> PPT Administration
> This chapter provides information on how to perform the administrative tasks on Cisco Policy Provisioning Tool (PPT). Being an integrated part of the Cisco’s Policy Control and Charging (PCC) solution, it is required that all other components including Intelligent Policy Control Function (IPCF) and Subscriber Service Controller (SSC) are setup efficiently for flawless communication to one another.
> This chapter includes the following topics:

> • | IPCF Setup

> • | SSC Setup

> • | User Administration

> • | SNMP-MIB Traps for PPT

> IPCF Setup
> The Intelligent Policy Control Function (IPCF) provides policy control and charging rule function in a core network. IPCF acts as a PCRF (Policy and Charging Rule Function) supplemented with usage monitoring capability that enables policies around data consumption.
> In the Cisco’s PCC deployment, the PPT facilitates the network operator the creation of a local library of rules/rulebases and APNs which exist on Policy Control Enforcement Function (PCEF) so that they can be used for policy configuration. Acting on the HTTPS request from the PPT client, the PPT server interacts with the IPCF using CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) communication and responds to the PPT client using HTTPS response.
> Important: For more detailed information on IPCF and configuration example, please refer the IPCF Administration Guide.
> In order to configure the IPCF function using PPT UI, following information is required:

> • | IPCF Name: is the name of IPCF. User can specify any name by which this IPCF is to be identified.

> • | IP Address: is the IOP address (IP address for CORBA communication) of the machine running IPCF suite. The user can retrieve it by executing the “show orbem status” command on CLI of IPCF machine. A sample output of this command is shown below:

> Service State : On
> Management Functions : FCAPS
> IOP Address : 10.4.10.35
> SSL Port : 12125
> TCP Port : 12126
> Session Timeout : 300 secs
> Max Login Attempts : 3
> IIOP Transport : On
> Number of Current Sessions : 0
> Number of Operations Completed : 504
> Number of Events Processed : 0
> Avg Operation Processing time : 7396 usecs
> (last 1000) : 7519 usecs

> • | Port Number: is the TCP port over which the CORBA communication occurs with the IPCF. This setting must be identical to the IIOP port setting on the IPCF. It can also be retrieved using the “show orbem status” command as shown above.

> Important: Alternatively, the IP address and Port number can be taken from the IPCF administrator.
> Caution: In case of the co-location of the Web Element Manager (WEM) and PPT, either WEM has to be installed before PPT so that port 5432 is not available or PPT PostgreSQL should not be installed on port 5432. This is because the port is fixed at 5432 for WEM.

> • | Application Server ID: is the name by which the PPT is identified to the IPCF server. The user can retrieve it by executing the “show orbem client table” command on the IPCF machine. It is set by executing following set of (sample) commands on command line interface in EXEC Mode:

> [local]asr5000#configure
> [local]asr5000(config)#orbem
> [local]asr5000(config-orbem)#client id client_id passowrd password
> You can get this information by executing the “show configuration” command. The sample output of this command is shown below:
> orbem
> iiop-transport
> client id STARENT encrypted password 5c4a38dc2ff61f72
> Caution: If the WEM and PPT are co-located, you have to make sure that the application server IDs are different for WEM and PPT for CORBA management.

> • | Application Server Password: is the password set for the ORBEM client configuration as shown in the above sample set of command lines. It is used by the PPT when communicating with the IPCF.

> Important: Alternatively, the application server ID and password information can be taken from the IPCF administrator.

> • | Node Type: for the IPCF can be specified as Primary or Secondary. Only one IPCF can be specified as Primary in PPT. One IPCF has to be Primary, because it is the primary IPCF from which the information is fetched including IPCF objects like profile-policy, QoS-profiles, data-services, timedefs etc. While configuring IPCF objects, a primary IPCF has to be selected, and secondary IPCFs can optionally be selected.

> SSC Setup
> Subscriber Service controller (SSC) is another integrated part of the Cisco’s PCC solution. It is the place where the subscriber profile information resides along with the service usage related data. With the subscriber data in place, SSC provides the centralized management of subscriber policies, data plans, profile attributes, subscription tier, and quota management for the PPC deployment. SSC also manages the event notification function for PCC by sending the notifications to the subscribers via e-mails and/or text messages (SMS).
> In the PCC deployment, the PPT interacts with the SSC using XML RPC interface. In order to configure the SSC using the PPT UI, following information is required:
> Important: In PPT-SSC communication, the XML RPC protocol uses HTTP as the data transport mechanism.

> • | SSC Name: is the name of the machine where SSC is installed.

> • | Main SSC IP Address: is the IP address of the interface on which main SSC's apache server (profile controller application) is installed and running.

> Important: In a geographic redundant setup, there will be two physical SSCs, each addressable with a different IP address. The two different IP addresses are main and standby IP address. In case of a failover to the redundant SSC, user has to manually change the standby node to active. There is no automatic detection of a failover and therefore once the main node comes up back, user has to manually change that back to active.

> • | Port Number: is the port over which communication occurs with the SSC. On the SSC, this is the port on which the Apache Web server runs. The Apache port is set to 8080 by default.

> • | Standby SSC IP Address: is the IP address of the interface on which standby SSC's apache server (profile controller application) is installed and running. This IP address can be obtained through ‘Listen’ configuration variable in the Apache configuration file “httpd.conf”.

> • | Port Number: is the port over which communication occurs with the standby SSC. On the SSC, this is the port on which the Apache Web server runs. The Apache port is set to 8080 by default.

> Important: IP address and Port information can be retrieved through the Apache configuration file httpd.conf. Alternatively you can contact the SSC administrator for this information.
> User Administration
> User administration section allows the user having superuser privileges to add more users to use PPT application.
> For each user, a unique ID and password is provided. The PPT application allows to add two types of users: Administrator and Operator. Administrator user has the privileges to perform all the possible operations in the PPT, however the operator user is provided the viewing only privileges. The Operator user can not add, delete, or modify any service or configuration using PPT application.
> While adding a new system user for the PPT application, the Session Timeout is also set for the user. This time is set in number of minutes which ranges from 1 to 1440 minutes. With this session timeout setting, the user’s session expires when no request-response happen with PPT client and PPT server for the set session time and the user has to login again to proceed with the PPT application.
> Important: After installation a user is added to the PPT database. The login credentials of this user can be used to create other application users. It is recommended that you change the password for this user on first login. Please contact Cisco support for the default username and password. The default session timeout for this user is 15 minutes.
> The privilege, session timeout, and password for the users added through PPT application can be modified later, however the user ID once provided is not allowed to be modified.
> Change Password
> This is the place from where the administrator can reset the password of any other user. Logged in user can change their own password from the ‘Change Password’ option. If a user forgets the password then he/she will contact the administrator who can then reset the password.
> Debug Information
> The users can collect all sort of log information from this section. For the user’s convenience, to options have been provided for collecting the debug information:

> • | Level 1: Choosing this option, the user can collect logs for application, application installation, Web server, and database.

> • | Level 2: Choosing this option, the user gets all the debug logs collected using Level 1, to the database.

> Audit Trail
> In this particular section of the Administration part, the records of all the operations including loggin in and logging out of the PPT software are stored. Using the filter options, the user can display the desired records in tabular format.
> SNMP-MIB Traps for PPT
> SNMP traps are used to manage and monitor the PPT services in Cisco’s PCC deployment.
> Following is the list of supported SNMP traps along with their respective IDs:
> SNMP Traps and Object IDs

> Traps | Object ID
> starPPTWebserverStart |
> starPPTWebserverStop |
> starPPTWebserverRestarted |
> starPPTDatabaseStart |
> starPPTDatabaseStop |
> starPPTDatabaseRestarted |
> starPPTPSMonStart |
> starPPTPSMonStop |
> starPPTPSMonRestarted |
> starPPTCriticalCondition |
> starPPTDBBackupDestinationNotAccessible |
> starPPTDBBackupNotEnoughDiskSpace |

> ‌
> Important: For more information on PPT traps, please refer the IPCF PPT Application MIB chapter of the Cisco ASR5000 Series SNMP MIB Reference guide.

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