EMC® Smarts®

Service Assurance Manager

7.2

Introduction
P/N 300-005-568
REV A01

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2 EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Introduction

 Contents

Preface ......................................................................................................................... 5

Chapter 1 Architectural Overview

Service Assurance Manager architecture ............................................................ 12
Service Assurance Manager ............................................................................ 13
Global Console .................................................................................................. 13
Integration with third-party applications ..................................................... 13
Service Assurance Failover System................................................................ 14
Service Assurance modules................................................................................... 15
EMC Smarts Business Impact Manager ........................................................ 15
EMC Smarts Report Manager......................................................................... 15
EMC Smarts Web Console .............................................................................. 15
EMC Smarts Business Dashboard.................................................................. 16

Chapter 2 Functional Overview

Service Assurance Manager features and functions.......................................... 18
Automatic topology and event consolidation .................................................... 19
Automatic topology abstraction ........................................................................... 20
The Global Console ................................................................................................ 21
Notification Log Console................................................................................. 21
Topology Browser Console ............................................................................. 22
Map Console...................................................................................................... 22
Summary View Console .................................................................................. 22
Status Table Console ........................................................................................ 23
Domain Manager Administration Console .................................................. 23
Global Manager Administration Console..................................................... 23
Service Assurance functions.................................................................................. 24
Notification severity......................................................................................... 24
Notification List ................................................................................................ 24
Tools ................................................................................................................... 25
Notification escalation ..................................................................................... 25
Audit log ............................................................................................................ 25
Containment...................................................................................................... 26
Security............................................................................................................... 26
Service Assurance module functions................................................................... 28
EMC Smarts Business Impact Manager functions....................................... 28
EMC Smarts Report Manager functions ....................................................... 28
EMC Smarts Business Dashboard functions ................................................ 30

EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Introduction 3

 Chapter 3 Implementation Scenarios
The challenges of network management ............................................................. 32
EMC Smarts solutions ............................................................................................ 33
Fast and accurate fault isolation ..................................................................... 33
Automated corrective actions ......................................................................... 33
Business focus.................................................................................................... 33
Integration.......................................................................................................... 33
Rapid deployment and low maintenance ..................................................... 34
Enterprise provider ................................................................................................. 35
Network service provider ...................................................................................... 38

Index .......................................................................................................................... 41

4 EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Introduction

 Preface

As part of an effort to improve and enhance the performance and capabilities of its product
lines, EMC periodically releases revisions of its hardware and software. Therefore, some
functions described in this document may not be supported by all versions of the software or
hardware currently in use. For the most up-to-date information on product features, refer to
your product release notes.
If a product does not function properly or does not function as described in this document,
please contact your EMC representative.
The Service Assurance Manager (Service Assurance) solution automatically
correlates topology and event data from multiple EMC Smarts managed domains to
diagnose root-cause problems and (with Business Impact Manager) the impact that
those problems have on business-critical processes and services. EMC Smarts
managed domains can include IP networks, systems, routing protocols, ATM/Frame
Relay, applications, and business entities. Service Assurance Manager enables
operations personnel to effectively prioritize their time and resources to maintain and
sustain the business-critical processes and services.
EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Introduction provides high-level architectural
and functional overviews of the EMC Smarts Service Assurance Management Suite
solution. It also provides several examples of implementation scenarios.

Audience This document is intended for operations staff, managers, and administrators who
are interested in automated Service Assurance solutions.

EMC Smarts Service In this document, the term BASEDIR represents the location where EMC Smarts
Assurance software is installed.
Management Suite
installation directory For UNIX, this location is: /opt/InCharge<n>/<productsuite>.
For Windows, this location is: C:\InCharge<n>\<productsuite>.
The <n> represents the software platform version number. The <productsuite>
represents the EMC Smarts product suite to which the product belongs. For example,
on UNIX operating systems, EMC Smarts Service Assurance Management Suite is, by
default, installed to /opt/InCharge7/SAM/smarts. On Windows operating systems,
this product is, by default, installed to: C:\InCharge7\SAM\smarts. This location is
referred to as BASEDIR/smarts.
Optionally, you can specify the root of BASEDIR to be something other than
/opt/InCharge7 (on UNIX) or C:\InCharge7 (on Windows), but you cannot change
the <productsuite> location under the root directory.
For more information about the directory structure of EMC Smarts software, refer to
the EMC Smarts System Administration Guide.

EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Introduction 5

Preface

EMC Smarts Service The EMC Smarts Service Assurance Management Suite includes the following
Assurance products:
Management Suite
◆ Service Assurance Manager (Global Manager), includes Business Impact
Manager (BIM) and Failover System
◆ Global Console
◆ Business Dashboard
◆ SAM Native Adapters:
• Service Assurance Manager Notification Adapters (E-Mail Notifier Adapter,
Script Notifier Adapter, SNMP Trap Notifier Adapter, Log File Notifier
Adapter)
• Adapter Platform (Adapter Platform server, Syslog Adapter, SNMP Trap
Adapter, sm_ems command-line interface)
• XML Adapter

Related In addition to this document, EMC Corporation provides a Help system for
documentation command line programs as well as product documentation.

Help for command line programs

Descriptions of command line programs are available as HTML pages. The
index.html file, which provides an index to the various commands, is located in the
BASEDIR/smarts/doc/html/usage directory.

EMC Smarts documentation

Readers of this guide may find the following related documentation helpful. It can be
found in the BASEDIR/smarts/doc/pdf directory.

Note: These documents are updated periodically. Electronic versions of the updated manuals
are available on the Powerlink website:
http://Powerlink.EMC.com.

◆ EMC Smarts Documentation Catalog

◆ EMC Smarts System Administration Guide
◆ EMC Smarts ICIM Reference
◆ EMC Smarts Common Information Model Infrastructure Models Chart
◆ EMC Smarts Common Information Model Application⁄Business Models Chart
◆ EMC Smarts ASL Reference Guide
◆ EMC Smarts Perl Reference Guide
◆ EMC Smarts Dynamic Modeling Tutorial
◆ EMC Smarts MODEL Reference Guide

EMC Smarts Business The following documents are relevant to users of the EMC Smarts Service Assurance
Impact Manager User Management Suite:
Guide documentation
◆ EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Introduction
◆ EMC Smarts Service Assurance Management Suite Deployment Guide
◆ EMC Smarts Service Assurance Management Suite Installation Guide
◆ EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Operator Guide
◆ EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Configuration Guide

6 EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Introduction

 Preface

◆ EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Dashboard Configuration Guide

◆ EMC Smarts Business Impact Manager User Guide
◆ EMC Smarts Report Manager User Guide
◆ EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Failover System User Guide
Refer to the EMC Smarts Documentation Catalog for documentation resources provided
with other EMC Smarts product suites.

Suggestions for You may search across multiple PDF files using the Adobe Reader software.
searching PDF files
1. If the documentation is not accessible to all users of the EMC Smarts product
suite, copy the contents of the BASEDIR/smarts/doc/pdf directory to a central
location, such as a shared drive on your LAN, that operators and others may
view.
2. To search throughout the documentation library, open the Acrobat Reader
software.
a. Choose Edit > Search, and enter a word or phrase.
b. Select All PDF Documents in, in the Where would you like to search option,
and type the pathname of the location where the PDF documents reside.
If you have more than one EMC Smarts product suite installed, you can set up
cross-product document searches by copying files from the
BASEDIR/smarts/doc/pdf directory for each product suite into this common
documentation directory path.

Conventions used in EMC uses the following conventions for notes and cautions.
this document
Note: A note presents information that is important, but not hazard-related.

! IMPORTANT
An important notice contains information essential to the operation of the
software.

! CAUTION
A caution contains information essential to avoid data loss or damage to the system
or equipment. The caution may apply to hardware or software.

EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Introduction 7

Preface

Typographical conventions
EMC uses the following conventions in this guide:
Normal font In running text:
• Interface elements (for example, button names, dialog box names) outside of
procedures
• Items that the user selects outside of procedures
• Java classes and interface names
• Names of resources, attributes, pools, Boolean expressions, buttons, DQL
statements, keywords, clauses, environment variables, filenames, functions, menu
names, utilities
• Pathnames, URLs, filenames, directory names, computer names, links, groups,
service keys, file systems, environment variables (for example, command line and
text), notifications
Bold In procedures:
• Names of dialog boxes, buttons, icons, menus, fields, and maps
• Selections from the user interface, including menu items, and field entries
• Key names
• Window names
• Code examples
• Commands
• User interface tabs
Italic Used for:
• Full publications titles referenced in text
In procedures:
• Directory paths
• Filenames
• Scripts
• Important/unique words
• URLs
• Utilities
• Variables
Courier Used for:
• System output
• User entry
<> Angle brackets used to enclose parameter or variable values supplied by the user.
[] Square brackets used to indicate optional values.
| Vertical bar used to indicate alternate selections. The bar means “or”.
{} Braces used to indicate content that you must specify (that is, x or y or z).
... Ellipses used to indicate nonessential information omitted from the example.
% Used to indicate a C shell prompt.
# Used to indicate a C shell superuser prompt.
▼▲ Used to indicate a command is wrapped over one or more lines. The command must
be typed as one line.

Pathname conventions
Directory pathnames are shown with forward slashes (/). Users of the Windows
operating systems should substitute back slashes (\) for forward slashes.

Graphical conventions
If there are figures illustrating consoles in this document, they represent the consoles
as they appear in Windows. Under UNIX, the consoles appear with slight differences.
For example, in views that display items in a tree hierarchy such as the Topology
Browser, a plus sign appears for Windows and an open circle displays for UNIX.

8 EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Introduction

 Preface

Smarts Manager
Unless otherwise specified, the term Smarts Manager is used to refer to EMC Smarts
programs such as Domain Managers, Global Managers, and adapters.

Where to get help EMC support, product, and licensing information can be obtained as follows.
Product information — For documentation, release notes, software updates, or for
information about EMC products, licensing, and service, go to the EMC Powerlink™
website (registration required) at:
http://Powerlink.EMC.com

Technical support — For technical support, go to EMC Customer Service on

Powerlink. To open a service request through Powerlink, you must have a valid
support agreement. Please contact your EMC sales representative for details about
obtaining a valid support agreement or to answer any questions about your account.
Sales and customer service contacts — For the list of EMC sales locations, please
access the EMC home page at:
http://EMC.com/contact

EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Introduction 9

Preface

10 EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Introduction

 1

Architectural
Overview

This chapter provides an architectural overview of EMC® Smarts® Service Assurance

Manager (Service Assurance), the Service Assurance Manager adapters, and the
Service Assurance modules (EMC Smarts Business Impact Manager, Report
Manager, Global Console, and Business Dashboard) that can be implemented to
extend the capabilities of Service Assurance.
EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager is a full-featured, open solution for
managing the technology infrastructure that supports business services. As the
cornerstone of network operations management, it provides integrated, unified, and
individualized views of the systems, network infrastructure, applications, and
business entities that comprise the managed domain.
Service Assurance imports topology and event information from the underlying
managed domains (distributed management applications), consolidates the
information, and interprets problems in the context of their impact on business
services. Service Assurance provides operations personnel with meaningful
information with which automated corrective actions can be associated.
The Service Assurance modules provide the capabilities to calculate the business
impact of infrastructure problems, to produce a wide variety of operational and
management reports, and to display customer-specific information to a given
enterprise or service provider customer through a secure channel.
This chapter contains the following information:
◆ Service Assurance Manager architecture.................................................................... 12
◆ Service Assurance modules .......................................................................................... 15

Architectural Overview 11
Architectural Overview

Service Assurance Manager architecture

Figure 1 illustrates the overall architecture of the EMC Smarts® Service Assurance
Manager and its adapters and modules.

Global Consoles

InCharge Business
InCharge Impact Manager
InCharge Service
Business Dashboard Assurance
Manager InCharge Report
Manager

ICIM Information

InCharge Service InCharge IP InCharge

InCharge ATM/Frame
Assurance Manager Performance and Application Services
Relay Manager
Adapters Availability Manager Manager Editions

3rd Party
Applications

Figure 1 EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager architecture

EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager abstracts topology information and

cross-correlates and consolidates event information from distributed EMC Smarts
applications and third-party applications. Note that the EMC Smarts applications are
responsible for discovering and monitoring infrastructure elements, and correlating
event information within their respective managed domains.
Service Assurance, other EMC Smarts applications, and/or third-party applications
communicate by way of a shared Information Bus that employs the ICIM Common
Information Model (ICIM). Once Service Assurance abstracts high-level views of the
distributed topologies from the underlying applications, it correlates, consolidates,
and integrates event information collected from the applications, and enriches the
event information with the severity of the events.
Event information (for example, root-cause problems and their impacts and
severities) are displayed in the Notification Log Console, Topology Browser Console,
Map Console, and/or Summary View Console. From these consoles, operations
personnel can invoke diagnostic or corrective tools, store the information for
management and operations reports, and send the information to third-party
applications.

12 EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Introduction

 Architectural Overview

Service Assurance Manager

The Service Assurance Manager, also referred to as the Global Manager, is the Service
Assurance component that serves as the central point for monitoring and managing
your entire technology infrastructure by obtaining data from multiple distributed
domains. The Global Manager communicates with the underlying distributed
EMC Smarts applications and abstracts and consolidates:
◆ Network, system, application, and business resources
◆ Results of domain-specific root-cause analysis
◆ Results of domain-specific impact analysis
The Global Manager scales to large topologies because it maintains a high-level,
abstract representation of the topology. The detailed topology information—and
therefore the bulk of the data—is kept in other EMC Smarts applications. When
needed, the Global Manager retrieves detailed information from the underlying
domains.
The Global Manager can attach to multiple, distributed EMC Smarts applications as
well as other Global Managers. It can also be integrated with third-party applications
from which it can receive topology and event information, and to which it can send
event information or initiate corrective actions.
The Global Manager, in conjunction with Report Manager, sorts and stores
event-related information in an ODBC-compliant database from which users can
produce a variety of management, operations, and business impact reports.

Global Console
EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager includes a user interface that provides
different views into EMC Smarts-managed domains.
The Global Console displays topology and notifications as well as summary,
containment, and status information. EMC Smarts operators use the Global Console
to monitor EMC Smarts domains, acquire detailed information (on demand) about
topology and events, respond to problems, and take corrective action. EMC Smarts
administrators with appropriate privileges and access control can use the Global
Console to discover topology, and administer underlying domains, as well as
administer EMC Smarts users, user profiles, program tools, and escalation policies.
The Global Console runs as a standalone Java program.

Integration with third-party applications

Since EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager is an open solution, it is possible to
integrate Service Assurance with third-party applications and other EMC Smarts
applications by way of Service Assurance Manager (SAM) adapters (See Figure 2.)
The EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Adapter Platform, which normalizes
data in accordance with the EMC Smarts ICIM Common Information Model (ICIM),
enables the importation or exportation of topology and event information. The
topology information is stored in the repository of the Global Manager. As event data
is forwarded to Service Assurance through the adapters, the system correlates the
third-party event data with the corresponding elements in the Global Manager’s
repository.

Service Assurance Manager architecture 13

Architectural Overview

SAM adapters also enable EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager to forward event
information to third-party applications, such as trouble ticketing systems.

Program
Tools

Global
Console

InCharge
Service Assurance
Manager

ICIM Information

InCharge Service
Assurance Manager
Adapters

3rd Party
Data Sources

Figure 2 Integration with third-party applications

Service Assurance Failover System

To maintain critical availability, EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager can be
implemented with a failover system. The EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager
Failover System ensures that the managed environment continues to be monitored
when the primary Global Manager becomes unavailable because of a hardware
failure or system malfunction. Redundancy is provided by a secondary Global
Manager that serves as a backup to the primary Global Manager. The Failover
System, which is configured to match the primary system, monitors the primary
Global Manager. The Failover System periodically copies the repository file to the
secondary Global Manager, thus preserving important topology and configuration
information.
If a failure occurs, the secondary Global Manager automatically starts. The secondary
Global Manager registers with the EMC Smarts Broker using the name of the primary
Global Manager. Clients of the primary Global Manager (such as the Global Console
and adapters) that become disconnected can reconnect to the secondary Global
Manager.
When the primary Global Manager is again available to monitor the managed
environment, a reset script copies the backup repository to the primary Global
Manager, shuts down the secondary Global Manager, and restarts the primary Global
Manager.

14 EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Introduction

 Architectural Overview

Service Assurance modules

Several modules can be implemented with EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager
to extend Service Assurance’s capabilities. These include:
◆ EMC Smarts Business Impact Manager
◆ EMC Smarts Report Manager
◆ EMC Smarts Web Console
◆ EMC Smarts Business Dashboard

EMC Smarts Business Impact Manager

EMC Smarts Business Impact Manager (Business Impact Manager) extends the
capabilities of Service Assurance to analyze events by calculating the business impact
of events and propagating the impacts to affected business entities as discrete
notifications that are linked to topology within the managed domain. The impacts are
displayed in the Business Services Maps.
To accomplish its functions, Business Impact Manager includes facilities to import
business entities, which consist of subscribers and service offerings. Subscriber
information may include customers as well as organizations, business units, lines of
business, and department entities. Service offerings include business processes. For
example, a subscriber can be a customer that subscribes to an IT service offering that
provides Internet access.
The imported business information can be also assigned to user-specified groups.
Additionally, Business Impact Manager provides facilities to assign weights to
business entities and other elements in your topology. The weights capability allows
you to prioritize critical topology and to use the prioritized information when
calculating the business impact of events.

EMC Smarts Report Manager

EMC Smarts Report Manager (Report Manager), which includes a Structured Query
Language (SQL) Data Interface, extracts notifications from Service Assurance, passes
them to an Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) driver, and stores the notification
information in a relational database. The database uses a special database schema
designed for EMC Smarts notifications.
Notification information can then be extracted from the database and imported into
Crystal Enterprise Reports or some other user-selected report application.
The Report Manager includes predefined report files (in Crystal format) that can be
used to display or print a wide variety of operational, management, and business
impact reports.

EMC Smarts Web Console

The contents of the Global Console can also be displayed as a Java applet within a
web browser. The Web Console capability allows you to connect to an Domain
Manager from any system with a web browser and does not require a Global Console
installation on the system.

Service Assurance modules 15

Architectural Overview

EMC Smarts Business Dashboard

The EMC Smarts Business Dashboard (Business Dashboard) is a flexible,
business-oriented alternative to the Web Console. The Business Dashboard displays a
collection of EMC Smarts analysis data along side important data from other sources.
Each component of the collection of EMC Smarts data is referred to as an
EMC Smarts ViewletTM. The collection of viewlets can be loaded into your
organization’s web page and can commingle with important trouble-ticketing
information or your company’s intranet news. EMC Smarts viewlets can also be
embedded within a third-party Web Portal product.
Figure 3 illustrates the architecture of a Web Console and an EMC Smarts Business
Dashboard when loaded by a remote user.

Global Consoles

Host

Web Console
Remote User
Host
Web Browsers
GLOBAL
MANAGER Host

Business Dashboard
Remote User

Figure 3 EMC Smarts Business Impact Manager architecture

16 EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Introduction

 2

Functional Overview

This chapter provides a functional overview of EMC Smarts Service Assurance

Manager and the Service Assurance modules (EMC Smarts Business Impact
Manager, Report Manager, Web Console, and Business Dashboard) that can be
implemented to extend the functionality of Service Assurance Manager. This chapter
contains the following information:
◆ Service Assurance Manager features and functions ................................................. 18
◆ Automatic topology and event consolidation............................................................ 19
◆ Automatic topology abstraction .................................................................................. 20
◆ The Global Console........................................................................................................ 21
◆ Service Assurance functions ......................................................................................... 24
◆ Service Assurance module functions .......................................................................... 28

Functional Overview 17
Functional Overview

Service Assurance Manager features and functions

EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager provides the automated functions and
features that are required by today’s enterprise and service provider network
operations centers. Indeed, its automation, intelligent analyses, and adaptability can
significantly reduce both the resources needed for pinpointing and resolving
infrastructure problems, and the costs of monitoring and managing distributed
networks.

18 EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Introduction

 Functional Overview

Automatic topology and event consolidation

One of the primary tasks of EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager is topology and
event consolidation. Service Assurance imports infrastructure elements (such as hosts
and routers) and applications from each underlying managed domain. As it imports
the elements, it consolidates elements that are reported by different sources. Service
Assurance also imports the relationships between the elements from the underlying
managed domains. Using these relationships and overlapping devices, Service
Assurance accurately pieces together a complete topology of the managed
environment.
When Service Assurance imports events from the underlying managed domain, they
are automatically associated with the elements to which they apply. Notifications
received from multiple sources are consolidated into single events. Similarly, impacts
reported by different sources for the same problem are deduplicated and associated
with the consolidated event in Service Assurance.
Further, to provide business context, EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager
provides a facility that imports customer and service information from provisioning
systems and other sources. Using this data, Service Assurance can automatically
calculate the customer and service impact for the consolidated events.

Automatic topology and event consolidation 19

Functional Overview

Automatic topology abstraction

In order to scale to large numbers of underlying systems, EMC Smarts Service
Assurance Manager performs topology abstraction. Figure 4 illustrates the difference
between a detailed representation and an abstracted representation of network
connectivity.

ConnectedVia
IP IP Network
ConnectedVia/ IP Network
ConnectedSystems

Underlying

Router

ConnectedVia
Interface Cable

ConnectedVia
Cable
ComposedOf

Router

Figure 4 Detailed vs. abstracted representation

Abstraction produces a coarse level of topology detail. A system, for example, is

viewed as a single entity rather than as a collection of its components, and
connectivity is between systems as opposed to between components in the system.
Although Service Assurance maintains a coarse level of topology detail, it stores
sufficient information for its varied Notification Log, Topology Browser, and Map
views. When needed, detailed information can be automatically retrieved from the
underlying applications by Service Assurance.

20 EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Introduction

 Functional Overview

The Global Console

The Global Console provides a focal point through which operations personnel can
monitor and manage distributed systems and EMC Smarts administrators can
configure and administer Domain Managers. EMC Smarts administrators control the
views, program tools, and access to console operations for EMC Smarts users. The
following describes the full functionality of each console. Certain functions require a
license and thus may not be included in your EMC Smarts deployment. Also, an
EMC Smarts user’s access to some console operations may be restricted based on the
user’s connection privileges and user profile.
For any given event, operations personnel with appropriate access control can take
ownership of the event, acknowledge the event, add comments to the audit log of the
event, or invoke tools for corrective actions.
The Global Console provides the following console views:
◆ Notification Log Console
◆ Topology Browser Console
◆ Map Console
◆ Summary View Console
◆ Status Table Console
◆ Domain Manager Administration Console
◆ Global Manager Administration Console

Notification Log Console

The Notification Log Console provides a view of a set of notifications, which is
defined by the user profile associated with the user. The notification information can
include, for example, the type of event, the element that is affected, and the severity
of the event. Operations personnel can potentially open multiple Notification Log
Consoles, each customized to display different events, or show multiple lists in a
single console, as needed.
Operations personnel can also potentially access the details of the event through the
use of the Notification Properties dialog box. The Notification Properties dialog box
provides detailed information about a selected notification. The properties include,
for example, attributes and values related to this event, elements that are impacted by
this event, an audit log of changes in this event’s history, or (if this event is a
root-cause problem) other events used in the analysis.
The viewable attributes of the displayed events in the Notification Log view (event
severity, active event, or first notify, for example) can be customized to meet the needs
or preferences of operations personnel. The order in which the attributes are
displayed can also be modified. Operations personnel can sort on any number of
attributes (whether the attribute column is visible or not) by specifying up to five
sorting columns.
The notifications listed in the Notification Log view are color-coded in accordance
with the severity of the events. An icon is also used as another indicator of an event’s
severity.

The Global Console 21

Functional Overview

Topology Browser Console

The Topology Browser Console enables operations personnel to display the managed
topology in a tree format and traverse the topology. The console displays Domain
Managers as well as Global Managers. For the selected managed domain, the console
displays the classes of elements, instances of each class, and their relationships.
Specified elements, indicated by a plus sign on Windows systems or a circle (on
UNIX systems), can be expanded into instances, properties, or relationships.
When an element in the topology tree is selected, the console displays a
corresponding property sheet with tabs for Attributes, Events, and Groups. The tabs,
where applicable, include the following information:
◆ Attributes — Provides general information about the selected element
◆ Events — For a selected Global Manager, displays the active events that Service
Assurance may notify for the element
◆ Groups — Provides the current group membership of the element
In addition, the Topology Browser Console provides the Browse Detail menu option.
When an element in the topology tree is selected, Browse Detail displays a list of all
underlying managed domains that contain that element in their topology. Users can
select an underlying managed domain and display it in another Topology Browser
view. For hierarchical Service Assurance deployments, users can select Browse Detail
as many times as necessary to navigate to the desired domain. Note that Browse
Detail is also available for selected notifications in the Notification Log Console and
for selected map icons and edges in the Map Console.

Map Console
The Map Console displays, by way of icons and edges, the managed elements in a
given environment and the relationships between them. Different types of maps are
made available based upon the elements in your managed topology. For example,
with EMC Smarts IP Availability Manager, the console displays infrastructure
elements in network and connectivity maps. With the addition of Business Impact
Manager, the console can also display business services maps that show how the
infrastructure elements are associated with business services, as well as the customers
that subscribe to those services.
Operations personnel can select elements in the maps and then display detailed
information about the elements, such as the ports and/or interfaces contained in a
system.
If the status of a given element displayed in the Map Console indicates a problem,
operations personnel can view the audit logs of events by way of the Notification
Properties dialog box. They can also select and use tools such as on-demand pings
and Telnet sessions.
The maps can be customized to meet your needs and/or preferences. For example,
custom backgrounds and element icons can be incorporated into the maps.

Summary View Console

The Summary View Console provides overviews or summaries of notifications. The
console can contain several summaries that are attached to either the same managed
domain or to different domains.

22 EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Introduction

 Functional Overview

Summaries offer concise, graphical representations of sets of notifications associated

with groups of elements. The summary can be depicted as a three-dimensional graph
or pie chart. The summary counts indicate the percentages of elements in the group
with active events.
The summaries organized by severity are color-coded in accordance with the severity
of the events. Otherwise, for other criteria, the colors do not indicate event status.

Status Table Console

A Business Impact Manager user can view a Status Table to quickly determine the
overall status of customers and the services being delivered to those customers. In
such a Status Table, customers would be represented as the primary set of instances,
and the services being delivered to them would be represented as the secondary set of
instances.
To describe it in more general terms, a Status Table Console offers another way to
present a concise status of a set of instances. The information displays as a matrix,
with a primary set of instances along the Y axis and a secondary (related) set of
instances along the X axis. The status of the related instances displays, when relevant,
at the intersection points in the matrix to reflect the overall status for each primary
instance.
The Status Table functionality is very useful for the Business Impact Manager user.
The Status Table requires a Web Console or EMC Smarts Business Dashboard license.

Domain Manager Administration Console

The Domain Manager Administration Console enables EMC Smarts administrators
to configure and administer the underlying Domain Managers, and to perform tasks
such as:
◆ Discover topology
◆ Manage and unmanage elements in the managed topology
◆ Access the Polling and Thresholds Console to fine-tune parameters of the polling
and thresholds settings in the underlying domain
The EMC Smarts Storage Insight Management Suite Discovery Guide provides
information about the Domain Manager Administration Console. Information about
polling and thresholds for specific EMC Smarts applications is provided in their
respective user guides.

Global Manager Administration Console

The Global Manager Administration Console enables EMC Smarts administrators to
configure Global Managers, including Security Infrastructure Managers (SIMs), and
the SAM Adapter Platform.
For a selected Global Manager, EMC Smarts administrators create and maintain
configuration entities such as notification lists, tools, users, user profiles, access
control to console operations, and escalation policies.
The EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Configuration Guide contains information
about the Global Manager Administration Console.

The Global Console 23

Functional Overview

Service Assurance functions

The following section describes many of the functions that are integral to the EMC
Smarts Service Assurance Manager.

Notification severity
The EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager classifies notifications according to
their calculated severity.
The notifications listed in the Notification Log Console and the Map Console are
color-coded in accordance with the severity of the events. Icons are also used in the
notification log and the maps to identify severity.
The color codes are explained in Table 1.

Table 1 Notification severity levels

Level Icon Color Description

1 Red Critical — Identifies a specific failure that requires resolution.

2 Orange Major — Identifies a serious condition that requires immediate

attention.

3 Yellow Minor — Identifies an abnormal condition that is not serious but

requires some action.

4 Blue Unknown —Identifies an unknown, unreachable, disconnected,

or suspended condition.

5 Green Normal — The element is in its normal state.

Notification List
A Notification List determines the events that are forwarded to a given client.
Essentially, the list filters the notifications that are sent from the Global Manager to a
client. Additionally, the list, which is configured by the EMC Smarts administrator,
can be assigned to one or more user profiles. The personnel assigned to a specified list
only see the set of events defined by the list.
The lists could be used to organize, for example:
◆ Business units
◆ Geographical regions
◆ Groups of resources
During day-to-day operations, operations personnel use the Global Console to
monitor and manage their areas of responsibility. In doing so, personnel see only the
subset of notifications defined for them in the Notification List.
EMC Smarts adapters can also connect to a Notification List, and receive the
notifications that match the conditions specified in the list.

24 EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Introduction

 Functional Overview

The EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Configuration Guide contains information
about Notification Lists.

Tools
Tools (server, client, and automatic) are programs that are executed by EMC Smarts
Service Assurance Manager. There are two types of tools:
◆ Server and client tools can be invoked by operations personnel in the Global
Console or can be automated using escalation policies. Tools invoked by
operators may produce output that can be sent back to the console for display.
◆ Automatic tools are executed by administrator-specified escalation policies or by
adapters. Output is not sent back to the console for display.
Server and client tools are executed in the context of a particular target object. The
target object may be a notification, or it may be an infrastructure element such as a
router. When invoked from the Global Console, the specification of the target object is
implicit.
Automatic tools are executed for notifications that meet the escalation criteria for
specified periods of time.
The EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Configuration Guide contains additional
information about the Service Assurance tools.

Notification escalation
Escalation is a process that defines a sequence of corrective actions for notifications.
Examples of corrective actions include alerting responsible parties and executing
automatic tools. EMC Smarts administrators use the Escalation view in the Global
Manager Administration Console to configure escalation policies.
Escalation policies enable EMC Smarts administrators to automate responses to
events. For example, an administrator can configure an escalation policy to page a
shift supervisor if no one takes ownership of a problem for more than 15 minutes. If
the problem remains unowned for 30 minutes, the policy will page the operations
manager. The administrator can define multiple policies to handle different types of
events.

Audit log
An audit log is associated with each of the notifications that the EMC Smarts Service
Assurance Manager receives from the underlying EMC Smarts applications. The
audit log includes the following information:
◆ Event
◆ Time of the update
◆ Name of the operations person or system that made the update
◆ Type of audit entry
◆ Description of the entry (Notify, Clear, or Suspend, for example)

Service Assurance functions 25

Functional Overview

Service Assurance begins to create an audit log when it receives a notification, and
relates the event to an infrastructure element. Thereafter, Service Assurance adds
actions for the event, any program tools used for the event, and changes in the status
of the event. Actions may include system actions such as archiving and user actions
such as acknowledgement and ownership. Comments can be added directly to the
audit log.
An audit log for each notification can be viewed in an audit log dialog box using the
Global Console, exported to spreadsheet applications, or printed as part of a report.
All the audit log entries for individual notifications are stored in one log file on the
Global Manager.

Containment
The Containment dialog box provides detailed information about a managed
element. Containment information varies depending upon the type of element and
the type of analysis being performed by the underlying domain. As examples, for a
network connection, the containment information includes details about connection
points; for a device managed by IP Performance Manager, containment information
includes details about the device’s memory.
The Containment dialog box is available for selected notifications in the Notification
Log Console, for selected instances in the Topology Browser Console, and for selected
nodes in the Map Console. When an element is managed by multiple Domain
Managers, the Containment dialog box includes all the containment information for
each domain.

Security
Security is a critical concern in the world of large-scale distributed networks.
Therefore, the EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager provides several means by
which EMC Smarts administrators can set up security and control access to the
system. This includes:
◆ User rights and privileges, including client authentication
◆ Encryption of passwords in files
◆ Encryption of communication channels
An EMC Smarts administrator can place access restrictions on certain console
operations by applying user profiles. Each user should be associated with a profile
that defines the appropriate level of access control (rights and privileges) for their
position and job responsibilities.
Client/server connections are controlled on both the client and server sides of the
system. The system is secured using authentication records and by assigning
connection privileges on the server side. When a client initiates a connection to a
server, the client must supply appropriate authentication to the server before the
connection (as defined by the connection privileges) is permitted.
For added protection, authentication and other passwords are encrypted in the files
that store them.

26 EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Introduction

 Functional Overview

Communication channels (that is, TCP connections made via Remote API) between
EMC Smarts servers, brokers, and adapters can also be encrypted. Instead of passing
information as clear text, these components’ communications can be encrypted using
either a site secret, the Diffie Helman-Advanced Encryption Standard (DH-AES), or
both. For new installations, encryption by DH-AES is enabled by default between
EMC Smarts processes that support encryption.
The EMC Smarts System Administration Guide contains additional information about
securing access to EMC Smarts applications. The EMC Smarts Service Assurance
Manager Configuration Guide includes additional information about restricting access
to certain Global Console operations.

Service Assurance functions 27

Functional Overview

Service Assurance module functions

The Service Assurance modules provide additional capabilities to calculate the
business impact of infrastructure problems, to produce a wide variety of operational
and management reports, and to display customer-specific information to a given
enterprise or service-provider customer through EMC Smarts Business Dashboard.

EMC Smarts Business Impact Manager functions

The degradation or failure of important infrastructure elements can slow or stop vital
business processes and business services, or dramatically reduce user productivity in
needed business areas. EMC Smarts Business Impact Manager ensures maximum
availability of services.
EMC Smarts Business Impact Manager (Business Impact Manager) extends the
capabilities of Service Assurance to calculate the business impact of events, and to
propagate the impacts to affected business entities as discrete notifications that are
linked to elements in the infrastructure.
Users can create business entities, such as organizations, business units, lines of
business, and departments, and relate them to corresponding infrastructure elements.
Users can also create business processes.
In Business Impact Manager, users can assign different weights to any elements in the
business or infrastructure topology. Business Impact Manager calculates the impact
of root-cause problems by summing up the weights of the impacted elements.
The calculated impact enables operations management to prioritize notifications in
accordance with business needs, and to effectively use their time and resources to
resolve problems that degrade or threaten vital processes and services.
Business process tools are also provided for users to create, update, and delete events
associated with their business processes. For example, a user might create an event
that represents a telephone call from a supplier who is out of stock of a popular retail
product, and then associate the event with the user’s Order Fulfillment Business
Process.
The EMC Smarts Business Impact Manager User Guide includes detailed information
regarding Business Impact Manager.

EMC Smarts Report Manager functions

The EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager collects a wealth of notification data. To
make this data available to operations personnel, Report Manager can be
implemented with Service Assurance Manager.
EMC Smarts Report Manager (Report Manager), which includes a Structured Query
Language (SQL) Data Interface, extracts notifications by way of a Notification List
from Service Assurance, passes them to an Open Database Connectivity (ODBC)
driver, and stores the notification information in a relational database. The database
uses a special database schema designed for EMC Smarts notifications.
Notification information can then be extracted from the database, and imported into
Crystal Enterprise Reports or some other user-selected report application.

28 EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Introduction

 Functional Overview

The Report Manager includes predefined report files (in Crystal format) that can be
used to display or print a wide variety of operational and management reports. The
predefined report files include:
◆ Day-to-day operations reports
◆ Operations management reports
◆ Maintenance reports
◆ Business impact reports

Day-to-day operations reports

The notification data stored by Service Assurance can be used to generate a variety of
reports that are helpful for day-to-day operations. For example:
◆ An open event report that lists all active events, sorted by duration
◆ A critical customers report that summarizes availability by customer and
highlights those customers with the lowest availability
◆ A critical devices report that allows operations management to review operations
performance and identify hot spots in the infrastructure (from a failure
perspective)

Operations management reports

The notification data can be used to generate management reports that provide
high-level views of service quality and staff performance. For example:
◆ An operator workload report that lists the workload of operators through their
ownership of active notifications
◆ A post mortem report that lists recently cleared events, sorted by duration
◆ An acknowledged events report that lists active, acknowledged root-cause events
◆ An unassigned events report that lists events that no one owns
◆ All active and inactive events for a specific element, showing the overall health of
the element

Maintenance reports
The reports can be used to help identify problem equipment. For example:
◆ An availability report that summarizes the availability of all devices or just the
devices of a specified class
◆ A recurring problem report that lists those events with the most occurrences
and/or greatest total impact for a period of days, and highlights the most affected
elements

Business impact reports

EMC Smarts Business Impact Manager users also have predefined reports that track
critical business entities in the network. For example:
◆ A critical business users report that shows the availability of devices by customer
◆ A critical business processes report that shows the availability of a customer’s
business processes

Service Assurance module functions 29

Functional Overview

EMC Smarts Business Dashboard functions

The EMC Smarts Business Dashboard (Business Dashboard) displays views normally
available from the Global Console as a collection of EMC Smarts viewlets within your
organization’s web page or a third-party web portal. EMC Smarts viewlets can
display a variety of information including a Notification Log, Status Table, Map,
Summary, Notification Properties, or Containment view. Viewlets can also be
customized to suit your needs. For example, a map viewlet can be set up to show a
specific topology instance as the focus of the map display.
Furthermore, the viewlets can function as sources for broadcasting context
information to other, listener viewlets. For example, a Status Table viewlet and a
Notification Log viewlet can be displayed such that selections in the Status Table
result in the Notification Log showing notifications related to those Status Table
selections.

30 EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Introduction

 3

Implementation
Scenarios

This chapter highlights important features of EMC Smarts solutions, and describes
how EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager can be implemented for a competitive
advantage in two business areas:
◆ Enterprise Service Provider
◆ Network Service Provider
This chapter contains the following information:
◆ The challenges of network management .................................................................... 32
◆ EMC Smarts solutions ................................................................................................... 33
◆ Enterprise provider ........................................................................................................ 35
◆ Network service provider ............................................................................................. 38

Implementation Scenarios 31
Implementation Scenarios

The challenges of network management

Regardless of the business area, network management organizations everywhere are
faced with the following challenges:
◆ Improve service
◆ Reduce operational costs
◆ Integrate new tools with existing management and support systems
◆ Deliver a high return on investment

32 EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Introduction

 Implementation Scenarios

EMC Smarts solutions

The features and functions of the EMC Smarts solutions, which include EMC Smarts
IP Availability Manager, EMC Smarts IP Performance Manager, EMC Smarts
Application Services Manager, EMC Smarts ATM/Frame Relay Manager, and EMC
Smarts Service Assurance Manager, address important challenges that network
management organizations face on a day-to-day basis.

Fast and accurate fault isolation

EMC Smarts uses comprehensive topology models to quickly and accurately analyze
and isolate failures in networks of any size and complexity.
EMC Smarts analysis improves service by greatly reducing manual problem
isolation, which accounts for up to 80 percent of total downtime. The analysis also
lowers operational costs by reducing the human effort involved in isolating
problems, as well as the effort involved in chasing down all the symptomatic events
and false alerts.

Automated corrective actions

Once a fault has been accurately isolated, Service Assurance can be configured to
initiate automated responses to correct soft faults or to reroute services around
failures. Because EMC Smarts can separate root-cause problems from symptomatic
events and false alarms, actions are only invoked when or where needed. With the
EMC Smarts topology models, corrective actions can be invoked against both the
failed component and/or any impacted services.
Service Assurance’s automated actions avoid service downtime and provide virtually
immediate service restoration. They can also improve service by fixing problems
before users become impacted.

Business focus
EMC Smarts Business Impact Manager can import business information directly from
existing data sources such as provisioning systems. During its analysis, it places
infrastructure problems in their proper business context and analyzes their impact on
services, business processes, and customers. This enables managers to focus their
efforts on the problems with the highest business impact.

Integration
EMC Smarts solutions are designed to integrate with management tools and other
operational support systems. EMC Smarts leverages management data from
third-party sources while providing console access to third-party management
applications. EMC Smarts software’s ability to distill countless events into a concise
set of defined problems and exceptions makes it a natural integration point for
problem management (ticketing) systems.
Service Assurance’s integration with other management applications lowers
operational costs by providing users with a single, consistent, intuitive interface for
viewing all management data. At the same time, Service Assurance improves
operational control by presenting a concise display of network problems in their full
topology context, complete with their impacts and histories.

EMC Smarts solutions 33

Implementation Scenarios

Rapid deployment and low maintenance

EMC Smarts solutions are designed for rapid deployment and low maintenance.
Unlike other management solutions, EMC Smarts software’s comprehensive set of
problem and impact models automatically adapt to the configuration of the network
infrastructure—providing immediate results. This same adaptability enables
EMC Smarts solutions to automatically keep pace with future changes in the
infrastructure without the need for expensive ongoing code maintenance.
The key to EMC Smarts’ ability to automatically adapt to changes is the use of ICIM
models that represent the various elements of the infrastructure, how they relate to
one another, and how they can affect one another. EMC Smarts solutions then apply
these models to the discovered elements in a given network to provide problem and
impact analysis specific to that network. Furthermore, customers who need
additional functionality can leverage these models to build solutions that also adapt
automatically to change.
This enables EMC Smarts solutions to provide better return on investment than other
management solutions. Benefits include:
◆ Automatic adaptation reduces the head-count needed to maintain the
management solution
◆ Analysis that automatically adapts to changes in the environment and provides
more accurate results, which reduces service downtime
◆ More accurate analysis frees up expensive engineering resources to work on more
strategic initiatives

34 EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Introduction

 Implementation Scenarios

Enterprise provider
A diversified financial services firm deployed an EMC Smarts Service Assurance
Manager solution to help them manage their complex infrastructure as an integrated
system rather than as sets of unrelated silos.
The primary concern of the financial enterprise was the more than 100
mission-critical applications used by their business units, such as applications to
monitor their exposure to interest and currency fluctuations. Basically, the enterprise
had too many mission-critical applications for the network teams to track. At the
same time, their network changed and evolved so quickly that the application teams
could not stay abreast of the changes.
As a result, when network failures occurred, or when network maintenance was
required, they had no way of knowing which applications were affected. Attempts to
do this with traditional tools—where one specified network dependencies for each
application—failed because of the need to manually maintain the correlation logic
every time the network topology changed. If they missed a change, the correlation
would fail.
By deploying an EMC Smarts solution the enterprise was able to solve their problem
by separating the network, applications, and business analysis into separate domains,
thus breaking the problem into manageable pieces, as well as automating the most
complicated part of their problem: defining the network dependencies of the
distributed applications. Their EMC Smarts solution consisted of the following:
◆ EMC Smarts IP Availability Manager and IP Performance Manager — To monitor
failures in the network infrastructure and identify the affected systems,
automatically calculating the affect of any network path redundancies
◆ EMC Smarts Application Services Manager — To perform root-cause and impact
analysis of distributed applications based on events and topology information
imported from the Availability Manager, IP Performance Manager, and the SAM
adapters
◆ EMC Smarts Business Impact Manager — To correlate failures in the technology
infrastructure to the businesses they impact (for example, processing on
NASDAQ trades)
◆ EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager — To bring it altogether into a single
system, where users can get customizable views of the data they need, and use
the appropriate tools to quickly restore service
◆ EMC Smarts Business Dashboard — To provide web-based, personalized views
for business unit managers (for example, in the foreign exchange unit) showing a
map representation and a summary view of the status of their systems

Enterprise provider 35
Implementation Scenarios

Figure 5 illustrates their EMC Smarts implementation.

Management
Tools

Global Consoles
Maintenance InCharge Business
Provider InCharge Impact Manager
Service
Assurance
InCharge Business Manager InCharge Report
Dashboard Manager

ICIM Information

InCharge Service InCharge IP InCharge

Assurance Manager Performance and Application Services
Adapters Availability Manager Manager Editions

System &
Application
Management Network Infrastructure

Figure 5 Enterprise solution

By connecting the analysis from the network, application, and business domains,
EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager provided the enterprise with an end-to-end
view of causes and impacts—automatically correlating network failures with their
impacts on applications and critical business processes. For example, it showed that a
switch failure blocked access to a Solaris system that ran one of the two Oracle
databases that supported their accounts receivable application. This resulted in
degraded performance of the accounting application, and placed their ability to
complete their quarterly financial reporting on time at risk.
By knowing the business impact of each problem, the operations staff effectively
prioritized their support efforts on the most critical problems; that is, they aligned
their efforts with the overall business objectives of the enterprise.
At the same time, because EMC Smarts IP Availability Manager and EMC Smarts IP
Performance Manager automatically adapt to changes in the network topology,
operations did not need to devote teams of people to modify the analysis every time
the network topology changes. This dramatically reduced the cost to maintain their
management systems. In fact, because all of the logic is based on the infrastructure
topology, they only needed to manually maintain the business and application
elements. EMC Smarts software automatically adapted everything else: root-cause
and impact analysis, personalized views, and so forth.
In addition to solving the problem of application and business impact, the EMC
Smarts Service Assurance Manager also streamlined operational processes.
By identifying the root causes, the support staff eliminated most of the
time-consuming fault isolation process and immediately proceeded to problem

36 EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Introduction

 Implementation Scenarios

resolution. By identifying which events are impacts of other problems, the support
staff avoided wasting time trying to chase down and fix symptoms of other problems.
Finally, by relating the root causes with the impacts, operations staff streamlined
communications. For example, when estimating the time to resolve a root-cause
problem, that information was automatically propagated to all affected systems,
applications, and business processes.
Because they identified the actual root-cause failures (for example, a card on a
switch), they were able to automate the dispatch of service technicians from their
maintenance provider. More importantly, because they positively identified the failed
element, they avoided the delays caused by technicians who arrived on site with the
wrong parts.
By integrating the EMC Smarts solution with their existing system and application
management tools (by way of SAM adapters), the enterprise was able to leverage
their previous investments in management tools and accelerate the deployment of the
overall solution.

Enterprise provider 37
Implementation Scenarios

Network service provider

A large network service provider had been using traditional management tools to
manage a broad array of services. After several years of deployment and custom
work, the systems were starting to improve network operations. However, the
maintenance costs were spiraling out of control and it was becoming more difficult to
keep up with changes in the managed environment. Worse, the operational
improvements were not translating into higher customer satisfaction because of
communications failures between operations and the call center. The provider needed
to find an alternative that could deliver real improvements to customer satisfaction
while reducing operational costs. The answer to this challenge was an EMC Smarts
solution composed of:
◆ EMC Smarts ATM/Frame Relay Manager
◆ EMC Smarts IP Availability Manager
◆ EMC Smarts IP Performance Manager
◆ EMC Smarts Application Services Manager
◆ EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Adapter Platform
◆ EMC Smarts Business Impact Manager
◆ EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager
◆ EMC Smarts Business Dashboard
◆ EMC Smarts Report Manager

38 EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Introduction

 Implementation Scenarios

Figure 6 illustrates the solution.

InfoVista

Remedy Provisioning
Concord CiscoWorks

CRM HelpDesk

Global Consoles
InCharge Business
InCharge Impact Manager
InCharge Business Service
Dashboard Assurance
Manager InCharge Report
Manager

ICIM Information

InCharge Service InCharge IP InCharge

InCharge ATM/Frame
Assurance Manager Performance and Application Services
Relay Manager
Adapters Availability Manager Manager Editions

Concord InfoVista Network Infrastructure

Figure 6 Network service provider solution

With EMC Smarts’ autodiscovery, built-in analysis, and policy-based management,

operations was able to immediately identify and isolate root-cause failures in their
networks. Because EMC Smarts applications automatically detect and adapt to
changes in topology, the service provider no longer needed to dedicate teams of
consultants to maintain them. Also, because EMC Smarts intelligently manages
networks with overlapping IP addresses (for example, private IPs), the provider
could discontinue the expensive process of dedicating a separate management
system to each customer. These features helped the provider to dramatically reduce
the cost of managing their environment.
By integrating the EMC Smarts solution with existing management tools (for
example, system and application agents from Concord), the service provider was able
to use its existing investments to cut deployment time.
EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager’s unique ability to integrate not just events,
but events in the context of a comprehensive topology, allowed the service provider
to more effectively integrate operations with its other OSS applications. By
integrating with their provisioning system, the provider was able to automatically
build their business topology, and relate customers to services and services to
elements in their network topology. This integration provided automated business
impact analysis for prioritization, and allowed users to view technology failures in
their complete technical and business context.

Network service provider 39

Implementation Scenarios

Leveraging this business topology, EMC Smarts was able to automatically identify
which events customers would care about so that the call center could focus on
customer impacts rather than sifting through masses of arcane infrastructure events.
Similarly, by using the customer data to integrate with the CRM application,
EMC Smarts was able to identify the account managers associated with each
customer impact, and notify them of problems in real time. Furthermore, the
operations staff used this information to coordinate maintenance work with the
account managers of potentially affected customers.
Because problem causes and impacts were linked, the provider was also able to
streamline communications between operations and the call center. For example,
when operations identified a problem and dispatched an engineer to resolve it, they
could estimate a repair time and the system automatically relayed that estimate for all
customer impacts to the call center and customer web applications so that everyone
immediately knew when the service would be restored. Finally, when customer
relations faced a crisis and the customer assurance staff elevated the priorities of
specific customer impacts, EMC Smarts automatically applied the priority changes to
the root-cause failures and notified engineering management so that operations could
shift their activities accordingly.
With the Business Dashboard, the provider's customers were able to get real-time
views of their data. Because these views use the same topology, the views changed
automatically whenever the topology changed. This, too, reduced the cost of
servicing customers.
In conclusion, by effectively integrating the EMC Smarts solution with its existing
applications (for example, provisioning, CRM, and call center), the service provider
was able to show a more professional face to its customer. In the past, customer calls
to the call center typically resulted in an operator taking messages, calling around
operations to see what was happening, and then calling the customer back—a time-
consuming process that often left the customer wondering what the provider was
doing. Now, when the customer calls, the call center is not only aware of the problem,
but is also able to give the customer up-to-the-minute information about the status of
the problem and its resolution.

40 EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Introduction

 Index

A F
Adapter 12, 24, 35, 37 Failover System 14
And third-party applications 13 Fault isolation 33
SAM Adapter Platform 23 Features and functions, Service Assurance Manager 18
Architecture, Service Assurance Manager 12 Functional overview 17
Audit log 21, 25 Functions, Service Assurance modules 28
Audit logs 22
G
B Global Console 13, 15, 21
Business Dashboard 16, 28, 35 Domain Manager Administration Console 23
Architecture 16 Map Console 22
Sources for listener viewlets 30 Notification Log Console 21
Business Dashboard Functions 30 Status Table Console 23
Business focus 33 Summary View Console 22
Business Impact Manager 15, 28, 35 Topology Browser Console 22
Functions 28 Global Manager 13, 14, 24, 26
Reports 29
Business Services Maps 22
I
ICIM Common Information Model 12
C Implementation scenarios 31
Challenges of network management 32 Information Bus 12
Containment dialog box 26 Integration 13, 33
Corrective actions 33
Crystal Enterprise Reports 15, 28
N
Network Service Provider 38
D Notification
Diffie Helman-Advanced Encryption Standard 27 Escalation 25
Properties 21
Severity 24
E
Notification Lists 24
EMC Smarts Application Services Manager 33, 35
Notification Properties dialog box 21
EMC Smarts ATM/Frame Relay Manager 33
EMC Smarts IP Availability Manager 22, 33, 35
EMC Smarts IP Performance Manager 33, 35 P
EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager 19, 33, 35, 38 Property sheet 22
EMC Smarts Solutions 33
Enterprise Service Provider 36
R
Network Service Provider 38
Rapid deployment 34
Encryption 27
Report Manager 15
Enterprise Service Provider 35
Functions 28
Escalation 25
Reports 11, 12, 26, 28
Event consolidation 19
Business Impact 29

EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Introduction 41

Index

Crystal Enterprise 15
Day-to-day Operations 29
Maintenance 29
Operations Management 29

S
Security
Accessing 26
Diffie Helman-Advanced Encryption Standard 27
service 38
Service Assurance 33
Service Assurance Manager 18, 33, 35, 38
Service Assurance modules 11, 15, 17
Business Dashboard 15, 16
Business Impact Manager 15
Report Manager 15
Web Console 15
Service Provider 31, 38, 39
Severity color codes 24
Status Table Console 23
Licensing 23

T
Tools 25
Topology
Abstraction 20
And event consolidation 19

W
Web Console 15

42 EMC Smarts Service Assurance Manager Introduction