CNCF-hosted Co-located Events Europe 2025

Kubernetes and the cloud native paradigm is beneficial not for web services, but for telecom and networking workloads also. These telecom and networking workloads have more special requirements for the platform due to the nature of their functionality. One big area for these extra requirements is networking. The cloud native ecosystem responded to these needs with a couple of additions to Kubernetes, but these can not provide complete functionality without modifications in Kubernetes itself. In this panel leading experts in Kubernetes networking who are in the forefront of developing and providing these additional features will discuss what are the still missing features, how to find a balance between modifying Kubernetes and providing an add-on components, and what are the limitations of modifying Kubernetes.

The adoption of a mutualized Telco Cloud for hosting multiple network functions presents significant opportunities in terms of common tooling. We will present GitOps best practices in configuration management, and reliability for large-scale production environments.
Then how we the open-source project Sylva helps to implement GitOps for CNF and Kubernetes.

After this intro, we will show in a demo with a Oracle CNF, Sylva LCM based on FluxCD and ClusterAPI. The aim is to show how Gitops approach ease to manage NF and Cloud
1st step Deployment of the CNF
2nd Upgrade the Kubernetes Cluster with Gitops without impacting the NF
3rd NF configuration changes
Takeways :
The audience will leave with a comprehensive understanding of the challenges and opportunities in Telco cloud management, the role of GitOps.
The audience will have demo with materials released in open source.
We will open the door to the audience if they want deeper collaboration on Gitops adoption via Sylva

In this session we will introduce Kubenet, a community-driven initiative leveraging Kubernetes principles for automation and orchestration of networking systems (no CNI revolution). While Kubernetes has revolutionized container orchestration, its capabilities extend far beyond, offering powerful tools to automate and manage physical, virtual, and containerized Network Operating Systems (NOS). This talk will highlight how network engineers can leverage Kubernetes to simplify, standardize, and scale network automation.

We’ll discuss the motivations behind Kubenet, its architecture, and its practical applications in diverse networking scenarios such as datacenter networking, WAN, peering, campus networking, and cloud environments.

This session will also introduce open-source extensions developed by the Kubenet community, designed to tackle real-world networking challenges across Day-0, Day-1, and Day-2 operations.

As an operator, we are convinced that Kubernetes is the platform to build our infrastructure and run our B2B, wholesales and Telco services.

But how do we manage those ever-lasting VNFs, with all their networking constraints and performance requirements, in a Cloud Native way?
How do we isolate networks of our many B2B services of our many customers?
How can we provide each customer's CNFs with inter-connectivity and with the expected service exposition features ?
How do we ensure this UPF pod will automatically get its connectivity, without being too greedy with our nodes' NICs, while ensuring its security?

If you're also wondering how to tackle these challenges, you might be interested in the solution we intend to share with you.

The telecommunications industry is undergoing a transformative shift, driven by the need for scalable, cloud-native solutions that enable seamless integration of advanced network capabilities into modern applications. CAMARA, an open source project under the Linux Foundation, is addressing this challenge by standardizing APIs to simplify access to telco capabilities such as quality of service (QoS), device location, and identity management among others.
In this talk, Markus Kümmerle of Deutsche Telekom and chair of the CAMARA Outreach Committee, will provide an overview of how CAMARA is fostering collaboration between telcos, developers, and hyperscalers. Attendees will gain insights into the project’s mission and value in simplifying telco network complexity with APIs, and making the APIs available across telco networks and countries. Focus will be on cloud APIs, but also how cloud capabilities are used to implement APIs.
By reducing complexity and enabling interoperability across telco networks and countries, CAMARA is accelerating innovation, creating new revenue opportunities for telcos, and empowering developers to deliver next-generation applications. This session will inspire participants to join the growing CAMARA community, to use CAMARA APIs and contribute to shaping the future of telecommunications

Telecom networks, especially with 5G expansion, are major energy consumers. What if we could cut energy use and carbon emissions without compromising performance? In this session, we’ll show how Kubernetes and OpenSource tools can transform Radio Access Networks (RAN) into energy-efficient systems.

We’ll walk through deploying AI/ML pipelines to predict network traffic and optimize energy in real-time. Using Kubernetes for scalability, Prometheus and Grafana for monitoring, and open-source tools for automation, we’ll demonstrate how these technologies come together to tackle energy challenges.

The session ends with a live demo, starting with a RAN simulator, integrating AI workloads, and visualizing energy-saving results. You’ll see the power of OpenSource in action and leave with practical tips, reusable code, and a clear vision for making telecom networks more sustainable.

As part of Swisscom's cloud-native transformation, we developed the open-source NetBox Operator to bridge the gap between network management and Kubernetes. Leveraging the Kubernetes API, the NetBox operator enables users to adopt GitOps practices for IP address management.

The operator uses the same "claim" model found in Kubernetes – e.g. in the PersistentVolume Controller – to differentiate desired and observed states. The user only defines a high-level intent which the operator will process to reserve a resource, like IPs, in NetBox.

In this talk, we’ll demonstrate how the NetBox Operator simplifies the automation of MetalLB IP Address Pools, enabling zero-touch configuration for ingress networking in your Kubernetes clusters. We’ll also highlight advanced features like sticky IP assignments for power users. By simplifying resource management, the operator lets engineers focus on higher-level tasks, enhancing scalability and agility across infrastructures, including the 5G core.

Are you using GitOps to manage increasing numbers of Kubernetes clusters without going insane? Great!

GitOps is widely used to manage 1000s of Kubernetes resources in large numbers of clusters with numerous Kubernetes manifests in Git repositories. These are difficult to handle manually, requiring human approval of 100s of git pull requests.

Better GitOps automation is essential to manage Kubernetes workloads, especially towards 10s or 100s of thousands of Cloud-RAN far-edge clusters. Kubernetes-native automation with operators is well-supported but reconciling Kubernetes YAML manifests in Git repositories is a challenge. That is, until now! Let us introduce you to Porch, which simplifies this process significantly.

Porch allows human-machine collaboration on infrastructure/application configuration data stored in Git, transforming generic blueprints to fully specified deployable packages. This “hydration” process pioneered in Nephio is a novel approach to platform engineering.