Thread: FCAPS tasks manager

Let me propose four points, the essen¬tial tasks that a service provider does, that uses FCAPS as our check list of essential key functions.

3. Provisioning the service the customer needs

4. Monitoring the service delivery meets the customer's requirements

5. Providing selective information to the service provider's management for future planning

6.Keeping the network administrators and operators abreast with the use of cost-effective and easy-to-execute procedures.

The following sections of this paper will discuss the above tasks in detail.

I. Provisioning the service

Provisioning a service follows the receipt of a customer's order and implies the availability of sufficient equipment to set up the circuits that the customer has ordered. The inventory provides the NMS administrator an account of installed equipment, what is avail¬able for new customers, equipment in stock for expanding (that is, installing) circuits at a site, etc. This is an aspect of 'Accounting Management'. 'Configuration Management' includes the installation of new CPE equipment at the customer's location and, if needed, adding more equipment at the service provider's central office for that customer.

Finally the administrator 'activates' the circuit, also part of 'Configuration Management.' An Element Management System (EMS) typ¬ically operates with a single vendor's equipment. The end-to-end provisioning is often considered the task of the NMS, not the EMS, since the NMS can do the end-to-end provisioning, often with equipment of multiple vendors.



II. Monitoring the service delivery and performance

Within FCAPS, Fault and Performance management have key roles in meeting the customer's delivery requirements (SLAs), identifying issues before they become major problems, but when they do occur, to be able to resolve them quickly. The EMS stores collected performance statistics in a database which the NMS may use for generating reports, filtering, summarizing, and graphing the information. The NMS operating engineers use this to catch (hopefully in time) a service that is degrading in performance level before severe performance or even failure occurs. Despite all proactive measures taken, failures occur-this is the real world, not our model's Garden of Eden-and are to be resolved as quickly as possible.

Fault Management manages alarms and is best suited for correlating alarms. Alarm correlation assists an engineer in pinpointing the problem. Let the Network Management System analyze heaps of data to correlate events and alarms. This gives the network engineer an edge in resolving the problem as quickly as possible. Nevertheless the engineer is responsible for the final analysis and making the decisions to fix a problem.

An Network Management System that manages equipment from various vendors often does not offer as fine¬grained information and capability as a management system fine tuned in the design by the equipment vendor. Tradeoffs are unavoidable when considering an EMS by the equipment vendor versus an NMS (with EMS functionality) that offers more generalized man¬agement capabilities across the 'vendor boundary.'