4) Increase the font size of below field
DWORD value “el_font_height” – Allows the user to set their preferred font height
Values can be in the range of decimal 8 to 72

5) Restart your Netcool Omnibus Event Conductor and Open an Event list

http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-3000/introduction-1?a=browse

Some more information if you would want to develop modules:

http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-3155

Further reading [Simple and good]:

http://www.vivaunix.com/howtos/www/publish/html/Solaris%2010/SNMP.html

To find where the mib directory is

Overview

1. Asynchronous uni-directional data flow [from Nagios SBI to Netcool] : In this method of integration, Netcool shall receive events  as forwarded, but shall not acknowledge the event back in Nagios. This is useful when Nagios is not used by operators for RT monitoring.
2. Synchronous bi-directional data flow: An event in Nagios will flow to Netcool and will be confirmed back in Nagios as recieved by Netcool. On every update on the event [such as journal entry, acknowledgements] the event in Netcool, status shall be updated in Nagios.

Either options work based on the business/solution requirements. So without further ado:

Implementation:

1. Asynchronous uni-directional data flow [from Nagios SBI to Netcool]

To understand the implementation, I shall divide the steps as southbound implementation and northbound implementation. Southbound implementation refers to the changes/configuration on Nagios end, and Northbound implementation refers to updates in Netcool.

Southbound updates [On Nagios];

a) Create a script to send tcp socket messages or snmp traps or direct JDBC insert to NBI.

You can use snmptrap command for writing the script, if you are not a SNMP guy you can use a simple script to do socket message communication/JDBC inserts into Objectserver. Test this script.

sample snmp script:

Send trap

# Arguments:

# $1 = Management Station

# $2 = Community String

# $3 = host_name

# $4 = service_description (Description of the service)

# $5 = return_code (An integer that determines the state

# of the service check, 0=OK, 1=WARNING, 2=CRITICAL,

# 3=UNKNOWN).

# $6 = plugin_output (A text string that should be used

# as the plugin output for the service check)

#

# Sample

# /usr/bin/snmptrap -v 2c -c $2 $1 ” NAGIOS-NOTIFY-MIB::nSvcEvent nSvcHostname s “$3″ nSvcDesc s “$4″ nSvcStateID i $5 nSvcOutput s “$6″

b) Define a global event handler in Nagios: Global event handler will help execute the script on every state change on Nagios instance and will communicate, failure and seizure of the problem. How to configure GEH: http://nagios.sourceforge.net/docs/2_0/eventhandlers.html

Northbound updates [On Netcool]

If SNMP:

a) Download the Nagios MIB and compile with MIB2Rules

http://sourceforge.net/projects/nagiosplug/files/nagiosmib/

b) Update the rules file and include it  in mttrapd main ruleset

If socket:

a) Update the socket probe to parse message based on delimiters

b) Ensure all mandatory objectsesrver fields are accounted for

If JDBC:

a) Ensure all mandatory objectsesrver fields are accounted for

b) **CAUTION** Watch the objectserver profiler for IDUC consumption, as this is not so much of a conventional approach

DID YOU CATCH THE HEADFAKE?

Nagios an Netcool were just examples, you can integrate most FM-FM/FM-PM solutions using the aforementioned procedure, you just need to know the NBI data model, SBI data model, right triggers on the SBI system and right listner on NBI system. Made your life easy, din’t I? So start saving your company some money now!!

In the next post, I will talk about method 2 {bidirectional data flow}. Keep visiting!!

LTE [Long term evolution] is the one of the proposed 4th generation radio access network technology and if all goes as planned the world will be wireless and with much higher data rate after a successful implementation. Recent tests on the field have been successful and all the  investments planned by US telecom market indicates that this is definitely going to be the future of access Networks. The main node of this network would be the eNodeB which would encompass the functional behavior of multiple nodes of our current network paradigm. The end goal architecturally is to have a flat architecture for 4G networks. End goal from user perspective is increased data rate and quality, along with reduced cost and access anytime/anywhere.

SAE [System Architecture Evolution] on the other hand will be the core for the 4G networks, is focused on a all IP, flat architecture, improved data rate and reduced CAPEX/OPEX expenditures. Evolved packet core [EPC] to which the eNodeB will connect, serves as the central functional unit of the core architecture.

Now, what does all of the above mean to Service and Network management  as it is known today to what it would become in the coming years of 4G networks. Will get to this in my next post. Stay tuned!

References:

http://www.radio-electronics.com/info/cellulartelecomms/lte-long-term-evolution/sae-system-architecture-evolution-network.php

“Self-configuring and self-optimizing network use cases and solutions: Release 9”; 3GPP TR 36.902; Sept, 2009

Groundworks 5.3 community edition is hosted on enterprise class application server/database, this came as a big relief after using Nagios which had some scalability issues. JBOSS and Mysql have given a good foundation to GroundWorks and provide some really nice Web 2.0 features like AJAX driven views/role driven dashboards etc… Furthermore GWS also provides some really cool reporting features. Note that the reporting functionality is for both realtime and historical information.

Hardware requirements for GWS are pretty straightforward i.e. 4 Gigs of RAM, 3 GHz CPU speed, 160 Gigs of harddrive, etc.. Net net – Nothing earthshaking.

What was really interesting is that GWS had a lot of plug ins incorporated, intuitive UI driven hostgroup/host setup, servicegroup/service setup, dependency control and service metric reporting features. This was a BIG plus and provided value of the shelf… For the existing Nagios users, GWS provides an seamless port over of existing functionality. Whats more is that installation took only 30 minutes!! Well do not confuse installation with ready solution — PLEASE. I am only referring to base solution.

If all of the aforementioned was not enough, the GWS solution provides a feature to discover  devices based on ping sweep and tcp layer discovery option as well; Auto discovery for free — Neat!!

So to summarize, GWS community edition turned out to be a very useful time investment due to following reasons:

1) Easy to install 20 minutes of initial setup

2) UI driven hostgroup/host/servicegroup/service/commands/dependencies

3) Historical and Realtime reporting features

4) Auto Discovery via ICMP protocol

5) AJAX driven role based views/dashboards

6) MySql archive

7) Checks for SNMP alarms [passive]

8 ) Active service checks [loads of them]

I would be interested to hear the feedback from others who have used enterprises edition on GWS BSM features provided in enterprise version of the solution.

Very often I come across clients where ignorant system administrators use the MIB2Rules tool to create *Production ready* rules file which are included in the MTTRAPD rules file. Over a period of time, as MIB’s are added to the queue of requests for additional Fault/Event management requests – the rules garbage piles on. As a result monitoring gets out of hand and Network operations starts complaining about the quality of alarming. The complains increase and the quality of the Product is challenged.

To these organizations/system administrators; I want to assert – STOP THE ABUSE!! MIB2RULES is not intended to be used assuming that every rules file generated is the best fit solution for the facility/infrastructure for which the MIB is compiled. By NO MEANS MIB2RULES SHOULD BE USED TO BYPASS THE EVENT ENGINEERING PROCESS.

Event engineering process is the only way to improve and maintain the quality of alarming and meet expectations of the Operations users. So that leads us to the question – What is event engineering?

Event engineering is an engineering process of defining the events, the symptoms associated, probable organizational impacts and intended audience. Furthermore, event engineering process defines the visual association like severity, escalation procedures and any related enrichment information which would help user to respond to the event, if required.

So this leads us to what constitutes of an event; in my perspective an event should minimum constitute of the following fields from fault reporting standards: ManagedObject, ProbableCause, SpecificProblem, Severity, AlertGroup, AlertKey, Manager, Agent and Summary.

At the system level events can be depicted with various lifecycle or escalation points using powerful tools like Impact; this is something that I highly encourage but do not mandate. What I do strongly recommend is the process of engineering events better!!

Following the aforementioned within 10 weeks, I have succeeded in taking experience of the end users from 2/10 to 7/10 when it comes to Service Assurance solution in place. No, it’s not a secret, its just pure old Network management practices which were followed even in early 90′s but were somehow killed by Vendors/Sales folks to show the value of the box. Check out any new vendor site you will find “8 hours to Event Management”; setup in a day sort of slogans which have taken the quality of entire landscape to be below par.

Irrespective of the tool, the fundamentals of instrumentation have never changed. D L Parnas in his famous paper – “RDP – Fake it!!” has talked about following the procedure as close as possible and with this post I recommend the very same principle for managing infrastructure, networks, services and customers with the same rigour and formality.

Bottomline: Tools don’t/should’nt change Strategy, Organizations, Principles- They just align with the aforementioned to achieve the common purpose. Something to think about!

For those of you who are not familiar with this topic, let me give a quick background. Most equipment vendors, provide MIBs/Off the shelf management modules to manage equipment from fault management/service assurance perspective based on standard TCP or UDP protocols like SNMP, TL1, Socket communication etc.  Various Telecom/Financial giants NMS teams debate the feasibility of managing huge number of events often millions in number in terms of volume per day; correlation/deduplication does reduce events to more actionable alarms but it does not solve reduce the actual root causes. So this leads us to a bigger question, what are root causes?

Does a NOC or Front office technician really care for Authentication failure alarms or those annoying informational and warning alarms provided off the shelf by vendor to “effectively manage the network”?

Following are the organizational factors to consider for effective event management:

1) The size and skills of the Layer 1 support NOC/Front Office: Ok, so if the Front Office is 4-5 guys, can they really handle 3000 critical alarms a day? Do they really need those trending alarms indicating that a T1 might be impacted in 4 hours or would they rather focus on the customer impacting outages? [I know that some would argue the very org. structure; but I will not try to influence business decisions which consider multiple dimensions of the picture, technology being one of them.]

The size of the team responsible for incident management is key for the fault management/service assurance team to ensure quality of alarming meets the expectations of the Organization.

2) The size & complexity of Application platform/Network: Size and complexity of the Application platform/Network plays an important role in defining alarms.

Example: For layer 1/core network – Technicians may want to know all trends to mitigate incidents from happening where as for layer2/layer3 network – Technicians may want only events indicating incidents impacting services.

Note: Understanding the network/applications from usage perspective helps immensely.

3) Customers & Services: Provisioned services and customer associations are important to the overall business objective. Understand them!

After understanding the aforementioned, you will know the organizational perspective and volume management perspective of events.

Now for the most important dimension of the debate on quality of alarming which constitutes of  accuracy, completeness and actionable alarms. Considering this factor, one might argue that only if we manage all identified alarms vs. whatever provided off the shelf – we can reach the goal of quality. Yes, i agree.

One the other hand, few might argue that by discarding unknown alarming we let some information which might impact services go unnoticed. Yes, i agree to this too. But the challenge is to balance these discards to the right level showing events which indicate right impact on the service.

That is why the challenge is not in getting the Right tool, its all using the tool Right!!