r NFV solutions based on open stan- dards and software. And finally, promoting OPNFV as the preferred open reference platform. The initial scope of OPNFV is to provide NFV infrastructure (NFVI), virtualized infrastructure management (VIM), and APIs to other NFV elements, which together form the basic infrastructure required for virtualized network functions (VNFs) and management and network orchestration (MANO) components. 6.1 Open Source Initiatives The OPNFV project focuses on the NFVI layer: the NFVI and VIM layer. NFVI provides basic access to compute, storage, and network resource from the hypervisor and SDN. The VIM manages VNF images and deploys them in the virtualized environment. Dif- ferent from the previous open source projects, OPNFV collaborates closely with other open source projects. For VIM, its main upstream project is OpenStack. For its network controller and virtualization infrastructure, its main upstream is ODL. It uses KVM and Xen for the virtualization and hypervisor. Its data plane acceleration uses Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK), another open source project led by Intel. Its first release includes several projects, covering areas of automation, fault tolerance, carrier-grade performance improve- ments, and network management tools. The details and project outlines are shown in Figure 6.3. OPNFV works directly with upstream standards bodies such as European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and IETF. It also directly works with upstream open source projects, including ODL, OpenStack, KVM and Xen, and many others. It leverages existing codebases so that it can move to integration in a faster pace. It integrates existing open source components and identifies gaps to create new code. Finally, it provides a point of integration, testing, and performance optimization. Its main organization includes a Business Board and Technical Steering Committee (TSC) governance structure separates business decisions from meritocratic and technical decisions. The board is in charge of nontechni