Cisco® MPLS Assurance Manager (MPLS-AM) 1.0 provides a set of tools that you can use to monitor Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) networks and MPLS virtual private networks (VPNs). Cisco MPLS-AM discovers and displays logical inventory information specific to MPLS VPNs, MPLS traffic engineering tunnels, and pseudowires. Cisco MPLS-AM also provides MPLS network fault management tools including impact analysis, multipath tracing, and connectivity outage detection (COD). Cisco MPLS-AM is installed on top of Cisco Active Network Abstraction (ANA) 4.0. Cisco ANA is a flexible, vendor-neutral network resource management solution that serves as an active mediation layer between the operation and network layers and provides applications and APIs for operation support system (OSS) and business support system (BSS) applications.
Overview
Cisco MPLS-AM 1.0 is closely integrated with Cisco ANA 4.0. Cisco MPLS-AM adds MPLS technology-specific extensions and impact analysis to the real-time centralized monitoring and root-cause functionality of Cisco ANA. With Cisco MPLS-AM, service providers and enterprises can expand the scope of Cisco ANA to simplify the network resource assurance operations for complex MPLS VPN and MPLS core networks.
Cisco MPLS-AM 1.0 extends Cisco ANA to deliver:
• Logical inventory information specific to VPNs
• Discovery and monitoring of MPLS traffic engineering tunnels
• Discovery and monitoring of pseudowire end-to-end emulation tunnels
• Service impact analysis
• MPLS service view that allows users to navigate into specific VPNs and view information about the business elements contained in each VPN
• Multipath tracing capability using the Service Path Tracer tool
• Additional Cisco MPLS-AM-specific APIs that provide access to MPLS VPN, traffic engineering, and pseudowire inventory information, as well as impact analysis data. These APIs are integrated into the Cisco ANA northbound interface framework and are available through the Cisco ANA Integration Software Development Kit (SDK) and its associated developer program.
Integration with Cisco ANA
Offered as a network service management application for Cisco ANA, Cisco MPLS-AM extends the Cisco ANA root-cause analysis functionality to MPLS technology and adds impact analysis. With the addition of Cisco MPLS-AM 1.0, Cisco ANA will identify affected services and network paths. In particular, Cisco MPLS-AM will identify the primarily affected MPLS VPN customer site (the customer site connected to the affected Virtual Route Forwarding [VRF] table), other potentially affected MPLS VPN customer sites based on the discovered VPN topology among the customer sites, affected pseudowire tunnels, and traffic engineering tunnels.
Cisco ANA users will find information about affected sites or network paths within the context of the Cisco ANA ticket user interface. Users will be able to navigate from a ticket to the information about affected services using tabs from the Cisco ANA root-cause ticket. Cisco MPLS-AM further adds service inventory views to the Cisco ANA user interface to help users visualize the topology among MPLS VPN sites or view the paths of given pseudowire and traffic engineering tunnels.
Extending the already comprehensive and unique combination of topology-based and rule-based correlation features offered by Cisco ANA, Cisco MPLS-AM delivers MPLS discovery, inventory, impact analysis, and topology visualization capabilities that further ease the challenging task of assuring a network's ability to deliver MPLS-based services to end users.
Association with Cisco Assurance Management Solution
While not adding any particular, pair-wise integration among the Cisco MPLS-AM and the manager-of-managers components of the upcoming Cisco Assurance Management Solution (AMS) version, Cisco MPLS-AM extends the already comprehensive and unique combination of topology-based and rule-based correlation features offered by Cisco ANA 4.0. Cisco ANA 4.0 will be a component contained within the next version of Cisco AMS.
By extending the scope of Cisco ANA 4.0, Cisco MPLS-AM will offer users of the upcoming Cisco AMS version access to information about affected sites or network paths within the context of the Cisco ANA ticket user interface. Cisco MPLS-AM further adds service inventory views to the Cisco ANA user interface that are accessible to Cisco AMS users to help visualize the topology among MPLS VPN sites or view the paths of given pseudowire and traffic engineering tunnels.
Key Features and Benefits
Cisco MPLS-AM 1.0 provides the features and benefits listed in Table 1.
• Logical role assignment (for example, customer edge, provider edge) added to network elements
• Accurate representation of logical MPLS configurations based on "what is" information derived from network element configurations and states
• Fault and impact analysis based on actual service topology to help guide network operations users to high priority network fault conditions with greater accuracy
MPLS VPN impact analysis
• Endpoint/site affected by the alarm
• VPN sites affected based on discovered VPN service topology
• Enrich ticket with affected VPNs and affected sites
• Quick determination of extent of service degradation caused by a network fault condition.
• Beyond simply identifying the customer VPN site closest to the network fault, Cisco MPLS-AM also calculates secondary effects on customer sites based on the logical VPN topology among customer sites.
• Impact information is automatically added to the Cisco ANA ticket to allow network operations center (NOC) users and process analysts to assess the effects of network faults and identify network regions with high impact potential.
Pseudowire monitoring
• Pseudowire status
• Display of discovered pseudowires
• Enrich ticket with affected endpoint on pseudowires (if defined)
• Offers visibility into logical pseudowire tunnels across an MPLS core network
• Extending the ability of Cisco ANA to narrow a problem down to a network element component, Cisco MPLS-AM provides alerts when conditions prevent traffic from being carried through pseudowire tunnels across the MPLS core.
• Identifies access points (if defined) to an affected pseudowire tunnel to determine the affected service or user
Traffic engineering tunnel monitoring
• Traffic engineering tunnel status
• Display of discovered traffic engineering tunnels
• Enrich ticket by identifying tunnel as primary or secondary tunnel
• Offers visibility into logical TE tunnels across an MPLS core network
• Extending the ability of Cisco ANA to narrow a problem down to a network element component, Cisco MPLS-AM provides alerts when conditions prevent traffic from being carried through TE tunnels across the MPLS core.
• Indicates affected tunnel as primary or secondary tunnel to help identify the priority of the affected tunnel
Connectivity outage detection
• Enable Cisco IOS® IP Service Level Agreements (SLAs) label switched path (LSP) Health Monitor probes on provider edge (PE) devices
• Monitor the MPLS core LSP connectivity
• Enable VRF-aware IP SLA probes on PE devices
• Test attachment circuits and VPN connectivity
• Facilitates the use of network element resident MPLS connectivity assurance capabilities
• Extends monitoring of MPLS network resources from passively listening to or polling for events to actively monitoring the network's ability to carry traffic across the MPLS core and across attachment circuits
Service Path Tracer
• Trace the path of a packet across the VPN, pseudowire, or traffic engineering tunnels
• Assists in visualizing the path that network traffic should take across a given VPN or MPLS pseudowire or traffic engineering tunnel, based on the Cisco ANA record of the network configuration
Extensibility
• Because Cisco MPLS-AM extends Cisco ANA, Cisco MPLS-AM can be added to the upcoming version of Cisco AMS. Customers may expand Cisco AMS to include additional fault and assurance functionality of Tivoli Netcool or Cisco Info Center.
• Cisco MPLS-AM extends the Cisco ANA set of APIs, which are available through the Cisco ANA Integration Software Development Kit and its associated developer program.
Product Availability
Cisco MPLS-AM software begins shipping November 20, 2007. Customers can order Cisco MPLS-AM 1.0 through local Cisco account representatives as of November 9, 2007.
Ordering Information
Cisco MPLS-AM 1.0 software is targeted to the service provider marketplace. For more information on Cisco MPLS-AM and ordering details, please see the data sheet at http://www.cisco.com/go/mpls-am or contact the product marketing group at ask-ana@cisco.com.
For More Information
For more information about Cisco MPLS-AM, please visit http://www.cisco.com/go/mpls-am, contact your local Cisco account representative, or write to the product marketing group at ask-ana@cisco.com.
For more information about Cisco ANA, please visit http://www.cisco.com/go/ana or contact your local Cisco account representative.
For more information about Cisco Assurance Management Solution, please visit http://www.cisco.com/go/ams or contact your local Cisco account representative.
For more information about the Cisco ANA developer program or the Cisco ANA Integration SDK, please visit http://www.cisco.com/go/ana-sdk.
To become a member of the Cisco ANA developer program, independent software vendors and system integrators must register for the Cisco ANA developer program at http://www.cisco.com/go/ana-sdk, while Cisco ANA end users should contact their Cisco account manager for further details.
