Case Studies
Java-based Element Management System (EMS)
Company
The client is a leading supplier of Ethernet, IP, and Application Switches for blade server systems globally.
" Calsoft Labs has played a leading role in developing the management software for our switch products. Calsoft’s expertise in NSM/EMS technologies as well as their project execution methodologies helped us d e l i ver pr oducts exceeding expectations to the market in a timely and cost-effective manner. I am extremely happy with their team’s professionalism and would highly recommend their services."
EMS/NMS
Project Manager
Challenge
With hundreds of devices per deployment of various switch modules, the client faced a unique challenge in providing an effective as well as centralized management system to administer and monitor their wide range of switch modules.
Solution
Calsoft Labs's expertise in network management enabled the client to quickly build an element management system to address the business challenges.
Calsoft Labs's engineering team designed and implemented a Java-based Element Management System (EMS), which facilitated a centralized administration of client’s switches in a single chassis or across large server deployments. The solution offered by Calsoft Labs had an extensible architecture for effortlessly supporting client’s future product lines.
The Element Management System’s key features included:
- Platform independent GUI for simplified device configuration and fault management
- Automatic discovery of the switches using IP address range and subnet
- Centrally upgrade firmware and configure to multiple switches simultaneously, optionally via schedule
- Central backup configurations from multiple switches simultaneously, optionally via schedule
- Configure and monitor entire layer 2 and layer 3 features
- Collect, display, and graph real-time performance statistics
- Centralized fault management like Device status/health, events
- Use of the industry standard SNMP (all versions: v1, v2c and v3) for management
- Context sensitive online help for all parameters
User Interfaces Highlights
Main Interface
The EMS simplifies management of configuring tasks resulting in lesser keystrokes and errors and spendless time troubleshooting the switch configurations.
Auto-discovery
The EMS discovers all client switches on a given network by IP subnet and IP address range. The UI allows the user to configure multiple ranges of addresses to include and exclude from auto discovery.
Custom Grouping using Domains
All client switches that are discovered can be grouped in a way that is logical for customer’s network, whether it is by physical or logical domain. It also allows the creation of domains within domains, and perform switch operations on any group.
Switch configurations and upgrades in groups
The EMS enables the user to organize switches of the same type into logical and physical groups to schedule upgrades, downgrades, and configure changes concurrently. It also tracks the success and failure of the upgrade process for each switch and reports the results.
Monitor and graph switch performance
The EMS Summary View lets the user to visualize traffic flow, CPU utilization, ARP and Routing table utilization, and sysLog messages at a glance.
The Monitoring functions allow the user to view all performance statistics and attributes kept in the switch, by:
- Tearing off monitoring windows from multiple switches for a side-by-side comparison of traffic flow
- Filtering table views to limit information in large tables for easier monitoring
- Generating graphs of polling tables, which are updated and displayed at configurable intervals
- Displaying multiple attributes on the same graph
- Exporting data in a polling table to a spreadsheet for further analysis
Switch Version Report
The switch version report provides an audit report of all the discovered switches by IP Address, status, description, name, location, image version and hardware serial number.
Result
With the Calsoft Labs team taking up the EMS, the client was able to deliver the element management solution in time to their customers. The product found good customer acceptance and this resulted in a prolonged business relationship between Calsoft Labs and the client as Calsoft Labs is working on architecting and implementing the next-generation EMS/NMS.