The HDD functionality provides an additional level of protection to the wireless operator by ensuring the charging records are preserved in case the Charging Gateway (CGF) goes down or loses connectivity with the ASR 5500 gateway. At the same time, this was implemented in a way that does not require any addition or modification to the existing mediation/billing systems.

This section describes the various records supported on the HDD:

HDD is used to store CDRs when CGF fails and then CDRs are streamed to the CGF when CGF is up. Streaming can be done in a First-In-First-Out (FIFO) or parallel mode. The parallel mode of operation is newly introduced in release 16.0. In FIFO mode, newly generated CDRs are routed to CGF via HDD. In parallel mode, newly generated CDRs from AAA Managers are sent directly to CGF server along with the streamed CDRs from hard disk.

With streaming mode enabled, CDRs are written to HDD when the OCG connectivity is down. Once the OCG connectivity is up, the HDD contents are sent in a FIFO order. New records should be written to disk as long as all contents from disk are not fully flushed. If the disk is completely flushed, the records can be sent to OCG directly.

In the FIFO implementation, CDR streaming works fine but the process of sending the newly generated CDRs to HDD and then to CGF is inefficient. Also, if the CDR generation rate is high and streaming rate is slow, the files in HDD will keep increasing and eventually there will be no space left in hard disk, leading to CDR purging. This can be avoided by sending the newly generated CDRs directly to CGF when streaming from HDD is in progress.

With parallel mode, this behavior is changed to send new CDRs directly to CGF when streaming from HDD is in progress.

The existing CLI command "gtpp storage-server mode streaming" used to set the streaming mode, is extended. The "parallel " keyword used with this command enables the new parallel streaming mode.

In the current implementation, during streaming, GTPP requests are read from HDD and sent to CGF server, till configured max outstanding is reached.

In PARALLEL mode, rate of streaming from HDD will be slow. It is assumed that the billing domain should be capable of handling Out-Of-Order CDRs in parallel streaming mode.

This section describes how to configure the HDD feature.

Important

This feature is disabled by default in the ASR 5500.

In GTPP group mode, an option is added to enable this functionality with local-fallback option to existing gtpp storage-server mode in the ASR 5500:

default gtpp storage-server mode { local | remote | streaming } 

Notes:

This section provides an example configuration to configure EDR/UDR file transfer and file properties parameters, including configuring hard disk support on SMC card on ASR 5500, transfer modes, transfer interval, etc.

To configure EDR/UDR file parameters:

configure 
     context <context_name> 
          edr-module active-charging-service 
               cdr { purge { storage-limit storage_limit | time-limit time_limit } [ max-files max_records_to_purge ] | push-interval push_interval | push-trigger space-usage-percent trigger_percentage | remove-file-after-transfer | transfer-mode { pull [ module-only ] | push primary { encrypted-url encrypted_url | url url } [ [ max-files max_records ] [ module-only ] [ secondary { encrypted-secondary-url encrypted_secondary_url | secondary-url secondary_url } ] [ via local-context ] + ] | use-harddisk } 
               file [ charging-service-name { include | omit } ] [ compression { gzip | none } ] [ current-prefix string ] [ delete-timeout seconds ] [ directory directory_name ] [ edr-format-name ] [ exclude-checksum-record ] [ field-separator { hyphen | omit | underscore } ] [ file-sequence-number rulebase-seq-num ] [ headers ] [ name file_name ] [ reset-indicator ] [ rotation [ num-records number | time seconds | volume bytes ] ] [ sequence-number { length length | omit | padded | padded-six-length | unpadded } ] [ storage-limit limit ] [ single-edr-format ] [ time-stamp { expanded-format | rotated-format | unix-format } ] [ trailing-text string ] [ trap-on-file-delete ] [ xor-final-record ] + 
               exit 
          udr-module active-charging-service 
               cdr { purge { storage-limit storage_limit | time-limit time_limit } [ max-files max_records_to_purge ] | push-interval push_interval | push-trigger space-usage-percent trigger_percentage | remove-file-after-transfer | transfer-mode { pull [ module-only ] | push primary { encrypted-url encrypted_url | url url } [ [ max-files max_records ] [ module-only ] [ secondary { encrypted-secondary-url encrypted_secondary_url | secondary-url secondary_url } ] [ via local-context ] + ] | use-harddisk } 
               file [ charging-service-name { include | omit } ] [ compression { gzip | none } ] [ current-prefix string ] [ delete-timeout seconds ] [ directory directory_name ] [ exclude-checksum-record ] [ field-separator { hyphen | omit | underscore } ] [ file-sequence-number rulebase-seq-num ] [ headers ] [ name file_name ] [ reset-indicator ] [ rotation [ num-records number | time seconds | volume bytes ] ] [ sequence-number { length length | omit | padded | padded-six-length | unpadded } ] [ storage-limit limit ] [ time-stamp { expanded-format | rotated-format | unix-format } ] [ trailing-text string ] [ trap-on-file-delete ] [ udr-seq-num ] [ xor-final-record ] + 
               end 

Notes:

For more information on this command, refer to the Command Line Interface Reference.

This section provides an example configuration to configure CDR file transfer and file properties parameters, including configuring hard disk support on SMC card on ASR 5500, transfer modes, transfer interval, and so on.

Important

This CDR push feature is applicable to all types of CDRs, for example, GCDRs, eGCDRs, PGW/SGW CDRs, SGSN CDRs, etc.

To configure CDR push feature:

configure 
   context context_name 
      gtpp group group_name 
         gtpp storage-server local file { compression { gzip | none } | format { custom1 | custom2 | custom3 | custom4 | custom5 | custom6 | custom7 | custom8 } | name { format string [ max-file-seq-num seq_number ] | prefix prefix } | purge-processed-files [ file-namepattern name_pattern | purge-interval purge_interval ] | push { encrypted-url encrypted_url | url url } [ encrypted-secondary-url encrypted_url | secondary-url url ] [ via-local-context ] | rotation { cdr-count count | time-interval time [ force-filerotation ] | volume mb size } | start-file-seq-num seq_num [ recover-file-seq-num ] [ push-count push_count ] 
         end 

Notes:

• The gtpp storage-server local file push command enables the push mode. This configuration will allow a primary and a secondary server to be configured. When a file transfer to primary fails four times, the transfer of CDR files will automatically be failed over to the secondary server. The transfer will switch back to the original primary after 30 minutes, or if there are four transfer failures to the secondary server.

  Important

  After you configure the gtpp storage-server local file push command, you must save the configuration and then reload the chassis for the command to take effect. For information on saving the configuration file and reloading the chassis, refer to the System Administration Guide for your deployment.

• The keyword [ via-local-context ] is used to specify whether to use the gtpp group's context or use local context to push/reach remote server.

  Important

  If the push is done through GTPP group context then the push rate is lesser compared to via local context, as the HDD is attached to the local context.

  For more information on this command, refer to the Command Line Interface Reference.

• The keyword push-count is used to specify the number of EDR/CDR/UDR files that are transferred to the external storage server during a single SFTP connection.

Important

After you configure gtpp storage-server local file { compression { gzip | none } } CLI command, you must save the configuration and then reload the chassis for the command to take effect. For information on saving the configuration file and reloading the chassis, refer to the System Administration Guide for your deployment.