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Unit 4Unit 4

Inventory Management Inventory Management ProcessProcess

OSS Essentials

by

Kornel Terplan

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The inventory management process

This process encompasses physical installation of the equipment and it’s administration

– installation and acceptance of equipment, with the physical configuration of the network, and handling of spare parts and the repair process

– Software upgrades, implementing IP-based services,

the number of managed objects is going to grow and so is the inventory

– Physical assets also include servers, access servers,

gateways, routers, and new connections

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The inventory management process

Principal tasks of this process are Installation and administration of the physical

network Performing work in the network Managing the repair activities Aligning inventory with network Managing spare parts Managing fault parts

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The service creation, planning and development process

This process encompasses the following functional areas– Designing technical capability to meet specified

market need at desired cost

– Ensuring that the service (product) can be properly installed, monitored, controlled, and billed

– Initiating appropriate processes and methods, modifications, as well as initiating required training to the appropriate personnel

contd..

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The service creation, planning and

development process

– Initiating any modifications to the underlying network or information systems to support the requirements

– Performing pre-service testing to confirm that the technical capability works & the system functions properly

– Ensuring that sufficient capacity is available to meet forecasted sales

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The service creation, planning and

development process

Total trend is towards the complete software based solutions of the services and support activities for ever changing network infrastructure needs, following are the principal functions

• Develop & implement technical solutions

• Develop & implement procedures

• Define & implement system changes (VPN, CNM etc..)

• Develop & implement training

• Develop customer documentation (plan, test, start-service etc..)

• Set product/service pricing

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The network planning and development process

This process encompasses development and acceptance of strategy, description of standard network configurations for operational use, and definition of rules for network planning, installation, and maintenance.

It is about the planning of boundary nodes, routes, and capacity. Many IP-based services & their multiple alternatives are available. Popular solutions are

- IP over ATM or IP over SONET/SDH

After topology is finalised, logical connections are expected to be provisioned along with backup / reserve capacity provisioning

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The network planning and development process

Special modelling tools are very useful to predict future performance under various load conditions.

These tools utilize what-if scenarios to emulate performance under various load conditions.

These tools depend on the protocols used. Many providers work with multiple tools. There are practically different tools for each service.

Using these tools a proper design of the logical network configuration is provided to the network provisioning process

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The network planning and development process

This process also deals with designing the network capability to meet a specified service need at the desired cost and for ensuring that the network can be properly installed, monitored, controlled, and billed.

The process is also responsible for ensuring that enough network capacity will be available to meet the forecasted demand.

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The network planning and development process

Principal functions are as follows :

Develop & implement procedures

Setup framework agreements

Develop new methods & architectures

Plan required network capacity

Issue orders to suppliers & other network operators

Plan the logical network configuration

Evaluate service metrics

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The service configuration process

This process encompasses the installation and/or configuration of services for specific customers, including the installation/ configuration of customer premises equipment.

Offering IP-based services, additional functions must be considered. In particular, firewalls, application services such as e-mail, Web hosting, and their configurations are

important.

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The network planning and development

process

Considering IP-based services, multiple alternatives for the implementation are available. Popular solutions are

– IP over ATM– IP over frame relay– IP over SONET/SDH

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The service configuration

Also the setting of parameters to support QoS and SLA requirements is important.

The more that can be automated, the better service providers do in the competitive market.

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The security management

Due to factors such as opening networks, connecting partners, and using a public domain such as the Internet security risks increase considerably.

Virtual private networks (VPNs) are one of the possible answers to combining existing infrastructure with acceptable protection.

Security management procedures are identical or at least very similar.

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The security management

Security management is in charge of protecting all systems solutions.

Process includes a planning and controlling function - In particular, three basic threats are considered:

loss of availability of services, loss of integrity, and loss of privacy.

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The service problem resolution process

Process encompasses isolating the root cause of service-affecting and non-service-affecting failures and acting to resolve them. Typically, failures affect multiple customers. Actions may include immediate reconfiguration or other corrective actions.

Aim is to understand the causes impacting service performance and to implement immediate fixes or initiate quality improvement efforts.

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The service quality management process

This process supports monitoring service or product quality on a service class basis in order to determine whether

Service levels are being met consistently There are any general problems with the service or

product The sale and use of the service is tracking to forecasts

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The service quality management process

This process also encompasses taking appropriate action to keep service levels within agreed targets for each service class and to either keep ahead of demand or alert the sales process to slow sales.

The aim is effective service-specific monitoring and to manage service levels to meet SLA commitments and standard commitments for the specific service.

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The network maintenance and restoration process

This process encompasses maintaining the operational quality of the network in accordance with required network performance goals.

Network maintenance activities can be– preventative-such as scheduled routine maintenance or– or corrective. Corrective maintenance can be in response to faults

or to indications that problems may be developing (proactive).

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Network Operational Management

Chapters 6.3.3-6.5.1

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6.3.3 Maintain Service Level Agreements

Surveys clearly show that the priority sequence of customer interest is as follows:

Availability of: 1) all components 2) application on the network 3) Availability of servers

Network RTT or delay Application response time during peak periods Availability of clients Server delay Mean application response time Client delay Median application response time Percentage of transactions completed within defined performance

levels

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6.3.3 Maintain Service Level Agreements: Availability

Availability percentage SA% is to indicate the time during which the contracted service at the respective access point (SAP) is operational

Other sources say: The outage length distribution is in special interest: specifically the question ”How long can a single outage be before it affects the customers’ operational ability and how often will outages this long or longer occur?”

Service availability always has three dimensions:

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6.3.3 Maintain Service Level Agreements: Time dimension

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6.3.3 Maintain Service Level Agreements: Site dimension

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6.3.3 Maintain Service Level Agreements: Functional dimension

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6.3.3 Maintain Service Level Agreements: All three in same picture

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6.3.3 Maintain Service Level Agreements

Usually SLA:s concentrate on time dimension only, locations are mentioned but only to define network boundaries

The functional dimension brings in the application layer, most important for customer

Before service providers were not forced to sign complex SLA’s. Due to liberalization, this is changing dramatically

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6.3.3 Maintain Service Level Agreements

Response time is the key metrics, although the definition varies

Usually the duration between sending the inquiry and receiving the full answer is considered as response time

This definition is better-suited definition for the working cycle of users

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6.3.3 Maintain Service Level Agreements

One of the big obstacles in implementing SLAs is the inability to create a solid baseline of data to quantify the historical performance of the service provider with various customers

This leads to difficulties in creating realistic and meaningful SLAs, expectations may be set unrealistcally high

SLAs of the past have failed due to their lack of accurate measurement data. It has been recorded manually an has often been unreliable

New monitoring tools have increased the quality and quantity of data available for SLA evaluation

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6.3.3 Maintain Service Level Agreements

Present measurement technology offers following alternatives: Monitors and packet analyzers Synthetic workload tools Application agents User of ARM MIBs

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6.3.3 Maintain Service Level Agreements

When evaluating products, many components must be factored in:

Customization needs Maintenance requirements Deployment of code Overhead of transmitting measurement data Load increase due to synthetic workload Reporting capabilities Capabilities to solve complex performance problems Capabilities to conduct root-cause analysis Combination with modeling tools Price of the tools

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6.3.3 Maintain Service Level Agreements

SLM Requires that multiple metrics are continuously supervised and measured. Depending on the contract, several reports are generated and distributed. Data sources include: Trouble tickets Alarm and security logs Performance metrics that have been measured by

various tools, described above

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6.3.3 Maintain Service Level Agreements

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6.3.3 Maintain Service Level Agreements

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Chapters 6.3.4-6.3.6

6.3.4 Monitor Available Capacity / Usage against Forecasted Sales

6.3.5 Initiate Service Improvements 6.3.6 Inform Sales on Constraints

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6.4 The Network Maintenance and Restoration Process

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6.3.5 Initiate Service Improvements

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6.4 The Network Maintenance and Restoration Process

This process encompasses maintaining the operational quality of the network in accordance with required network performance goals

Network maintenance activities can be preventative or corrective

Supervisory should be extended for IP-based services

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6.4 The Network Maintenance and Restoration Process

The principal tasks include Problem analysis, including testing, fig 6.20 Proactive recognition of problem trends Network quality maintenance and

restoration Maintenance of historic data of network

problems and performance

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6.4.1 Problem Analysis, Including Testing

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6.5 The Data Collection and Data Management Process

Principal tasks include Collection od usage data via call detail records (CDRs) and

IP detail records (IPDRs) Mediation on collected data Use of SS7 in collecting data Data warehousing for maintaining data Baselining and generating performance metrics for

reporting Maintaining trouble tickets in a database Providing notification on performance Initiating traffic metrics collection

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6.5.1 Collection of Usage Data via CDRs and IPDRs