Release Notes for Cisco Info Center, 7.3
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Table Of Contents
Release Notes for Cisco Info Center, 7.3
Key System Features and Benefits
Additional Cisco Info Center Products
Integration with Cisco Network Management Solutions
New Features and Enhancements with Release 7.3
Adoption of IBM Tivoli Netcool/Webtop into Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus
Extension of Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus Functionality
Support for LDAP Authentication
New Probe Rules Function for Sending Alerts to Multiple ObjectServers and Tables
Inclusion of the Tivoli Event Integration Facility Toolkit in Netcool/OMNIbus
Service Quality Management (SQM)
Customer Experience Manager (CEM)
Application Dependency Discovery Manager (ADDM)
Cisco Info Center 7.3 Products
Cisco Info Center Omnibus and Network Manager
Cisco Info Center Service Quality Management Center
Composite Application Manager Products
Composite Application Manager for SOA
Composite Application Manager for Applications
Composite Application Manager for Transactions
Composite Application Manager for J2EE
Server Compatibility, Performance and Scale
Hardware and Software Requirements for OMNIbus and Network Manager
Supported Browsers for Web Applications
Hardware and Software Requirements for BSM, SQM, and CEM
Obtaining Documentation and Submitting a Service Request
Release Notes for Cisco Info Center, 7.3
April 2010
Contents
This document provides information about the Cisco Info Center 7.3 release and contains the following sections:
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New Features and Enhancements with Release 7.3
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For more detailed information, see the documents listed in the Cisco Info Center 7.3 Documentation Guide and Supplemental License Agreement at the following location:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/netmgtsw/ps996/
products_documentation_roadmaps_list.htmlIntroduction
Cisco Info Center is a Service-Level Management (SLM) system that provides a consolidated view of enterprise-wide events and status information. It collects event streams or messages from many different data sources and presents a single, consistent view of the current state of all Cisco Info Center managed systems. It distributes the event information to the operators and administrators responsible for monitoring service levels.
This information can then be:
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Cisco Info Center allows diverse management platforms, applications, and Internet protocols to be brought together to provide an administrator a single point of monitoring those platforms and applications. Cisco Info Center does not replace the management platforms. It instead complements them by providing an enterprise wide event/fault and status exchange. Cisco Info Center can also tie together domain limited network management platforms in remote locations.
Cisco Info Center tracks the state of events in a high performance distributed database and presents information of interest to specific users through individually configurable filters and views. Cisco Info Center automation functions can be used to perform intelligent processing on the current state of managed objects. Cisco Info Center can build upon existing management systems or applications and, therefore, uses existing management skills and minimizes deployment time.
Key System Features and Benefits
System Definition and Scope
Designed to scale from the smallest to the largest, most-complex multi-vendor environments, Cisco Info Center OMNIbus and Network Manager software helps organizations improve network visibility and drive reliability and performance. The software collects and distributes Layer 1 through Layer 3 network data-and thereby builds and maintains knowledge about physical and logical network connectivity. With accurate network visibility, you can efficiently and effectively visualize and manage complex networks-and, more importantly, the services delivered across them. Cisco Info Center ONM software easily integrates with operational support systems and other mission-critical workflow applications.
Cisco Info Center software also provides valuable advanced fault correlation and diagnosis capabilities. Real-time root-cause analysis helps operations personnel quickly identify the source of network faults and speed problem resolution.
Features and Benefits
Cisco Info Center OMNIbus and Network Manager provide the following key features and benefits:
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Additional Cisco Info Center Products
In addition to the core product, Cisco Info Center includes a number of related products. For information on the products, see Cisco Info Center 7.3 Products.
Integration with Cisco Network Management Solutions
Cisco Info Center is a key component in several Cisco network management solutions:
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Cisco Info Center plays the role of a Manager of Manager (MoM) in the VAMS solution and the CIMS solution. Cisco Info Center sits on top of the other solution components—CMM for VAMS and Cisco Active Network Abstraction (ANA) for CIMS and provides integration of the solution components into the OSS. In combination with the Impact product, Tivoli Integrated Portal (TIP) and Tivoli Business Service Manager (TBSM) provide business service impact analysis. Using Impact, enhanced events are generated from events received from the solution components and displayed in the TBSM application.
New Features and Enhancements with Release 7.3
The previous version of Cisco Info Center (CIC 7.2) is based on OMNIbus 7.2 and OMNIbus & Network Manager 8.1 and will be upgraded to OMNIbus 7.3 and OMNIbus & Network Manager 8.2. The principal changes are set out in the following sections:
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Adoption of IBM Tivoli Netcool/Webtop into Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus
Netcool/OMNIbus V7.3 includes the strategic Event Management Desktop—the web user interface previously provided by Netcool/Webtop— for event visualization and management functionality. The new combined product brings enhanced functionality to both users and administrators and delivers significant enhancements in the following areas:
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New Installer Technology
Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus V7.3 now shares a common installer technology with related Tivoli products such as:
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Console and silent modes of installation and uninstallation are supported on all operating systems.
The current set of probes and gateways have been repackaged to use the new installer technology. The repackaged probes and gateways include all the IBM prerequisites to which customers are automatically entitled. All new probes and gateways will also use this installer technology. Customers must download and use only repackaged or new probes and gateways in their V7.3 installation.
Remote Deployment of Probes
Probes can now be deployed to remote computers from a central location.
SQL Performance Enhancements
Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus V7.3 provides improvements to the way in which SQL queries are parsed, resolved, and executed.
Extension of Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus Functionality
Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus provides a number of customizations that you can use to extend the functionality of the product. Functionality can be extended in the following ways:
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Support for LDAP Authentication
Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus V7.3 introduces support for the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP).
New Probe Rules Function for Sending Alerts to Multiple ObjectServers and Tables
A new function named genevent has been added to the rules file syntax for probes. This function can be used by a probe to create and send the same alert to more than one registered ObjectServer or to more than one table.
Inclusion of the Tivoli Event Integration Facility Toolkit in Netcool/OMNIbus
The Tivoli Event Integration Facility (EIF) toolkit, which was previously delivered as a component of the Tivoli Enterprise Console product has been updated, and is now shipped as part of Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus.
Enhanced Web GUI Features
The Web GUI component offers the following new and enhanced features:
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New Modules: SQM, CEM, ADDM
Service Quality Management (SQM)
The CIC Business Service Manager (BSM) platform has been updated to include optional extensions for Service Quality Management (SQM) and Customer Experience Management (CEM).
Tivoli Netcool Service Quality Manager Service Solutions are integrated with the operational support system (OSS) environment through open application programming interfaces (APIs), and conform to Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE), OSS/J and 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standards.
Each service solution collects data through predefined, open application programming interfaces (APIs). Tivoli Netcool Service Quality Manager uses that data to derive qualitative and quantitative measurements—providing data in terms accessible to customers as well as employees. Key Quality Indicators (KQIs) are derived from a number of underlying network, application and customer-specific measurements, and offer an enriched, end-to-end view of the service in question. Network and service operations teams can monitor these measurements in near-real time through prepackaged, internal SLAs. The underlying measurements can be reused across multiple SLAs, delivering information in terms relevant to various business units.
Each service solution contains:
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Customer Experience Manager (CEM)
The Tivoli Netcool customer experience management solution collects, correlates, filters, aggregates, and presents customer and network data to help you proactively ensure that all the groups in your organization focus on problems that directly impact the customer experience.
Once a problem has been detected, Tivoli Netcool customer experience management enables customer representatives to open a trouble ticket and then identify and take steps to minimize the impact on high-value subscribers. For example, a text message could be sent to let customers know that it is being repaired. Tivoli Netcool customer experience management monitors service delivery and consumption and detects potential problems before they impact customers.
CEM can be easily and cost-effectively upgraded to full service quality management (SQM).
Use Intelligence to Prioritize Responses to Service Issues
The Customer Experience Management solution provides the detailed answers that operations and service representatives need to assure customers that the organization is aware of the problem and is taking the necessary steps to resolve it. Through a single dashboard, you can provide status information on each customer's experience, eliminating back-and-forth communication with network operations
Tivoli Netcool customer experience management helps you quickly determine:
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Built-in intelligence within the Tivoli Netcool customer experience management solution, such as key performance indicator (KPI) calculations, enables automated problem investigation to help speed resolution and lessen the impact on customers. The software delivers dynamic monitoring and robust reporting tools, helping you access a variety of rich data to determine which actions to take and when, based on multiple revenue-impacting performance metrics.
Access Easy-to-Use Web Dashboards
These metrics are presented in easy-to-use Web dashboards specifically designed to offer the most useful view to different users, from network operations to customer support to account management. These views include:
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Summary
Tivoli Netcool customer experience management delivers:
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Application Dependency Discovery Manager (ADDM)
IT Monitoring and IT Composite Application Manager (CAM), replace the obsolete SSM, ASM, ISM products.
This robust, scalable solution automatically discovers application, system, network and storage dependencies; detects changes to them; and maintains an up-to-date picture of the application's IT dependencies. The information is then readily available to external data stores and CMDBs, to support critical operational processes. The detailed configuration and change reports provided by Application Dependency Discovery Manager further extend the value of this service dependency model. Users can directly access the reports through right-click actions —and thus can obtain greater intelligence to help improve mean time to problem resolution.
ADDM is tightly integrated with Business Service Manager (BSM) and SQM, delivering rapid, out-of-the-box value.
Cisco Info Center 7.3 Products
This section describes the Cisco Info Center 7.3 products.
Cisco Info Center Omnibus and Network Manager
Cisco Info Center OMNIbus and Network Manager is the core Cisco Info Center product. Cisco Info center Omnibus and Network Manager comprises the following main components:
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The Cisco MTTrapd Probe also processes events transmitted by element managers that support the Northbound Event Interface (NEI) included with the Cisco Element Manager System version 3.2 and higher.
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Cisco Info Center Impact
Impact is a value-added application that assists network operators in monitoring Service Level Agreements by providing additional event analysis beyond that available with Cisco Info Center. For example, Impact users can determine the consequences of an event, such as what or when services are affected and which users are affected by specific alarm conditions.
Business Service Manager
Tivoli Business Service Manager (TBSM) delivers the real-time information that you need in order to respond to alerts effectively and in line with business requirements, and optionally to meet service-level agreements (SLAs).
The TBSM tools enable you to build a service model that you integrate with IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus alerts or optionally with data from an SQL data source. TBSM includes optional components that let you access data from other IBM Tivoli applications such as IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console, IBM Tivoli Monitoring, and IBM Tivoli Application Dependency Discovery Manager. TBSM processes the external data based on the service model data you created in the TBSM database and returns a new or updated TBSM service event to Netcool/OMNIbus.
The TBSM console provides a graphical user interface (GUI) that allows you to logically link services and business requirements within the service model. The service model provides an operator with a view of how, second by second, an enterprise is performing at any given moment in time or how the enterprise has performed over a given time period.
Cisco Info Center Service Quality Management Center
Service Quality Management Center is a bundle of three components: Business Service Manager, Service Quality Manager, and Customer Experience Manager. The bundle is priced by the following chargeable components and metrics.
Netcool/Reporter
Netcool/Reporter is a real-time, Web-based client-server application that provides accurate, historical reporting on Cisco Info Center event data forwarded from the Cisco Info Server.
Webtop
The Netcool/Webtop product, which provides Web-based event visualization and management functionality, has been repackaged as a component of Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus, and renamed Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus Web GUI. With the convergence of these two products into a single Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus V7.3 offering, their documentation sets have been merged into a single information center unit.
Composite Application Manager Products
This section describes the Composite Application Manager products.
Composite Application Manager for SOA
Tivoli Composite Application Manager for Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) monitors the SOA life cycle to ensure high availability and performance.
Composite Application Manager for SOA includes integrated management tools that speed and simplify identification and resolution of SOA problems:
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Composite Application Manager for Applications
Tivoli Composite Application Manager for Applications provides an integrated solution for proactive monitoring, management, capacity planning, and historical analysis for heterogeneous applications and application infrastructure. Tivoli Composite Application Manager for Applications allows you to:
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Composite Application Manager for Transactions
IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager for Transactions allows you to proactively monitor response time and availability of business applications, which helps you to quickly and easily detect and isolate transaction response and availability issues, enabling faster problem resolution. Using Composite Application Manager for Transactions, you can:
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Composite Application Manager for J2EE
Tivoli Composite Application Manager for J2EE offers integrated management tools for Web and enterprise infrastructures. It helps you quickly pinpoint the source of bottlenecks or other defects in application code, server resources and external system dependencies before they affect customers. Tivoli Composite Application Manager for J2EE:
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System Requirements
Server Compatibility, Performance and Scale
Server Compatibility
Hardware sizing for Cisco Info Center (Tivoli Netcool) depends on a number of variables, including event throughput, number of active events, number of users and the complexity of their desktop requirements, etc., as well as integrations with and third-party components installed on the server.
The predominant characteristic of Cisco Info Center is its memory-resident database, so the more memory the better. Another key contributor to the Object Server performance is CPU speed. In general, the faster the CPU the better.
For details on supported operating systems, hardware requirements, and installation prerequisites, please see the Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus 7.3 Installation and Deployment Guide at the following location.
The only recommendation documented is the minimum disk space for the server. Table 1 shows the minimum disk space required for complete installation on each operating system.
Table 1 Minimum Server Disk Space
AIX
474 MB
HP-UX
520 MB
Linux
399 MB
Solaris
515 MB
Windows
324 MB
These figures are based on the assumption that a full installation of the features is performed, in the following environment:
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There are no specific hardware requirements for the probes as well, other than what is documented in the probe reference guide. In general the CPU and memory usage of the probe depends upon the types of alerts/traps being received, processed, and the frequency of the alerts/traps.
Hardware and Software Requirements for OMNIbus and Network Manager
This section describes the hardware and software requirements for IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus and Network Manager.
Supported Operating Systems
Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus is supported on various versions of UNIX, Linux, and Windows.
On Sun Microsystems processors, the following versions are supported:
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On Hewlett-Packard PA-RISC-based processors and Intel Itanium architecture-based systems, the following versions are supported:
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On IBM PowerPC-based systems, the following versions are supported:
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On Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) x86 processors, the following versions are supported:
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On IBM System z mainframes, the following versions are supported:
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IBM Tivoli Network Manager IP Edition V3.8 supports the following operating systems:
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Supported Browsers for Web Applications
To use the Cisco Info Center Web applications, make sure that clients use one of the supported Web browsers. Table 2 describes the supported Web browsers and the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) versions for each client operating system.
Hardware and Software Requirements for BSM, SQM, and CEM
Table 3 lists the hardware and software requirements for BSM, SQM, and CEM.
Browser Support
BSM, SQM, and CEM support the following browsers:
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Current 64-bit platform support is running in 32-bit emulation mode.
Licensing Requirements
For information on the licensing requirements for Cisco Info Center, see the Cisco Info Center 7.3 Documentation Guide and Supplemental License Agreement at the following location:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/netmgtsw/ps996/products_documentation_roadmaps
_list.htmlRelated Documentation
The main documentation page for Cisco Info Center is located at the following location:
For a detailed list of the Cisco and IBM documents for the Cisco Info Center family of products, see the Cisco Info Center 7.3 Documentation Guide and Supplemental License Agreement at the following location:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/netmgtsw/ps996/products_documentation_roadmaps
_list.htmlObtaining Documentation and Submitting a Service Request
For information on obtaining documentation, submitting a service request, and gathering additional information, see the monthly What's New in Cisco Product Documentation, which also lists all new and revised Cisco technical documentation, at:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/general/whatsnew/whatsnew.html
Subscribe to the What's New in Cisco Product Documentation as a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed and set content to be delivered directly to your desktop using a reader application. The RSS feeds are a free service and Cisco currently supports RSS version 2.0.
This document is to be used in conjunction with the documents listed in the "Related Documentation" section.
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