CiscoWorks Blue Internetwork Status Monitor (ISM) for NetView is an application that runs on an MVS mainframe and is integrated with NetView, IBM's network management platform, to allow users to manage Cisco routers from the NetView console. ISM brings together the world of mainframe network management with distributed-router management in LAN and WAN topologies.
This chapter provides an overview of how ISM Release 3.0 works and a description of its features and benefits.
This chapter provides the following information about ISM:
Designed for customers with large SNA networks, CiscoWorks Blue ISM enables NetView operators to have full visibility of a Cisco router network from a local or remote NetView domain regardless of whether that router network is routing SNA traffic. The ISM application suite enables a NetView operator to monitor and manage Cisco routers and their interfaces, DSPU resources, and Cisco Mainframe Channel Connections (CMCCs) from a NetView console. ISM operates like a standard NetView application and works in conjunction with many of NetView's components.
ISM provides visibility of the router network through the virtual telecommunications access method (VTAM), and enables management of router resources through a NetView console. To manage routers from NetView, a VTAM connection must be established for each router and the appropriate service point must be defined in the configuration file of each router using Cisco IOS software SNA interface commands. The ISM management environment is established via the service point interface that is integrated into Cisco routers.
ISM allows you to use a NetView console to remotely issue Cisco IOS router commands, which are traditionally entered at a router console. ISM converts these commands to RUNCMDs for communication with the router. The router's service point interface accepts the RUNCMDs issued from a NetView console and transports responses and alerts from the router to the mainframe.
The router responds to the RUNCMDs in the form of network management vector transports (NMVTs), and ISM displays these responses to the mainframe operator in its full-screen panel interface. In addition to responses to RUNCMDS, NMVT alerts are also transported from the router to the mainframe, where ISM provides a connection to the NetView Problem Determination Application (NPDA), NetView's hardware monitor.
For more information on configuring a VTAM connection and verifying the SNA service point of a router, see the CiscoWorks Blue Internetwork Status Monitor Installation Guide.
ISM Release 3.0 provides the following features from a NetView console:
- ISM provides summary of the status of all the routers being monitored by ISM on the ISM Status Summary panel and the Router Status panel. The status panels provide the following features:
- Color-coded status, where the color of the service point name of the router indicates the status of the router
- Drill-down interface to other related ISM panels
- The Router Status panel provides access to an options menu, which makes some of the most commonly used router diagnostic commands easily accessible to a mainframe operator.
- ISM provides an extended summary view that displays a flag next to routers experiencing performance problems. The flag indicates the source of the problem. This feature enables operators to quickly diagnose the performance problems a router may be experiencing.
- Added security support allows operators to be individually authorized to use either the display-only functions of ISM or to use both the display and configuration functions.
- Events sent by routers through ISM are correlated with the routers being managed by ISM to enable operators to easily view those alerts that apply to a specific router.
- Cisco IOS software commands that are typically used to diagnose DSPU and CMCC problems are available via a full-screen interface to make management of these devices simpler.
- ISM provides a command-line interface that enables NetView operators to connect to a router and issue commands that they would normally issue in a Telnet session. This command-line interface does not require TCP/IP at the mainframe.
- The routers displayed on the Router Status panels can be grouped by status or logical group criteria.
- Performance data are periodically collected for routers and interfaces at user-defined monitoring intervals and are viewable from a variety of ISM panels.
- ISM logs router and interface statistics in virtual storage access method (VSAM) for performance analysis. Performance statistics for both the routers and the interfaces enabled in those routers are logged to VSAM data sets. These statistics can be used later for performance analysis.
The following new features and enhancements are contained in this release of ISM:
- Implements four-digit year fields in ISM VSAM key structures.
- Allows you to view the overall status of network resources on a single, color-coded summary panel similar to NetView's STATMON.
- Allows you to disable monitoring of VTAM messages for router status updates. This can reduce the amount of mainframe CPU required to continuously monitor these messages, especially for sites with large networks.
- Allows you to manage the CPU usage that is necessary for monitoring routers by specifying more frequent polling on an individual router basis, such as only for certain critical network routers.
- Provides RIF information for CMCC sessions.
- Maintains the security environment of the router when you are issuing commands from ISM. When TACACS+ is implemented on a router, ISM also requires the userid and password to send privileged-mode commands to that router.
- ISM's CMCC management features include automatic discovery of CMCCs, status and performance monitoring, channel monitoring, and a CMCC and channel connectivity diagram.
- Allows you to monitor 12 types of router interfaces.
- Allows you to manage routers across multiple NetView domains.
- Allows you to set up the CPU and memory thresholds for an individual router (or all routers) and CMCCs.
- Allows you to use NetView's NPDA to monitor alerts detected by the ISM program.
- Implements a number of new enhancements that improve how you work with ISM, including the following new functions:
- Allows you to monitor events tracked internally by ISM, including router status changes and operator audit trails that record changes to ISM management definitions.
- Allows you to capture the contents of router memory to a VSAM data set, which you can browse through NetView.
The ISM program implements a variety of features that provide the following main functions:
The router management function provides dynamic status information for routers that have been defined to or discovered by ISM.
You can use ISM to perform the following tasks:
- Display a list of all the routers in your network, either in a single VTAM domain or multiple domains.
- Display a list of the interfaces enabled in each router.
- Access details about the status of a Cisco router.
- Access details about interfaces enabled in a router.
- Set CPU and memory performance thresholds for routers.
- Set monitoring intervals for routers and interfaces.
- Discover routers automatically through detection of generated alerts.
- Display a list of alerts generated by a router and forwarded to NetView.
- Issue commands to a router.
- Collect the current configuration of a router and access a list of archived configuration files that can be used for disaster recovery.
- View performance history.
The interface monitoring function allows you to monitor the interfaces enabled in the routers in your network. When you configure the ISM management environment, you can specify what types of interfaces you want to monitor and the interval at which you want the interfaces monitored.
You can monitor interfaces by type, such as ATM or Fast Ethernet, or on a per-router basis. You can also display the details about a specific interface and obtain interface history and performance data.
Note During interface monitoring, any new supported interfaces that are discovered by ISM are automatically monitored by ISM.
The types of interfaces you can monitor are:
- Asynchronous
- Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)
- Channel
- Ethernet
- Fast Ethernet
- Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI)
- High-Speed Serial Interface (HSSI)
- Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN)
- Loopback
- Serial
- Token Ring
- Tunnel
For more information on monitoring interfaces, see the "Monitoring Interfaces" chapter. For more information on configuring the ISM management environment, see the "Setting Up the ISM Environment" chapter.
In addition to using standard security features offered by NetView and the Cisco IOS software, ISM provides the following security features:
If an operator bypasses ISM by issuing RUNCMDs directly to a router, the following security issues are created:
- If an authorized user logs in to a router in enabled mode, all operators can issue the authority-level commands to the router.
- Without the ISM interface, there is no queue scheduling. This results in the possibility of any operator receiving data that is being sent in response to a command issued by another operator.
Caution ISM does not preclude you from using any security features provided by your system or NetView. If there is a concern about operators issuing RUNCMDs directly, operator command authorization can be altered in NetView to keep specific operators from issuing specific RUNCMDs and ISM commands. However, the granularity to which operator command scoping can be done may vary depending on the NetView release.
NetView security features utilized by ISM include:
- Operator registration and passwords
- Command facility security
For more information on NetView security features, refer to the appropriate NetView manual.
Cisco IOS software security features used by ISM include the following:
ISM enables you to define router CPU and memory performance thresholds so that when the thresholds are exceeded, the status of the router on the ISM status panels is altered. ISM provides data that enables you to evaluate the performance of the routers, interfaces, and DSPU and CMCC resources in your network.
You can monitor the performance of these resources by:
- Defining CPU and memory performance thresholds for routers and CMCCs and viewing exceptions
- Viewing real-time collected performance data for routers, interfaces, and CMCCs
- Logging, by user-defined intervals, the performance of an interface or router and measuring the results using the archived performance data
- Viewing the details of archived performance data
