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Root Cause Analysis and Service Impact Analysis Package
using IBM Tivoli Netcool
Abilitec’s Root Cause Analysis and Service Impact Analysis Package empowers users to customise their own solution based on their network and its idiosyncrasies. Our experience has shown us that every deployment of a network, especially a Next Generation Network behaves very differently. No matter what OSS vendors tell you, an out of the box Root Cause Analysis and Service Impact Analysis solution is not possible, but at least we can make it easier!
The Root Cause Analysis and Service Impact Analysis Package is built around the IBM Tivoli Netcool suite of products. The Root Cause Analysis Toolset allows the user to map logical, physical, and service relationships in the network and use this information to perform Root Cause and Service Impact analysis. This information can be updated in real time as and when the network behaviour changes.
The Root Cause Analysis Package is comprised of the following:
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1. Service and Network Topology Lookup Tables.
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2. User Friendly GUI for creating the Network Topology Lookup Tables and updating enrichment policies.
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3. Parent / Child relationship import GUI
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4. Event Filter GUI
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5. Enrichment Policies
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6. Parent Child Policy
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7. Service and Resilience Impact Policy
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8. Parent TT ID Population Policy
1. Service and Network Topology Tables
These tables map the logical, physical, and service relationships in the network. An example at a very basic level is the physical relationship between two interfaces cabled together which are mapped as follows:
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Interface 1
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Interface 2
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Sysname 1
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Interface ID 1
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Sysname 2
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Interface ID 2
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These tables are used by the enrichment policies to enrich events with relationship information. This means relationships can be mapped from both ends of the related elements which allows events that have been raised at different times to still be mapped into parent / child relationships. Other approaches such as the top down approach would miss events that weren’t presented at the same time.
2. User Friendly GUI for creating the Network Topology Lookup Tables
The User Friendly GUI is an API that simplifies and leads the user through the process of mapping the relationships in the network into useable lookup tables. The GUI then automatically updates the enrichment policies and adds the appropriate fields into the Netcool Object Server schema. Note population of the Service and Network Topology Lookup tables requires an interface/s from an inventory / fulfilment system.
3. Parent / Child Relationship Import GUI
This tool assists the user to map the actual event relationships into a reference table used by the parent / Child policy to create the Parent / Child relationships. For example this table will map that a link down event on router B is a child of a link down event on router A. Each event in the reference table has a parent column and a child column creating the chain for relationships that are several levels deep.
4. Event Filter GUI
The Event Filter GUI allows the user to create filters that Netcool uses to match events. For example “link down” will be the filter that netcool uses to identify the link down events in the above example.
5. Enrichment Policies
The enrichment policies use the information in the lookup tables to enrich the events in the Netcool Object Server with service, physical, and logical relationship information. This information is then used by the Parent / Child policy and the Service Impact policy.
6. Parent / Child Policy
The parent child policy searches for parent / children relationships and suppresses child alarms from the NOC operators views. Some parent / children relationships can be several levels deep and a chain is created between these events so that all children events are suppressed until the ultimate parent event is identified. The Network Filters and Parent / Child reference table are used to establish the parent / child relationship.
7. Service and Resilience Impact Policy
The service and impact policy assesses the services affected and the resilience impact of events flagged as the ultimate parent. Where an event has neither parents nor children it will be automatically flagged as the ultimate parent where it is assessed as service impacting, resilience impacting or requires any action from the NOC operators.
The lookup tables are referenced to establish whether an event is either potentially service impacting or resilience impacting or if it requires NOC action. It is the service and resilience impact policy that decides whether an Ultimate parent is actually service impacting and for which services by assessing the resilience available in the network.
The policy references the services on the equipment to see which resilience logic to apply. Resilience logic uses specific network knowledge and network naming conventions. The resilience logic is a customisation to the standard Root Cause Analysis package.
Finally the service and resilience impact policy can flag the ultimate parent for automatic trouble ticket (TT) generation. Only the ultimate parent would normally be flagged for automated TT generation.
8. Parent TT ID Population Policy
This policy populates the trouble ticket ID of the ultimate parent to all children events that have been suppressed as a result of the parent. The purpose is to provide the NOC with access to the original trouble ticket ID if a child is not cleared when the ultimate
Further information is available from the left hand menu.
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