Application Manager
Application Manager Features
The Application Manager features a powerful and highly scalable database system. It acts as the system’s data warehouse and stores all metric information and KPIs. The system architecture can handle Terabytes worth of detailed quality data records (QDRs). It is thus possible to store and process weeks of QDRs even in networks with hundreds of millions of call minutes per day. CSPs gain time for troubleshooting and taking care of customer requests – regardless of their call volume.
The Application Manager offers a web-based user interface to access and control the system features. It allows drilling down from a high-level view of the service quality down to QDRs, i.e. single 5 s segments of individual streams. In this manner, impairments and their sources can be located almost instantly. The powerful reporting application is used to export the relevant data for documentation and further analysis.
The alarming application notifies users and third party systems of voice quality degradations and transport performance issues. The application’s wizard helps to define custom alarms based on numerous triggers conditions.
The special business value of VOIPFUTURE’s alarming application comes from the detail of the underlying voice metric. Due to its unsurpassed accuracy, early warning alarms can be defined, that are triggered by (seemingly minor) events, which do not yet have an impact on the user experience. Such events can however be indicators for conditions that may eventually lead to major service quality degradations. Such an early warning indicator can be time-correlated single packet loss on an otherwise perfect interconnection trunk. If such warnings are considered in time, CSPs can benefit from more effective operations and their customers from higher service quality.
In combination, these features enable pro-active quality assurance of VoIP services. CSPs are able to identify the origin of voice impairments and can document network and service performance. Being able to assign responsibilities at domain boundaries is crucial for implementing effective voice quality SLAs.
Finally the Application Manager also provides interfaces to OSS/BSS and other third party systems.
Application Manager Appliances
The Application Manager software supports two types of hardware appliances: the Series 3000 and Series 5000 VOIPFUTURE Management Appliances (VMA). The Series 3000 management appliances are recommended for deployments in cost-sensitive enterprise environments. The small and light-weight 1 RU devices are based on SuperMicro servers. Specifically the VMA-3050 is an enterprise-grade appliance with an excellent price/performance ratio. This entry-level solution perfectly matches the requirements of enterprises and small carriers.
The Series 5000 Management Appliances targets multi-probe deployments in large enterprise and carrier environments. The appliances are based on IBM x3550 and x3650 servers with redundant power supplies and a RAID-protected storage system. Corresponding HP Proliant and Dell PowerEdge server configurations are available on request. The VMA-5050 is able to import probe data corresponding to 50,000 concurrent monitored calls. Its internal storage allows to record monitoring data for more than 150 million call minutes. The more powerful VMA-5080 can process up to 100,000 concurrent monitored calls and store relevant data for 600+ million call minutes.
The specifications of these appliances are based on the requirements gathered in typical customer scenarios. The capacity of the Application Manager can be increased simply by adding additional nodes to the database cluster. Custom configurations and storage extensions are available on request.