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Data Sheet
CiscoWorks Voice Health Monitor
CiscoWorks Voice Health Monitor (VHM) evaluates the health of an IP telephony environment based on Cisco technology by proactively monitoring Cisco IP telephony environments and applications and alerting operations and administrative personnel of potential and detected problems. CiscoWorks VHM helps to minimize IP telephony service interruption.
CiscoWorks VHM provides information that demonstrate the real-time health of Cisco CallManager applications, router gateways, and switches (including those supporting inline power) that enable IP telephony in monitored networks. CiscoWorks VHM uses confidence testing that replicates key forms of network activity associated with IP telephony to enable round-the-clock monitoring of key voice elements in the network. This technique monitors areas of concern to operations personnel and provides alerts about specific situations known to affect IP telephony implementations before they become significant problems.
CiscoWorks VHM is part of the CiscoWorks IP Telephony Environment Monitor (ITEM). ITEM is a suite of management applications that ensure the manageability of converged networks that support IP telephony and related applications. The solution consists of Voice Health Monitor (VHM), Device Fault Manager (DFM), and CiscoView (CD One). CiscoWorks ITEM is available as a complete suite (VHM, DFM, and CiscoView (CD One) as well as an add-on product (VHM only) for existing CiscoWorks LAN Management Solution (LMS) customers. CiscoWorks ITEM is intended for Microsoft Windows 2000 environments. All three applications in the ITEM suite (VHM, DFM, and CiscoView (CD One) work on Windows 2000.
CiscoWorks VHM provides real-time, detailed fault analysis designed specifically for Cisco devices in IP telephony environments. The focus on Cisco devices enables VHM to monitor IP telephony networks based on Cisco technology for a variety of fault conditions, to analyze these conditions, and to notify the operations manager via intelligent Cisco traps detailing the problem that has occurred.
CiscoWorks VHM also generates synthetic traffic to evaluate the general health of the IP telephony environment as well as the IP telephony applications in the monitored network. VHM takes advantage of DFM while providing sophisticated capabilities of its own to deliver timely information about the health of IP telephony environments. Using several data collection and analysis techniques, VHM and DFM generate intelligent Cisco traps that can be forwarded to other multidevice, multivendor event-management systems installed in the network, sent to e-mail or pager gateways, or displayed for operations personnel in alarm windows and on the VHM network-health dashboard display.
Designed to work out of the box, CiscoWorks VHM supports more than 200 types of the most popular Cisco routers, switches, access servers, and other devices. In particular, CiscoWorks VHM supports health monitoring of the Cisco CallManager application, IP telephony applications and platforms, router gateways, and in-line power switches. For each of the supported devices, VHM automatically looks for a range of predefined problems at the device and network level and does not require operations managers to write rules or set polling or threshold values. As IP telephony traffic grows, VHM can detect changes in the number and type of Cisco devices installed and adjusts its analysis accordingly.
CiscoWorks VHM features include:
Problem-Focused Fault Analysis
CiscoWorks VHM actively monitors a wide range of problems that can affect the operation of IP telephony traffic on monitored networks. Depending on the type of Cisco internetworking equipment, VHM actively monitors different conditions via Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) polling, Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) Management Information Base (MIB) interrogation, and SNMP trap reception, and it tracks only those conditions known to help cause higher-level problems in the monitored device.
If CiscoWorks VHM receives information from the device that is not a known condition of a higher-level problem, it ignores the information, eliminating the need for operations managers to look at every network event. This intelligent capability enables operations managers to manage Cisco IP telephony environments more productively. VHM recognizes whether several events from a device are related. For example, if several ports on a switch are down, instead of flooding operations personnel with port-down traps, CiscoWorks VHM recognizes that the ports are on the same module and informs the operations personnel that the module is down.
As part of its analysis, CiscoWorks VHM continually analyzes the availability of Cisco devices and ports on the devices, but it also looks for specific problems with specific devices of interest to IP telephony, including:
Confidence Testing and Monitoring
CiscoWorks VHM uses confidence testing to enable round-the-clock monitoring of key voice elements in the network, highlighting areas of concern to operations personnel and providing alerts to specific situations known to affect IP telephony before they become significant problems. Some of the areas that are evaluated include:
Real-Time Dashboard Display
CiscoWorks VHM provides dashboard views that demonstrate the real-time health of Cisco CallManager applications, router gateways, and switches that enable IP telephony in the monitored network.
Integration with CiscoWorks Desktop
VHM works with the entire family of CiscoWorks products. VHM integration with the CiscoWorks family includes:
Integration with Enterprise Management Systems
CiscoWorks VHM can be used as a Cisco fault subsystem, generating intelligent Cisco traps to other multidevice, multivendor event-management systems installed in the network. Cisco has worked closely with a range of enterprise-management systems, enabling these intelligent Cisco traps to be displayed properly in their respective event systems.
Specifications
Server System Requirements
Hardware and Operating System
Client Browser System Requirements
Hardware and Operating System
Supported Cisco Devices
The current supported device list is available at:
http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/rtrmgmt/ cw2000/vhm/vhm1_0/index.htm
Availability
CiscoWorks Voice Health Monitor is available in the CiscoWorks IP Telephony Environment Monitor Solution v1.4 and as an add-on for existing LMS customers.
To place an order, contact your local Cisco sales representative. For more information email the CiscoWorks team at: CiscoWorks@cisco.com