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+Introduction
+============
+
+The goal of this project is to build an NFVI fault management and maintenance
+framework supporting high availability of the Network Services on top of the
+virtualized infrastructure. The key feature is immediate notification of
+unavailability of virtualized resources from VIM, to support failure recovery,
+or failure avoidance of VNFs running on them. Requirement survey and development
+of missing features in NFVI and VIM are in scope of this project in order to
+fulfil requirements for fault management and maintenance in NFV.
+
+The purpose of this requirement project is to clarify the necessary features of
+NFVI fault management, and maintenance, identify missing features in the current
+OpenSource implementations, provide a potential implementation architecture and
+plan, provide implementation guidelines in relevant upstream projects to realize
+those missing features, and define the VIM northbound interfaces necessary to
+perform the task of NFVI fault management, and maintenance in alignment with
+ETSI NFV [ENFV]_.
+
+Problem description
+-------------------
+
+A Virtualized Infrastructure Manager (VIM), e.g. OpenStack [OPSK]_, cannot
+detect certain Network Functions Virtualization Infrastructure (NFVI) faults.
+This feature is necessary to detect the faults and notify the Consumer in order
+to ensure the proper functioning of EPC VNFs like MME and S/P-GW.
+
+* EPC VNFs are often in active standby (ACT-STBY) configuration and need to
+ switch from STBY mode to ACT mode as soon as relevant faults are detected in
+ the active (ACT) VNF.
+
+* NFVI encompasses all elements building up the environment in which VNFs are
+ deployed, e.g., Physical Machines, Hypervisors, Storage, and Network elements.
+
+In addition, VIM, e.g. OpenStack, needs to receive maintenance instructions from
+the Consumer, i.e. the operator/administrator of the VNF.
+
+* Change the state of certain Physical Machines (PMs), e.g. empty the PM, so
+ that maintenance work can be performed at these machines.
+
+Note: Although fault management and maintenance are different operations in NFV,
+both are considered as part of this project as -- except for the trigger -- they
+share a very similar work and message flow. Hence, from implementation
+perspective, these two are kept together in the Doctor project because of this
+high degree of similarity.
+
+..
+ vim: set tabstop=4 expandtab textwidth=80: