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Cisco Active Network Abstraction Administrator Guide, 3.6.6
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Preface
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Introducing Cisco ANA
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Getting Started with Cisco ANA Manage
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Deploying Cisco ANA
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Using Cisco ANA Manage Tables
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Managing Cisco ANA Units
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Managing AVMs and VNEs
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Managing Global Settings
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Managing Links
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Managing Workflows
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Managing Security
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Managing the Event Listener
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System Health Diagnostics
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Purging the Database
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System Security Events
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Backup and Restore
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Utility Scripts
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Golden Source Registry
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Ports Used by Cisco ANA
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Drools Rules Engine
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Using High Availability
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VNE Persistency Mechanism
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Index
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Table Of Contents
Introducing Cisco ANA
This chapter describes the Cisco Active Network Abstraction (Cisco ANA) platform and architecture. In addition, it provides a brief explanation of the terms used throughout this guide. The Cisco ANA Manage maintenance application is part of an overall Cisco solution, so a brief overview of Cisco ANA is provided to aid in understanding the Cisco ANA Manage environment.
This chapter contains the following sections:
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Additional Concepts and Terms
Note
Introduction
Cisco ANA is a carrier-class network management platform, designed to serve as an active mediation layer between the operation and network layers. It provides a set of easy-to-use applications as well as well defined application programming interfaces (APIs) for Operations Support System (OSS), enabling carriers and service providers to efficiently respond to the constant market demand for new, reliable, and more sophisticated services, while hiding the complexity of large, multivendor, mixed-technology networks.
Cisco ANA provides solutions for diverse network environments and applications. It offers an integrated network and service autodiscovery for network modeling, intelligent fault analysis, and a highly flexible network configuration and activation engine.This enables fully correlated management of global scale networks supporting millions of subscribers and customers.
Cisco ANA is a network management solution that provides a fully integrated service-oriented solution offering:
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Based on a patented, innovative architecture of distributed autonomous virtual network elements (VNEs), Cisco ANA enables integrated management for hybrid network environments while being scalable to support network growth and evolution.
Cisco ANA includes the following functionality:
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The Cisco ANA platform architectural diagram and functional blocks are displayed in Figure 1-1.
Figure 1-1 Cisco ANA Architecture
Cisco ANA Components
The Cisco ANA system includes key components, as follows:
Autonomous VNEs
Autonomous VNEs are software entities that run as a completely autonomous process within the Cisco ANA units. Each VNE is assigned to manage a single NE instance using the southbound management interfaces that the NE implements, such as Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) or Telnet. Autonomous VNEs are entities that maintain a live model of each NE and of the entire network.
As the VNE loads, it starts investigating the NE and automatically builds a live model of the NE, including its physical and logical inventory, its configuration, and its status. Following device investigation, the VNEs begin to negotiate with peer VNEs, which represent the peer NEs determining the connectivity and topology at different layers. This model of the network topology, device state, and device inventory is constantly being updated by the VNEs, which track every change that occurs in the NE or in the network.
Messaging between VNEs is used for running different end-to-end flows to provide information for root cause and impact analysis, service path tracing, and more.
Cisco ANA Servers
Cisco ANA uses two server types, each performing different activities:
Cisco ANA Gateway
The Cisco ANA gateway serves as the gateway through which all clients, including any OSS/BSS applications as well as the Cisco ANA clients, can access the system. The gateway is an extended Cisco ANA unit. It enforces access control and security for all connections and manages client sessions. In addition, it functions as a repository for storing configuration, network, and system events and alarms.
Another important function of the gateway is to map network resources to the business context. This enables Cisco ANA to contain information that is not directly contained in the network (such as VPNs and subscribers) and display it to northbound applications.
Cisco ANA Unit
The main purpose of Cisco ANA units is to host autonomous VNEs. Units are interconnected to form a fabric of VNEs that can communicate with other VNEs regardless of the unit they are running on. Each unit can host thousands of autonomous VNE processes (depending on the server system size). Units also allow for optimal VNE distribution, ensuring geographic proximity between the VNE and its managed NE.
Cisco offers a clustered N+m high availability mechanism for use with Cisco ANA. When this high availability mechanism is implemented, unit availability is established in the gateway, running a protection manager process, which continuously monitors all units in the network. After the protection manager detects a unit that is malfunctioning, it automatically signals one of the m servers in its cluster to load the configuration of the faulty unit (from the system registry), taking over all its managed NEs. The switchover to the redundant standby unit does not result in any loss of information in the system, as all information is autodiscovered from the network, and no persistent storage synchronization is required. When a unit is configured, it can be designated as being an active or standby unit.
For more information about obtaining this high availability feature for use with Cisco ANA, contact your Cisco Account Manager. For more information about implementing this feature in your Cisco ANA environment, see Appendix F, "Using High Availability."
Cisco ANA Clients
Cisco ANA provides a comprehensive suite of GUI applications to manage the network:
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The clients support automatic client updates from the gateway using Web Start. When connecting with a gateway application, the system verifies that the client version is the latest available, and if an upgrade is required, the system automatically updates the clients from the gateway.
Cisco ANA Manage
Cisco ANA Manage is the GUI tool used for performing various system administration activities for simple system control. It provides an interface for performing the following tasks:
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Additional Concepts and Terms
The sections below include additional concepts and terms used in Cisco ANA Manage and throughout this guide.
AVM
Cisco ANA units are divided into AVMs. These AVMs are Java processes that provide the necessary distribution support platform for executing and monitoring multiple VNEs. AVMs and VNEs reside on a Cisco ANA unit as a common configuration, but they can also reside on a Cisco ANA gateway.
Some types of AVMs run on the server, but do not run VNEs. These AVMs have reserved ID numbers (AVM 0-100) and these cannot be used. In addition, there are other reserved AVM ID numbers. The following AVMs have special roles assigned to them:
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Element Management
Element management is the base configuration required to create the managed element. For example, Cisco ANA Manage enables users to create VNEs by entering their IP address, SNMP, and polling rate information.
License
Cisco ANA client applications and Broadband Query Language (BQL) connectivity are based on installed license files. Cisco ANA Manage enables you to control and monitor the number of client and BQL connections over a limited or unlimited period of time based on the client licenses installed. The following license types are supported:
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For more information, see Managing Client Licenses, page 7-1.
Managed Element
After Cisco ANA Manage installs and runs the process, samples the device, and collects the data, a VNE, or managed element, is created. This managed element includes logical inventory (such as forwarding tables) and physical inventory (such as modules and ports), and can be accessed using Cisco ANA NetworkVision.
Network Element
A network element is a network component that exists in the network; for example, the devices displayed in Cisco ANA and in Cisco ANA NetworkVision.
Network Element Components
Network element components are components of an NE, such as ports, blades, or contexts.
Permission
Permission is the user's ability to perform certain tasks. There are two types of permissions:
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Polling Group
A polling group is a group of polling rates that can be specified for a device. For more information, see Polling Groups Overview, page 7-6.
Polling Intervals
Unit servers poll NEs to discover and display accurate and up-to-date network information. The system periodically triggers polling at set intervals. Cisco ANA provides three out-of-the-box polling intervals for VNEs. For more information, see Polling Groups Overview, page 7-6.
Protection Group
A protection group is a cluster of related units and standby units. In case of unit failover, the redundant unit is taken from the same protection group.
Redundant Unit
Cisco ANA units come with built-in redundancy for maximum uptime and automatic switching. A threshold-configurable watchdog constantly monitors the units and gateway, and can perform an automatic or manual (operator-approved) switchover when there is no response from the monitored entity. The system is always current via real-time network investigation. The redundancy mechanism ensures synchronization of the active and backup units. Once activated, the standby node is immediately synchronized with the network.
Roles
Cisco ANA implements a security engine that combines a role-based security mechanism that is applied on the scopes of NEs granted per user. The system supports user account creation, multiple NE scope definitions, and a set of five predefined roles for security and access control to allow different system functions:
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Roles can be granted per scope or at an application level (default permission) for all activities that are related to GUI functionality, not the activities related to devices. The default permission includes:
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Scopes
A scope is a named collection of managed NEs that have been grouped so that a user can view and manage the NEs according to their specified role. Grouping can be based on geographical location, NE type (such as router or software), NE category (such as access or core), or any other division according to the network administrator's requirements.
Using Cisco ANA NetworkVision, a user who has been assigned a scope can view and manage the NEs within this scope according to the role assigned to the user. The user cannot view any information regarding NEs, including basic properties, inventory, or alarms, that are outside the user's scope.
Static Link
A static link is a physical link that is not automatically discovered by the system. The user manually creates the static link between NEs by selecting the two end ports from the NE physical inventories.
Transport Link
A transport link is a logical link used for communication between units and for transferring information.
Users
A user must have the following to work with Cisco ANA:
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For more information about users, see Chapter 10, "Managing Security."
Workflow
A workflow consists of several tasks grouped and arranged in a flowchart. All workflows are stored on the gateway. After a workflow is deployed, it can be accessed using Cisco ANA Manage to view its properties and status. Deployed workflow templates can be invoked with the Cisco ANA API using BQL. In addition, the user can view a history of the invoked workflows using Cisco ANA EventVision. For more information, see the Cisco Active Network Abstraction 3.6.6 Customization User Guide.
