un on commercial off-the-shelf hardware. Virtualization hit like a tidal wave right from the time of 4G networks. A lot of network elements in 4G networks have been virtualized deployed by operators across the world. Virtualization ushered in a lot of savings in terms of hardware costs that resulted in CapEx savings by decoupling the operating system from the hardware, but it brought with it software complexity. Now, operators had to keep in mind additional hypervisors that were used to onboard and manage these virtual functions. Most operators avoid vendor lock-ins, which would mean different network elements can be procured from different vendors. This, in turn, means that these different vendors may have varied preferences for hypervisors, and guest and host operating systems. Hence, the network becomes diverse and complicated to manage manually. Therefore, there arises the need for a robust automation framework to manage the life cycle of these virtualized functions. Cloud-native network functions were designed keeping automation in mind; hence, 5G networks are the best candidates for automation for life cycle management and deployment. Most of the network equipment vendors bring forth automated orchestration tools to deploy and orchestrate the network. There are also some generic orchestrators sold by many vendors, which solely manage on-premises and cloud deployments. There are also sophisticated tools for observability, wherein the entire network health is visible in a single pane of glass; this completely abstracts the complexity of the underlying technology. Hence, automation in 5G can be thought of as a beautiful veil that hides all the complexity behind it and makes the network appealing and manageable. All these network elements, whether physical, virtual, or cloud-native, are candidates for major and minor software upgrades, which can be a huge exercise given the sheer number of such network equipment that an operator might have. Hence, finishing such configuration updates quickly (by fitting them in