Network Management by Woraphon Lilakiatsakun

Course details Midterm 30 % Final 40 % LAB 20 % Assignment 10 %

Books Network Management Fundamental – Alexander Clemm – Cisco press SNMP V3, Rmon1 and 2 – William Stallings

Definition of Network Management Network management refers to the activities, methods, procedures and tools that pertain to the operation, administration, maintenance, and provision of networked systems

Operation Operation deals with keeping the network (and the services that network provides) up and running smoothly It includes monitoring the network to spot problems ASAP before a user is affected

Administration Administration involves keeping track of resources in the network and how they are assigned It deals with all the “housekeeping “ that is necessary to keep things under control. – Monitoring – Documentation

Maintenance Maintenance is concerned with performing repairs and upgrades – When a line card must be replaced – When a router needs a new OS image with a patch – When a new switch should be added to the network It also involves corrective and preventive proactive measures – Adjusting device parameters as needed

Provisioning Provisioning is concerned with configuring resources in the network to support a given service. – Setting up the network so that a new customer can receive voice service

Related terminology Organization is the one who relates to network management function (as described) Network is the communication networks Network management system is the system to provide network management functions – Systems and applications / Activities and operational procedures – Manager/Agent

Important of Network Management (1) Not just work ! But it is needed carefully planning Let’s consider in term of service provider perspective – Who can operate the network at the lowest cost – Who provides better customer experience (minimal turnaround time) – Who can maintain and guarantee the highest QoS – Who can roll out services fast and efficiently

Important of Network Management (2) Similar factor to businesses that run their own networks – Cost saving in operating the network benefit the enterprise (Cost) – Fast turnaround time to deploy new services and high QoS can translate to competitive advantage (Quality and Revenue)

Cost One of the main goals of network management is to make operations more efficient and operator more productive Ultimate goal is to reduce and minimize TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) that is associated with the network

Total Cost of Ownership (1) Operational cost – Operating personnel – Electricity – Physical space – Operation support infrastructure Equipment cost – Amortized over several years

Total Cost of Ownership (2) Operating cost can be higher than the cost of amortizing the network equipment – May be a factor of 2 or more – After a few years, TCO will be dominated by operating cost Let ‘s consider – Operating cost 200,000 Baht/year – Equipment cost 300,000 Baht (amortized 100,000/year) – Efficiently operation can save 50,000 baht /year Make business more competitive

Total Cost of Ownership (2)

How to save operating cost (1) Network testing and troubleshooting tools – More quickly identify and isolate problems – Automating troubleshooting for routine problems enables personnel to focus on the really tough issues System that facilitate turn-up of service and automate provisioning – Reduce human error because most of steps required to enable a service for an end user can be completed by automating system

How to save operating cost (2) Performance reporting tool and bottleneck analysis – Allocate network resources to where they are needed most Minimize the required investment Maximize the “bang for the buck” Other ? – Reduce skill level of the network operators Reduce in investment in training and hiring

Quality Getting users have good experiences for using services. – Bandwidth – use efficiently – delay - minimize Service providers need to emphasize on – Reliability Traffic can go through steadily Services can run without any problems – Availability - working most of the time Redundancy (in case of equipments fail)

How to improve the quality (1) System for the end to end provisioning of a service automates many steps that be configured – More efficient (provide service faster) and less error prone / Misconfiguration (operators less involve) Misconfiguration can result in lower network service availability and reliability Hard to troubleshooting and slow to fix

How to improve the quality (2) Performance trend analysis – Help network managers detect potential network bottlenecks – Take preventive action before problems occur – Improve the level of service being delivered such as Bandwidth that is effectively available to users Delay that is introduced in the networks Alarm correlation capabilities – Faster identification of the root cause of observed failure Minimize time of actual outage

If quality is not met Lost revenue – Customers will change the operator Increased networking cost from inefficient utilization or network resources – More network equipments to support a certain level of service – More space is required for new equipments Higher operation cost – To fix the problems

Revenue (1) Open up market opportunities Service provisioning systems – Reduce turn on service time start from a service is ordered to a service actually turned up Increase capability of revenue generation and satisfying the user Augment a service offering management-related capabilities – Provide user to configure their service features over Web. – Attract more customers

Revenue (2) Make certain services possible – Some services need to operate at lower cost so the operation must be worked efficiently – Competition between ISP/Mobile phone provider

Players in Network Management space

The service provider The Service Provider – Telecommunication services - Telephone, voice mail – Data services - Leased line, Internet connectivity – Application services providers - ??? Running networks is the core of their business – The network management is really important to keep business alive Many communication services are being commoditized To win the marketplace – Turn up and roll out the services fastest – Offer best service level at lowest cost

The Enterprise IT Department (1) The Enterprise IT Department – In charge of running the network inside an enterprise Providing the enterprise with all its internal communication needs – Can be thought of as mini service provider but … – No generate income, it is a cost center – Focus on providing services at the lowest cost

The Enterprise IT Department (2) Only one customer: the enterprise – End users within the enterprise have no choice Not core business of the enterprise Enterprise IT departments are not regulated So, not much for investing in management applications and tools

The End User Refer to the persons who keep network running “Network Manager” whose roles might be the following – Network administrator – configure network devices / troubleshoot (remotely) – Craft Technician – fix problems (on site) – Help desk representatives – take user calls and support – Network planner – design the network, plan the topology

The Equipment Vendor Recently, capability to manage networking equipment is increasingly being recognized as competitive differentiator Management function is a part of system rather than out of box The equipment vendor can set high price for a special management function. In some cases, a management software might bundle with the equipment

Third-party Application Vendor Benefits – Multivendor support Flexible to networks that are using different vendors Drawbacks – Not own the equipment Some features can not be supported

The system Integrator For large enterprise, no one tool or application can do it all Provide services to integrate a set of management applications with a specific network and operations support environment

Challenges relating to network management systems Technical challenges Organization and operation challenges Business challenges

Technical challenges Application Characteristics Scale Cross-section of technologies Integration

Application characteristics (1) Transaction-based system characteristics (request- response) – Provisioning applications - it drives desired configurations down to network devices – To perform provisioning, a management system typically send requests to set of network elements and processes the responses returned from the network – To support dozens of different equipment types and technologies each App. Require a distinct set of parameters

Application characteristics (2) Provisioning System

Application characteristics (3) Interrupt driven system characteristics An important aspect is to keep track of the health of the network Alarm monitoring applications can receive and process such alarms, alerting the network manager to take action properly Real time app or near real time app It is not easy! to keep network operators up to date with the states of thousands of network devices

Application characteristics (4) Alarm monitoring

Application characteristics (5) Number-crunching system characteristics Network performance analysis – Identify bottlenecks – Assess whether service levels are being met – Evaluate utilization of network resources – Understanding traffic pattern – Analyze trends for planning future network rollout It requires – collecting large volumes of data – Large numbers of data points collected continuously over different period of time

Scale (1) Need to be carefully considered at the first place Operations concurrency – How to maximize concurrency in communication network element – Instead of sequential process – send a request/wait/ then send again, send several requests to network element at once

Scale (2) Pic 1-12 Impact of operations concurrency on Operations throughput

Scale (3) Event-propagation How to allow events to propagate efficiently to the system and update state After an event is received, the management app. has to – Quickly identify where it belongs – What its implication is – What else might be affected

Scale (4) Scoping – How to access and manipulate large chunks of management information efficiently and through single operation without the need for tedious incremental operations

Scale (5) Fig 1-13 Impact of bulk operations on management efficiency

Scale (6) Distribution and addressing – How to allow processing to be distributed across different systems – How to provide for location transparency and efficient addressing

Scale (7) Most network management providers claim that their management apps are scalable To be comparable, the following parameters are checked – Management operation throughput per time unit with stated assumption on the nature of operation / the number and complexity of parameters / the number of network element involved – Event throughput Per time unit, maximum throughput and sustained raw receipt of events – Network synchronization capacity How many network elements an application can synchronize with (retrieve information in a unit of time)

Cross-section technologies (1) Information Modeling – EX. Object-oriented analysis and design techniques such as Unified Modeling Language (UML) Databases – Ex. persistent storage such as to store configuration information with which to provision the network and services

Cross-section technologies (2) Distributed system – To meet requirement for scale as well as for reliability and availability, managing system need to be distributed – EX. Global management operations that can shift the main management load among operation center

Cross-section technologies (3) Communication protocols – Management apps have to communicate with other systems by management protocols – Thus, management protocols need to be well understood User Interfaces – Make operators performing their task efficiently – Also preventing operational errors

Cross-section technologies (4) Other consideration Specific requirements for various services might be taken into account – Ex. Management of a voice network and management of an optical transport network have many aspects in commons Topologies need to be displayed on a map Devices must be monitored for alarms – some aspects are completely different. Voice network requires management of the dial plan Optical network involve managing how optical links can carry different wavelengths Finally, understanding network provider’s workflow are required along with how the management system fits in the overall operation structure

Integration (1) A network management system might consist of – Different applications used to monitor a network and to provision services – Equipment from different vendors, each of which may come with its own software

Integration (2) Fig 1-15

Integration (3) Management integration

Organization and Operations challenge (1) Functional division of Tasks (1) – Network planning – topology /nodes/links – Network deployment - to install equipment – Network operation – to monitor the network for any problems, failures and issues with performance – Network maintenance and maintenance planning – to perform equipment and software upgrades provision services and tune network parameters

Organization and Operations challenge (2) Functional division of Tasks (2) – Workforce management - to manage maintenance and deployment personnel – Inventory management – to keep track of what is and what should be in the network and to maintain spare equipment – Order management – take orders for services from customers, dispatch requests to get the services provisioned and track their execution – Customer help desk – to provide level 1 support (take calls from customers, answer simple questions, direct customers to the proper person) – Billing and billing dispute resolution – to charge customers and collect revenue

Organization and Operations challenge (3) Geographical distribution – Support and manage globally Operation Procedures and contingency planning – Because a network provider need to ensure that the network is managed in an orderly fashion and must stay in control – Introducing comprehensive operational procedure and guidelines and documenting is an important tool. – This establishes a process that helps ensure that activities can be tracked in an orderly fashion – Documented guidelines ensure a consistent way of dealing with network management tasks and problems – Part of the operational procedures should deal with contingency planning What should be done when a virus outbreak inside the network or under denial of service attack

Business challenges (1) Placing a value on network management – ROI model is needed but it is hard to quantify – In term of equipment vendors, it is difficult to recoup investment in management application development than investment in networking feature development – In term of a service provider, the operational cost might actually exceed the cost of the equipment Good network management can save operational cost

Business challenges (2) Feature Vs Product – How to determine right level of investment (about management function) for the product – As a cost factor, the challenge is management apps. must be kept to the minimum investment but not jeopardize equipment sales – As a competitive differentiator, the challenge is how to show that business can be improved and competitive

Business challenges (3) Uneven competitive landscape (between 3 rd party and equipment vendor to develop management application) – Timing – 3 rd party management vendor tends to lag behind the equipment vendor – Economics – management software might be included in the product To be competitive,the 3 rd party should provide additional value such as support for multiple vendors – Customer expectation Economies of scale The area in favor of the management vendor – Ties management software with business process Ex. Billing software

Network Management Tools (1) Device Manager and craft terminal Network Analyzers Element Managers Management Platforms Collectors and Probes Intrusion Detection Systems Performance Analysis Systems

Network Management Tools (2) Alarm Management systems Trouble Ticket Systems Work Order Systems Workflow Management Systems and Workflow Engines Inventory System Service Provisioning Systems Service Order-Management Systems Billing System

Device Manager – ciscoview (1)

Device Manager – ciscoview (2)

Network Analyzer -MaaTech (1)

Network Analyzer -MaaTech (2)