session card could be configured based only on the density per session card/VM. With the introduction of the CLI command task facility mmemgr per-sesscard-count number the operator can now configure the number of MME Managers per session card. If the operator does not configure the desired number of MME managers per session card, a default number of MME managers will be spawned on the session card. The table below depicts the default and maximum number of MME managers configurable per session card for different platforms/cards:

Configuring the number of MME managers helps to scale the number of eNodeB connections.The maximum number of eNodeB connections supported by MME is 128K per ASR5500 chassis. Having more number of MME managers ensure better CPU utilization, load balancing across MME managers and improved message communication between Session managers and MME managers.

The following CLI command is deprecated from release 19.2 onwards. It was introduced in release 18.0 and is valid till release 19.0. When an operator using this configuration command upgrades to release 19.2, this CLI is mapped to a new CLI command task facility mmemgr per-sesscard-count count.

configure
     task facility mmemgr per-sesscard-density { high | normal }
     exit

This CLI command is deprecated as it does not allow the operator to configure the required number of MME managers per session card. This command only allows two predefined modes of either "high" or "normal" density.

New commands are introduced to provide more flexibility to the operator to configure required number of MME managers per session card and to configure the desired number of MME managers per chassis.

The following CLI command is introduced to configure the desired number of MME managers per session card:

configure
      task facility mmemgr per-sesscard-count count
      default task facility mmemgr per-sesscard-count
      exit

Notes:

Usage example:

Listed below is an example where 3 MME managers are configured per session card on an ASR5500 platform with DPC2 card:

task facility mmemgr per-sesscard-count 3

Listed below is an example where default number of MME managers configured per session card on an ASR5500 platform with DPC card:

default task facility mmemgr per-sesscard-count

The following CLI command is introduced configure desired number of MME managers per chassis:

configure
    task facility mmemgr max value
    default task facility mmemgr max
    exit

Notes:

Usage example:

Listed below is an example where 5 MME managers are configured per chassis on an ASR5500 platform with DPC2 card:

task facility mmemgr max 5

Listed below is an example where default number of MME managers configured per chassis on an ASR5500 platform with DPC card:

default task facility mmemgr max