Network Fault Management

Today we're going to be talking Redcell. While comparisons are nice (and we ALWAYS encourage people who are considering network infrastructure management software to do comparisons!) it's also good to just straight-up answer the question: "Why should I consider buying this product??"

When it comes to mission-critical infrastructure - network or otherwise - the folks running it are necessarily and understandably risk-averse. We wouldn't want it any other way. After all, do we want people to consider sloppy network management solutions for our phone company or airline? At the same time, the quickly evolving nature today's networked world makes it impossible to simply ignore change. At Dorado Software, that's a big part of what we do - help our customers manage network infrastructure change.

Gone are the days of manually running all but the smallest IT networks using hardware from just 1 vendor. Instead, a must-do requirement of any network management or monitoring software should be to be able to manage more than 1 vendor. And to be able to deploy automated network management. We encourage you do do yourself a favor: Save yourself a drive down to the server rack at 2am!

Some of the biggest network concerns center around network security. Especially with prominent equipment vendors such as Cisco. Here are some examples of what Redcell has when it comes to security and fault management:
Regardless of what tool you use, these are functions your current network management software should be able to perform. We encourage you to check out Redcell.

Managing Next-Generation Service Provider Networks 

Problem! Service Providers lose millions of dollars annually because of poor processes during the provisioning process. 

We were just perusing the collection of white papers on the Dorado Software website  and ran across a great write-up regarding lights-out IT Management. If you haven’t seen the actual white paper, you can get it here.

In a nutshell, Lights-Out IT Management is the ability to provide automated remediation including event, configuration, service level and security management in an unattended environment. This helps move IT resources further up the food chain – being able to provide value-add services to the enterprise instead of maintaining the “status quo”.

Lights-Out IT Management also covers the trifecta of IT responsibilities:

• Find – Automatic discovery of all IT infrastructure elements
• Configure – Automatically configure a service and IT infrastructure elements – especially the rote configurations
• Monitor – Maintain a highly-intelligent infrastructure monitoring scheme including Network Availability Management and WAN monitoring.

When implementing Lights-Out IT Management, the major tactical benefits fall into these categories:

• Configuration Management – Reduce / eliminate manual configuration – especially rote configurations
• Event Management – Monitoring events for conditions that may lead to a fault. Proactively take remediation measures.
• Service Level Management – Ensure SLAs are being met and feed violations to a fault management component
• Security Management – Ensure security policies are not being violated.

By converting manual network tasks into automated routines, an IT department can move resources towards customer-facing services and create more value for the enterprise. Automated management tools should be able to handle these tasks:

• An integrated system that supports find, configure and monitor functions
• Support for customizable user interface
• Multi-vendor, multi-element, multi-domain support
• Service-level awareness and reporting
• Support for virtualized environments
• Support for physical and logical network topologies and root cause analysis
• Integrated functionality across the Fault, Configuration, Accounting, Performance, Security (FCAPS) model and Service Level Management
• The ability to assist in the rapid creation and/or modification of a service
• Support of a sophisticated CMDB
• A high degree of automation within each function and across functions
• Ease of integration with other network management tools

Of course, Dorado software is a prime candidate for these operations and can help an IT department realize improved efficiencies and higher levels of service.

A sampling of other white papers at the Dorado website:

Impact of Carrier Ethernet on Service Providers

The Complete Network Assessment

The One Hour Network Assessment

Dorado gets another mention by people in the know. This time it’s from SearchNetworking.com. In the current article on TechWatch, it explains how to choose and implement automated configuration management tools.

Especially interesting is how Dorado already meets the majority of the items needing consideration. Such as:

•  A successful closed loop configuration management tool (CLCM) includes detailed templates that perform the actions and specify a set of conditions that must be met. Check.
• Actions to be taken based on several conditions including, in the event of a failure, returning the network to previous configuration. Got that.
• Integration between configuration tools, fault management tools including auto discovery. With Dorado’s suite of network tools, all this can be handled from a single console.

We’re glad to see the increasing press on our line of network management, configuration, monitoring and asset inventory products. A great product deserves great press!