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Table Of Contents
Network Topology and Inventory
Installation Framework Components
ANA Network Element Information
Additional Package Information
Overview
What Is ANA?
Active Network Abstraction is a resource management platform that serves as an active mediation layer between the operation and network layers. It provides a set of easy-to-use applications and well defined APIs for Operation Support Systems (OSS).
ANA enables service providers to efficiently respond to the constant market demand for new, reliable, and more complex services, while hiding the complexity of large, multivendor, mixed technology networks.
ANA can manage diverse network environments. It offers an integrated process for network modeling, intelligent fault analysis, and a highly flexible network configuration and activation engine. This enables fully correlated management of global scale networks that need to support millions of subscribers and customers.
ANA provides a fully integrated service-oriented offering including:
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Multivendor network element support (physical components that can be managed through an IP address).
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Based on a patented architecture of distributed autonomous virtual network elements (VNEs), ANA enables integration management for multivendor, multi-technology network environment. It also provides scaling according to network growth and evolution. For a description of VNEs, see ANA Architecture.
ANA hides the complexity of large, multivendor, mixed technology networks while allowing you to constantly modify your network in response to the constant market demand for new, reliable, and more sophisticated services.
The user interface provides a normalized view of devices and the network, abstracting out differences and nuances. This makes it easier to view the status, control the configuration, and manage the state of the network and intra-device operations.
How You Can Use ANA
The ANA GUI client applications help you to manage assurance, configuration, and performance of your network. ANA provides standards-based northbound APIs for support integration with OSS and BSS applications. The APIs include a WSDM-based API for inventory, provisioning, and fault OSS integrations.
ANA also provides an SNMP trap forwarding API that provides the ability to send traps to fault management OSS. It is a fully distributed solution that implements parallel processing by creating a virtual model of the network. Your network can continue to grow as you add more autonomous VNEs and units to support network growth.
The following sections describe the main ANA functionalities:
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Network Topology and Inventory
ANA provides views of network topology and inventory information for all network elements being managed.
An auto-discovery program can be used to query the network using networking technologies and seed devices, and discovers all network elements. It then creates the seed file needed to populate the ANA system with information to manage the network elements.
After the network elements are managed, ANA will further discover network topology and the logical inventory of the network and network elements. You can then browse both the physical and logical inventories and view the topology.
ANA provides rich functionality to display and manage topology by providing:
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Administrators can create multiple network domain maps in order to represent specific network and topology views. These network domains can cover specific network segments, customer networks, or any mix of network elements desired. After the network domain maps have been created, they are available for all connecting clients (based on user privileges).
ANA supports Cisco network elements, along with network elements from multiple vendors, across multiple technologies, forming a unified, end-to-end representation of the network. ANA also supports Layer 1 to Layer 3 topologies, including simulations of packet routing and path tracing.
ANA PathTracer enables end-to-end route tracing. After ANA PathTracer receives a path's start and endpoint, it visually traces the route through the network. For more information about ANA PathTracer, see the section Tracing the Packet Path in the Cisco Active Network Abstraction 4.0 User and Administration Guide.
You can extend and customize the set of supported properties for each network element using Soft Properties, by adding new soft properties to the VNEs. These properties extend the ANA model and are available through the GUI client.
In addition, alarm thresholding enables you to constantly monitor selected properties and generate an alarm every time a network element crosses a user-defined threshold or violates a condition. For more information on Soft Properties, see the section, Customizing Network Element Information Using Soft Property Builder in the Cisco Active Network Abstraction 4.0 User and Administration Guide.
You can also use APIs to provide physical and logical inventory information to northbound systems, including setting business tags, providing topology links, and subscribing to inventory change notifications.
Faults
ANA detects and identifies faults in the network using a combination of traps, syslog, and heartbeat-type polls to the network elements. After interpreting these events and applying correlation rules, ANA uses the Ticket Browser and the Alarm/Event Viewer to display active alarms in the network.
In addition, alarm status is propagated to the representation of the network element in the Object Tree View and network domain maps.
The following terms are central to ANA fault management:
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For an operator, the managed entity is always a complete ticket. Operations such as Acknowledge, Force-clear, or Remove are always applied to the entire ticket. The ticket also assumes the overall propagated severity.
When an alarm is raised, ANA correlates it using the network topology and inventory to determine the alarm's root cause, and analyzes the network elements to locate any elements that may be impacted by the alarm.
ANA removes duplicate alarms that result from the same cause. A ticket is identified by the top-most alarm. When you view a ticket in the ANA user interface, you can drill down to review the consequent alarms. For more information see the section, Tracking Faults, in the Cisco Active Network Abstraction 4.0 User and Administration Guide.
For northbound systems, you can forward ANA events in SNMP V2 trap format and subscribe to event and ticket notifications across the WSDM-based API.
Configuration
ANA configuration components provide the ability to monitor and make changes to network elements. Configuration components include:
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For bigger tasks, you can also create workflows of tasks that call multiple activation scripts to perform configuration changes on multiple network elements. You can run activation scripts sequentially, in parallel, on demand, or at a scheduled time. Workflows are stored on the gateway, where you can check its properties and status.
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Performance
You can use ANA to perform on-demand collections of performance statistics, and then display them in the inventory. You can extend and customize the data that is collected for different network elements using Soft Properties. You can also customize alarm thresholds to monitor selected properties and generate an alarm every time a network element crosses a user-defined threshold or violates a condition.
Administration
The system provides infrastructure software and tools for scheduling jobs, logging, auditing, backing up and restoring data, and managing licenses. Administrators can create users and control permissions by assigning these users a combination of predefined roles and scopes:
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ANA also provides a high availability mechanism to protect the system in case a unit malfunctions. If the unit is configured for high availability (by being assigned to a protection group), ANA will switch over to the standby unit, with no loss of information to the system.
ANA Architecture
Figure 1-1 illustrates the ANA platform's three layer architecture.
Figure 1-1 ANA Architecture
First Layer
The top layer comprises the commercial and legacy OSS and BSS applications, as well as the ANA clients. The ANA solution enables OSS and BSS applications to integrate with the platform, through a set of well-defined, standard-based APIs.
Second Layer
The second layer is comprised of the gateway server, through which all the OSS and BSS applications and our clients access the ANA fabric. Each client connects to its designated gateway. The gateway acts as the portal through which all clients, including any OSS and BSS applications, access the system. It enforces access control and security for all connections and manages client sessions.
The gateway maintains a repository for keeping system settings, topological data and snapshots of active alarms and events. Another important function of the gateway is to map network resources to the business context. This enables ANA to contain information that is not directly contained in the network (such as VPNs and subscribers) and display it to northbound applications.
The gateway also contains the alarms and events in the system. For information on managing the gateway, the section, Managing the Gateway, in the Cisco Active Network Abstraction 4.0 User and Administration Guide.
Third Layer
The third layer is comprised of the interconnected fabric of unit servers. Each unit manages a group of network elements. The units are distributed in a way that ensures proximity to their network elements.The gateway is connected to the units, which host the autonomous Virtual Network Elements (VNEs).
The units are interconnected to form a fabric of VNEs, which can inter-communicate with other VNEs regardless of which unit they are running on. Each unit can host thousands of autonomous VNE processes, depending on the server system size and VNE type)
The units also allow for optimal VNE distribution, ensuring geographic proximity between the VNE and its managed network element. ANA also provides a high availability mechanism to protect the system in case a unit malfunctions.
If the unit is configured for high availability, ANA will switch over to the redundant standby unit, with no loss of information. For more information about high availability, see the section Managing Protection Groups (for Unit High Availability) in the Cisco Active Network Abstraction 4.0 User and Administration Guide. For information on managing the units, see the section Managing Unit (and High Availability) in the Cisco Active Network Abstraction 4.0 User and Administration Guide.
Within the unit are AVMs. AVMs are Java processes that provide the necessary distribution support platform for executing and monitoring multiple VNEs. VNE containers and VNEs should reside on an ANA unit (as a common configuration) but they can also reside on an ANA gateway. For information on managing AVMs, see the section Managing AVMs in the Cisco Active Network Abstraction 4.0 User and Administration Guide.
The VNEs are the entities that maintain a live model of each network element and of the entire network. A VNE is a software entity that runs as a completely autonomous process within an ANA unit. Each VNE is assigned to manage a single network element instance, and contains a replica of that element.
The VNE uses whatever southbound management interfaces the network element implements (for example, SNMP or Telnet). For information on managing VNEs, see the section Managing VNEs in the Cisco Active Network Abstraction 4.0 User and Administration Guide.
ANA Package Contents
The ANA package has the following contents:
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Installation Framework Components
The ANA installation framework contains the following components:
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ANA uses Macrovision InstallAnywhere 8.0 as the installer framework.
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The components installed as part of the gateway installation are:
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Consists mainly of VNE drivers and supporting jar files.
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ANA uses Macrovision InstallAnywhere 8.0 as the uninstaller framework.
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Comprises mainly of the License Manager. By default, ANA is installed without a license and the License Manager treats a system with no license as an evaluation system for 90 days from the day you first start the system.
As part of the gateway post-install tasks, the License Manager starts, and once it is active, it handles the licensing. The License Manager will also allow customers to update the system with a valid license.
Installation DVD
The installation DVD covers the installation of all the system components:
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Before starting the installation procedure, verify the following:
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The customer supplied Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.1.0 - 64bi with partitioning option must be installed on the gateway machine or on a remote machine, before starting the Cisco ANA installation. For more information see "Cisco ANA 4.0 Installation Prerequisites".
ANA Network Element Information
The Reference Guide for Cisco Active Network Abstraction Device Support Packages contains extensive details about the support provided by ANA, to help you manage your network. This information includes:
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This guide also lists the schemes that are supported by ANA. A VNE's scheme is designated when the VNE is added to ANA. (Each VNE is assigned to manage a single network element instance, and contains a replica of that element.)
The physical and logical information that a VNE discovers is based on the scheme, because it determines which part of a network element will be discovered and added to the ANA model. The scheme may be a subset of the information available on the network element
Since the reference guide is constantly updated as new support becomes available, you should refer to the copy on Cisco.com.
Device support packages provide ANA with the information it needs to support new network element types and enhance the manageability of existing network types—without your having to wait for the next release of ANA.
The device support packages contain the property files, software, and metadata needed by ANA to extend its VNE layer. For information on these packages, see Additional Package Information.
Additional Package Information
ANA updates can contain new features, new device support, and patches for existing problems. You can download updates from Cisco.com as they become available. After you install an update, it cannot be uninstalled.
These updates are installed using scripts and are performed by Cisco Professional Services, to ensure that the system does not become misconfigured. For more information, contact Cisco Professional Services.
To view the current version of your software, choose Help > About.
You can check for new device support packages by logging in to Cisco.com and pointing your browser to:
Posted: Mon Sep 24 21:04:17 PDT 2007
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