The Five Critical Areas Network Management Platforms Must Address The size, complexity and evolution of the networks have created lot of challenges for Network Management platforms. This paper explains the five key areas which a network management platform should address to meet the critical needs of a network operator. Inventory Management Network Management software should be able to either manually or automatically discover the critical infrastructure elements of the network. A centralized inventory repository that stores and manages all the physical and logical resources will act as a database for the entire Operations Support System (OSS), supporting order management, service activation, fault management and trouble ticketing. An inventory management solution should map all network assets and ensure fast, accurate service provisioning and fulfillment, regardless of service complexity. Managing current inventories of network resources and their capacities, down to a port, channel level and end-to-end deployed service delivery capacity will enable network operators to order and schedule resources to meet the expected demand. Real-time Monitoring Alarms from the network come with varying degrees of severities. Service providers need to know which alarms need to be fixed immediately and which alarms can be scheduled. In addition to the real-time collection of alarms, alarm management software should provide all the reporting and auditing information an operator needs as well, so that he / she can see exactly what has happened on the network. Real time monitoring of alarms keep the network healthy, by effectively monitoring, reporting, and providing a clear picture of network behavior and associated issues. These components also allow operator to address important alarms before they become urgent or critical and give all of the required information. Openness / Flexibility: A good management framework should be able to adapt and change quickly to service providers’ or OEMs’ evolving business requirements. An open framework that incorporates © NOCVue 2012
standards-based integration technologies such as JMS, XML, Web Services, SOAP, EAI, etc. will easily support the integration of well known 3rd party or commercial components like Remedy Trouble Ticketing, Tivoli Netcool, etc. Open/standard APIs enable faster integration and hence accelerate the time-to-market. In addition to supporting standard management protocols like SNMP, TL1, HTTP, FTP/sFTP/TFTP. Telnet/SSH, TR-069, etc., in order to communicate with the network elements, the management platform should be able to add new management protocols.
High-Availability (HA): Networks are quickly growing in size as new devices proliferate in the network environment. Additionally, more companies depend on their networks for their critical business needs. Fault-tolerant network management is needed to help ensure business continuity. A fault-tolerant and highly available network management environment should assess the critical network management functions that truly need to be highly available. Once these functions are identified, the HA solution can be: • Active/Active (Multiple Management servers take an active role in polling, provisioning or receiving alerts. There are “no” management system in an “idle” or a “waiting” state to “take over”), • Active/Passive (Multiple management servers exist, but only one is taking an Active role in polling, provisioning or receiving alerts. The standby or the passive system provides redundancy by coming online only when the primary system fails),
The Five Critical Areas Network Management Platforms Must Address
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Hot Standby (Primary and secondary systems operate simultaneously. Data is replicated to the secondary server in real time. Both systems contain identical information), Warm Standby (The secondary system runs autonomously from the primary system. Data is replicated at scheduled periods. Minor data differences exist between scheduled replications).
Scalability: The size and complexity of telecommunications networks and their continuing evolution have created interesting challenges for network managers and network management solution developers. So planning for 5 years or more is difficult as the need for more capacity, hardware & protocols increases or changes rapidly. However, an NMS platform must provide the ability to grow with the network. Network size, configuration and technologies keep changing. Hence a management system must be able to track and support this evolution in an incremental way without disrupting the service. NOCVue™ is an industry leader among Element Management System (EMS) and Network Management System (NMS) products. To learn more about NOCVue’s integrated EMS and NMS Framework that cover all of these critical areas, click here.
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