With advancements in long-haul and broadband
technologies triggering an explosion in packet data traffic, service
providers have moved much of their data traffic onto more efficient
packet networks. They are now looking toward Voice over Internet
Protocol (VoIP) as a means to derive revenue from voice, but also other
multimedia services while providing a unified management console and
helping reduce OPEX.
GENBAND is a global leader of IP infrastructure solutions,
enabling service providers and enterprises around the world to evolve
communications networks through IP innovation. The company offers
market-leading switching, applications, networking and service
solutions, with products deployed in more than 600 customer networks
spanning more than 80 countries. GENBAND provides customers with
high-performance communication equipment (telephony, video, Internet,
and wireless services) to deliver secured quadruple-play and converged
services on IP networks.
Focusing on maximizing savings, increasing network simplicity and
providing new sources of revenue, GENBAND introduced the GENView
Manager, a best-in-class, unified operations, administration,
maintenance and provisioning system that provides operations support and
readiness, fulfillment, assurance and billing (OFAB, including
traditional FCAPS) functionality for network operators. Based on high
availability, highly scalable client/server environments, GENView
Manager provides the ease-of-use and scale required for even the largest
of network deployments.
This single unified interface for all the network elements means a
significant reduction in integration times and costs. The main
functional services with the GENBAND GENView Manager system include
fault processing, performance analysis, configuration management and
security management as well as a northbound interface to OSS systems. In
addition, network topology tools provide a good visibility into the
network issues for maintainability and problem resolution.
The system architecture is tiered providing aggregation of
GENBAND network elements for scaling purposes to meet larger network
requirements. GENView Manager has a backend server for data collection
and correlation logic, a front end to present the Graphical User
Interface and a database layer for persistence. GENView Manager operates
in a replicated high availability configuration to minimize service
outages or downtime, thereby protecting customer service-level metrics
and ensure service continuity. It can reside on ATCA blade in the
GENBAND GENiUS platform, or in a standalone Rack Mount Server, managed
from a different location within the service provider’s network.
GENBAND GENView Manager infrastructure uses a diverse set of
management protocols including standards such as SNMP and CORBA as well
as custom protocols. Fault processing includes business logic to
determine root-cause analysis. Alarm filtering and correlation is
performed to avoid duplicate faults. NOC operators can drill down from
an alarm to a graphical shelf level and view the chassis to see exactly
where and what is going on. Alarm resynchronization with network element
and OSS enable a reliable and robust fault capability.
Performance management performs the data collection and can
threshold at the network element and applications levels and generates
crossing alerts. Custom graphing and reporting can easily be
accomplished. Then performance data is aggregated to a northbound OSS
interface.
Configuration management allows NOC operators to control the
system by initiating configuration operations such as firmware upgrades,
patching, backup/restore, application management and high availability
settings.
GENBAND customers have high expectations around security and
GENView Manager treats it as an essential service and a key
differentiator. To harden its system, GENBAND typically secures
NMS-to-NE communications with protocols such as SSH, SFTP, IPsec and
SNMPv3 – depending on customer requirements. All communication:
southbound, northbound and between the GUI client server is secure via
SSL. GENView Manager uses a password encrypted single sign-on (SSO) to
ensure a seamless and solid operation to their authentication,
authorization and auditing (AAA) module. It can also be accessed
remotely via HTTPS. Authentication is achieved via a RADIUS-supported
central security server with configurable password-reset policies. The
central security server can also be integrated into the customer AAA
system using standard protocols such as Radius and LDAP. Authorization
is a simplified user and group management module that restricts views or
operations. Auditing records user operations on a per element basis.
Other GENBAND security measures include: pushing performance data
via secure FTP, hardening the OS, using restricted ports, conducting
periodic vulnerability scans, developing rules to better manage loads,
and enforcing rigorous backup/restore procedures to protect data from
being corrupted.
Another key component to the service provider’s environment is a
northbound interface that enables interoperability and unification into a
single-point management. To accomplish, GENBAND correlates data and
employs JMX (Java Management Extensions) as a means of a northbound
interface for faults, performance data and system configurations.
GENBAND, an innovative leader deployed in Tier 1 service
providers around the world, sets the standard with the unified
management system, GENView Manager, and is committed to responsiveness
and service to its customers.
Eric Wegner works for Zoho Corp, http://www.webnms.com
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