The Event Manager provides unprecedented event processing performance that enables NetOmniaTM to manage large communication networks and IT infrastructure.
It collects alarms and events from various device types, maps them into a common format and notifies the NOC staff of every event in the entire infrastructure in real-time. It also provides a number of useful business functions that help operational staff collaborate on problem-resolution. The operations staff has all required information in a single place and can focus on resolving problems, instead of compiling the data. Outlined below are the key features of Event Manager.
DASH BOARDS :
The Dash Board provides a bird's eye summarized view of the network and infrastructure at all times. The operations staff can use simple, context-sensitive trees to view domain-specific information and drill down to see event details. Several presentation formats are available to fit the needs of each operator.
ACTIVE ALARMS :
The Active Alarms is a list of all current problems. An alarm is added to the Active Alarms list after being qualified and translated. Each alarm consists of all the data sent by the device, the associated time stamps and all relevant administrative data needed for alarm management.
EVENT CUSTOMIZATION :
Extensive customization functions are provided to add business context to the events such as severity of a problem, indications as to whether an alarm is service-affecting or not and the probable cause. These rules are defined for each device type being managed.
EVENT TRANSLATORS :
The Event Translators feature allows for the translation of cryptic, raw data generated by the infrastructure turn it into useful information. For example: Device alarm reports that follow non-standard formats can be translated to standard formats for ease of use.
SUPPRESSION :
A typical NOC receives several thousands of events a day. Often times only a small percentage of these events are business impacting in nature. The event manager offers several suppression mechanisms to minimize information overload in the NOC. The user can decide to view suppressed, unsuppressed and all events at any time. The suppressed alarm list offers the list of events that pass the service root-cause analysis criterion and enable the operations staff to quickly identify the faults.
EVENT THRESHOLDS :
The Event Thresholds allows configurable alarm thresholds to be set for each network device end-point and application. The threshold policies can be defined to include a combination of criteria such as failures within a given time period, repetitive failures and/or alarm duration within a time period. The alarms are displayed in the active alarm list once they pass the threshold criteria.
DE-DUPLICATION :
Several devices forward the same event repetitively over a period of time. Needless to say, this is unnecessary workload to the operations staff. The De-duplication functionality in the Event Manager automatically suppresses duplicate alarms.
ENRICHMENT :
The event information can be augmented by adding custom fields that provide the operations staff with additional information to understand issues and their impact, without having to swivel chair or lookup information in other systems. This information might include customer information, circuit id and business priority of the problem. The default event behavior can also be modified by overriding the network assigned alarm severity.
CLEAR ALARM CORRELATION :
The Clear Alarm feature removes all cleared alarms from the active alarm list automatically without operator intervention. This allows the operations staff to focus on outstanding problems instead of spending time manually correlating and removing the events from the active alarm list.
FILTERS :
Every user can define and apply Filters to the Active Alarm and Alarm History views. A simple expression can be used to define specific filter criterion using any alarm object attributes and logical (AND, OR) operations.
USER CUSTOMIZATION :
Every event object includes several device, domain and business specific attributes. With NetOmniaTM users can customize the event page to see only information that is relevant to their job function.
OWNERSHIP ASSIGNMENT :
To manage several thousand events a day in a multi-user environment requires business process integration. This feature permits the NOC managers to assign events to relevant users for resolution.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT :
The user to whom the event is assigned can indicate acceptance by acknowledging the event, thus allowing the NOC managers to track the outstanding problems by the state of the events.
PRIORITIZATION :
Events reported by devices don't have a business context. To make sure the most business-impacting issues are processed with urgency, the Event Manager allows the operations staff to define and assign business priorities to the events. The operations staff can then prioritize the event resolution so that the most important customer issues are resolved first.
ANNOTATION :
An event life cycle may include many device and user initiated transitions and recording such transitions help operations staff analyze the event at a later time. The event annotation is used to capture all updates to the event. The operator notes can also be added to selected event or group of events. This information persists in the event history database even after the event is cleared from active alarm list.
DEFERMENT :
This functionality allows users to administratively suppress certain events for a specified duration from the active alarm list. Once the duration is complete, the events are unsuppressed unless cleared by the device.
TROUBLE TICKET INTEGRATION :
The Event Manager can integrate with any 3rd Party trouble ticket system. With a single click the NOC staff can create, update and close trouble tickets from Event Manager. The reference number of the trouble ticket number is automatically added to the event record.
EVENT HISTORY :
The Event History stores all event information for as long as it is needed, allowing the NOC staffs to generate long-running reports and history queries that help in identify reoccurring problems and meet regulatory obligations. The Event History keeps the history of activity performed on the event during its lifecycle, including various operations performed and its resolution.
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