Alarm monitoring

Managing a modern heterogeneous network is a difficult challenge for operators. The new Fault Monitoring System makes things easier with a user-friendly GUI.

The system delivers a mechanism to integrate the alarm monitoring of a SNMP-capable device with standard MIBs directly or over any other Fault Access Module.

The Alarm Monitoring solution is a central surveillance system of Iskratel equipment with the possibility to integrate any other telecommunications (TK) or information technology (IT) equipment within the TCP/IP network. The complete solution consists of the FMS (Fault Monitoring System), the FAM (Fault Access Module) and the corresponding Professional Services.

Benefits

• QoS - Improving QoS by:
  • Centralized problem detection for the complete network,
  • Fast reaction to critical problems by instant actions (e-mail, SMS, etc. - service personality),
• Connectivity to third-party products
• Background graphics on maps together with text, lines, shapes objects for better topology representation,
• User Views - Possibility to create ”User Views“, which is the basis for user access to objects,
• Alarm Life Cycle support & user-supplied comments to alarms,
• Context-sensitive start of management applications,
• Alarm history collection for post-analysis,
• External OSS - Possibility to integrate alarms into external OSS system,
• Cascade binding - Avoid performance bottle-necks with cascade binding,
• Platform-independent client application with simple Java Web-start installation and automatic update check.

The FMS is an application of the Iskratel management system (SI3000 MNS), but it can be offered as a stand-alone Alarm Monitoring solution as well.
FMS supports the possibility to view the state of managed network elements on the realistic graphical map or as different types of tree-like views.
The system can also operate in a network under the surveillance of third-party vendor equipment as an umbrella surveillance system or trouble-ticketing system. It uses the standardized X.733-compliant SNMP proxy-agent. So it can provide the required data exchange with the upper-level OSS. The system mediates alarms to the external OSS application as an umbrella surveillance system or a trouble-ticketing system.

Functionalities of the FMS are:

• Alarm collection (receiving and logging the incoming SNMP alarm messages from network elements. Verifying the connection between the system and the network elements using the ICMP protocol),
• Accurate alarm reporting (automatic resynchronization in the case of a disturbed connection),
• Centralized alarm life-cycle support (an alarm can be acknowledged, unacknowledged, deleted or activated. With appropriate user rights any user-defined message can be attached to it. Any change of alarm state or user-defined message is updated on all GUIs that show the same alarm),
• Powerful alarm-filtering capabilities (easy-to-use basic and advanced presentation-filtering capabilities are available. They allow operators to effectively observe the context of interest),
• Built-in tools (the Ping and SNMP Console window provides a convenient interface for contacting and querying an arbitrary network element, a MIB browser can be used to),
• Integration of element-manager applications (the system enables a contextual start),
• Northbound SNMP proxy agent,
• Connectivity to third-party products (Most of the information technology (IT) products supporting the standards SNMPv2 and SNMPv1 MIB can be integrated directly (such as routers, switches, PCs, printers, etc.). In the case of a non-standard or non-supported protocol, the integration can be made with Fault Access Modules (FAMs), which can translate information into the appropriate SNMP traps)

The Fault Monitoring System (FMS) is used as a central surveillance system for Iskratel equipment in the first place, but it can become much more, with the possibility to integrate any other telecommunications (TK) or information technology (IT) equipment within the TCP/IP network. It can become the central surveillance system of the complete network within a certain region. This can be realized with the Fault Access Module (FAM).

The FAM is needed when the monitored equipment is not directly supported in the FMS. The FAM is an application that collects alarms and notifications from monitored equipment, mediates them into an FMS-recognizable form and sends them toward the FMS as SNMP taps. The FAM can be installed on the same HW platform as the FMS or as a distributed system on separated HW.

The functionalities of the FAM are:

• Alarm collection over SNMP or any other free-running message protocol, as well as alarm-picture reconstruction from a file if the equipment cannot send the alarm, but it stores the alarm information as a file,
• Resynchronization mechanism in the case of connectivity loss,
• Filtering mechanism to ignore unimportant alarms.

Our experts are well trained and experienced to ensure high-quality professional services.
Within the Alarming Solution the following professional services can be offered:

• Engineering and Consulting
• Integration of third-party products,
• Integration into external OSS,
• Installation,
• Customization.