FCAPS Series: Fault Management for Carrier Ethernet 

Welcome to the latest issue of Creanord EchoNEWS. EchoNEWS aims to keep you informed of developments at Creanord and in the fields of SLA assurance, automated Ethernet service delivery and OAM (Operations, Administration and Maintenance). 

This edition of EchoNews initiates a series on EchoVault and FCAPS. FCAPS stands for Fault, Configuration, Accounting, Performance and Security, which are the five functional areas of the ITU-T Telecommunications Management Network (TMN) model. Any complete EMS/NMS platform should support a comprehensive set of FCAPS functions and integrate seamlessly with OSS/BSS systems. This edition focuses on Fault Management for Carrier Ethernet.

The F in FCAPS  

The purpose of Fault Management is to keep the network running effectively by identifying, isolating, logging and notifying users of network faults. Additionally, the target of Fault Management is to correct faults when possible. Since faults can cause downtime or network degradation, fault management is a widely implemented part of the ITU-T FCAPS model. In addition to notifying about individual faults a summary-level overview of the overall network health is a basic requirement for Service Providers.

Creanord EchoVault is a Carrier Grade FCAPS system with powerful fault management functionality. It allows you to do the following:
- Analyze faults on the network at very granular levels and at the same time use statistical analytics to see an overview of network health at a glance
- Perform thorough post incident analysis with tools to drill down into degrading or problematic services
- Give near real-time visibility from EchoVault's charts & dashboards
- Define a customized SLA along with setting up of a two degree threshold to alert operators to service failure conditions
- Set a tolerance to avoid performance "hickups" flooding the NOC

The challenge of Fault Management is to give a high level overview, while at the same time giving effective tools to drill down and address the cause of faults. EchoVault includes an easy to use events dashboard with priority, source and an informative message about incidents. For detailed fault analysis there is an option access information about the nature of the fault.

EchoVault Event Dashboard.

Further, the system allows opening an "Event Hotlink" with an interactive chart placing the event in context and allowing the user to see whether the event is for instance a one-off, recurring, constant or trending for the better/worse. This ensures a relevant response and that the user reacts only on relevant information.

Example of service degrading event in context showing that the violation follows a state of several near breaches.

In a Service Provider environment, management systems are rarely standalone so they need to integrate to other systems with Northbound systems. EchoVault naturally provides methods such as SNMP traps to forward fault related information to the providers OSS/BSS.

So there is a fault - what next?

With built-in Element Management functionality, EchoVault provides the benefit of means to correct the problems for instance when they can be fixed through reconfiguration. Using a standalone test and measurement system, the change of context when moving from error detection to fault resolution can be a point of workflow disruption slowing down resolution times.

In case events are due to planned maintenance activities, it should be possible to ensure that these events are not treated as faults. Granular maintenance windows in EchoVault allow accounting for situations when the service is not available due to planned maintenance. Maintenance windows can also be added or removed in the past for instance for situations where the event caused by a third party and such events are excluded in the SLA. Sometimes such events may need to be negotiated post event with the Service Provider customer.

In addition to Fault Management EchoVault addresses the other areas of FCAPS and we will delve deeper into those upcoming newsletters.

Upcoming Events: Mobile Backhaul India Summit

Welcome to join us on November 17th for Mobile Backhaul India Summit. Creanord President and founding member Jorma Hämäläinen will be talking on the topic of "Business drivers for the successful evolution of Mobile Backhaul in India".

Previous issues of Creanord EchoNEWS
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For more information please visit www.creanord.com or give us a call on +358 10 309 3400. We would be happy to arrange an appointment for a web meeting where you can receive more detailed information and discuss any specific needs or questions.



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