Cisco® Transport Manager intelligently supports configuration, fault, performance, and security management functional areas and serves as a foundation for integration into a larger, overall operations support system environment. Cisco Transport Manager manages the latest versions of the Cisco® ONS family of network elements along with MGX Voice Gateway (Figure 1).
Figure 1. A Typical Cisco Transport Manager Deployment
Competitive Differentiation
Cisco Transport Manager distinguishes itself from other device managers in the following ways:
• The only single device manager that manages across Cisco ONS 15000 Series and MGX Voice Gateway
• Manages up to 4000 optical network elements with 100 simultaneous client users in a single Cisco Transport Manager instance
• Provides northbound interfaces for OSS integration, standards-based TL1, Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA)
• Meets carrier-class requirements for high-availability deployments with configurations to achieve application availability
Adding Network Elements and Provisioning Circuits Within Cisco Transport Manager
NEService
Cisco Transport Manager server consists of many underlying services, such as NEServices, that control the instrumentation between the server and the network element devices.
Every network element to be managed by Cisco Transport Manager has to belong to an NEService that controls the type and model of that network element. For example, ONS15454 SONET will belong to the ONS15454 SONET NEService; ONS15454 SDH, MGX, and other devices will belong to their own NEServices.
Network Partition
Every network element managed by Cisco Transport Manager must belong to a partition. And each network partition must belong to one NEService. In other words there is a one-to-one correspondence between NEService and network partition. For Cisco Transport Controller craft-tool-based network elements (that is, ONS 15xxx SONET and SDH devices), there is currently a maximum of 500 network elements per partition. This means that one NEService will manage a maximum of 500 SONET or SDH devices and not both at the same time.
Subnetwork Explorer
By default Cisco Transport Manager groups managed network elements by subnet. This means that all network elements that belong to the same subnet will be grouped together; this is different from the manual assignment of network elements to groups manually created by users within Cisco Transport Manager.
The subnetwork grouping can be viewed with the subnetwork explorer. The function of the subnetwork explorer is to enhance the autodiscovery algorithm and circuit creation within Cisco Transport Manager.
Difference between Subnetwork Explorer and Domain Explorer
• Domain explorer is a logical representation dealing with administration of network elements (Figure 2).
• Subnetwork explorer is a physical representation dealing with the DCC domain and connectivity between network elements (Figure 3).
Figure 2. User-Created Device Groups
Figure 3. System-Created Subnetwork Explorer
Limitation of SubNetwork Explorer
Cisco Transport Manager prevents end-to-end circuit creation between network elements in different subnetwork groups. This limitation is present only if the "Automatically group NE" property in the control panel is checked.
This option is designed to help customers with small networks to automatically group network elements that belong to the same DCC domains in the same subnetwork.
When the option is selected, the circuit wizard will show all the network elements that are DCC-connected in the graphical view.
The subnetwork can be in the same network element partition or in another network element partition.
This feature can be disabled in the Cisco Transport Manager control panel as shown in Figure 4 by leaving it unchecked.
Figure 4. Disable Automatically Group Network Elements In Subnetworks
Once the feature is disabled, normal circuit creation between subnetwork groups can be performed without any need to restart Cisco Transport Manager processes.
Customers with large networks should choose this option to prevent all the DCC-connected network elements from filling the circuit wizard graphical view.
Customers can group network elements in the subnetwork explorer to match their connectivity requirements.
Limitation of Network Partitioning
Customers with fewer than 500 ONS15xxx CTC-based SONET or SDH devices in their network will only require one network element partition, and hence one NEService. Typically customers have either all SONET or all SDH, but there are a few customers with worldwide operations that maybe have both SONET and SDH devices. These customers will use one partition for each technology.
As the network grows and the number of network elements get near or beyond 500, a second partition and NEService will be required.
Currently Cisco Transport Manager has limitations with end-to-end circuit provisioning across two network partitions.
Network Repartitioning
To overcome the end-to-end circuit provisioning limitation across partitions, the network elements need to be rearranged by moving them between the partitions.
Repartitioning requires thought and good planning. First look at your entire network then grade the rings in terms of growth potential, from minimal growth, still growing, or fully built. Now look at the networks that are still growing and identify whether there will be potential connections to the other types of network.
You can now move the growing network to the new partition and then use the adjacency connections to decide which of the other networks to move to the new partition.
Once the planning is complete, you can contact Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) to assist in moving the existing network devices into the new network partition.
The procedures outlined in this document have been successfully applied to an existing service provider's Cisco Transport Manager installation.
