Alcatel-lucent 5670RAM DATA SHEET, 5670 RAM RELEASE 3 User Manual

Alcatel-Lucent 5670 RAM

R EP O R T I N G A N D A N A LY S I S M A N A G E R | R E L E A S E 3 . 0

Application traffic flow intelligence for business VPN sites and residential subscribers

The Alcatel-Lucent 5670 Reporting
and Analysis Manager (RAM) provides
accurate, timely application-level
intelligence for service providers,
enterprise business and operational
planning, as well as insight into
improving application performance
and QoS optimization by collecting,
warehousing, aggregating and
analyzing application performance
and volumetric data for application
traffic flows over the IP/MPLS
network. It is an integral part of the
Alcatel-Lucent management portfolio
for application-assured business VPNs
and residential triple play managed
online services. With the 5670 RAM,
service providers gain the ability to:

• Generate a wide range of report
types out-of-the-box using
pre-defined templates

• Create customized reports using
the self-service report authoring
capability

• Visualize application usage trends
and TCP performance across service
segments or through specific points
in the network

• Deliver executive-level Application
Performance Index (APDEX)
score dashboard views on overall
user satisfaction and health of
applications used over the network

• Automatically distribute reports
in a variety of formats by e-mail
or to external systems for further
processing

• Receive e-mail notifications when
pre-set thresholds are exceeded so
that they can take immediate action

• Gain visibility into how to best refine
subscriber and VPN site Application
Assurance (AA)-related QoS policies

Application assurance
management architecture

The Alcatel-Lucent 5670 RAM
generates volumetric A A traffic
flow reports based on billing-grade
application accounting data that
it receives from the Alcatel-Lucent
5620 Service Aware Manager (SAM).
The 5620 SAM is leveraged to collect
the application intelligence from
Alcatel-Lucent 7750 Service Routers
(SRs) and Alcatel-Lucent 7450 Ethernet
Service Switches (ESSs) equipped with
Multi Service-Integrated Service
Adapters (MS-ISAs). The 5620 SAM
also provides network management,
including definition and distribution
of network-wide AA measurement
policies, for the MS-ISAs.

Additionally, the 5670 RAM samples
and reports on application-level TCP
performance, such as application
latency, jitter and packet loss, by
leveraging its own highly scalable,
load-distributed collection and
processing system for raw AA cflowd
traffic data generated by the MS-ISA.

The Alcatel-Lucent 5670 RAM
functionality is provided by three
components:

• The 5670 RAM Data Collection
and Processing (DCP) systems,
which load-balance the collection,
processing and aggregation of raw
sampled AA cflowd data and enable
scaling with growing point-to-point
application-level TCP performance
monitoring demands

• The 5670 RAM Server, which
aggregates AA accounting data
from the 5620 SAM and warehouses
the large volumes of aggregated
historical AA statistics and raw data
provided by the 5620 SAM, as well
as the aggregated TCP flow statistics
from the 5670 RAM DCP systems

• The 5670 RAM Reporter, which
provides a web portal that allows
both pre-defined and customized
reports to be easily created and
distributed to a wide audience or
to external systems. The 5670 RAM
Reporter also proactively monitors
statistics for pre-set threshold
crossing conditions, notifying
operators when reports are available
so that they can take immediate
action when required

Alcatel-Lucent custom-developed service
portals can further streamline operations
within the service provider organization.
These portals are integrated with
the 5620 SAM and include 5670 RAM
Reporter web reports. They can also

The 5670 RAM can also be used in
conjunction with the Alcatel-Lucent
5750 Subscriber Services Controller
(SSC) or Alcatel-Lucent 5780 Dynamic
Services Controller (DSC) to enable
AA policy management. For example,
operators can use 5670 RAM reports
to determine how to use QoS traffic
re-marking and policy shaping in order
to better control traffic and provide a
higher quality customer experience for
high-revenue subscriber applications
or for mission-critical enterprise
WAN applications.

See Figure 1 for an illustration of
how the 5670 RAM fits within the
Alcatel-Lucent application assurance

management architecture.
be used to provide information directly
to enterprise customers.

Figure 1. How t he 5670 R AM fits w ithin the Alcatel-Lucent application assurance management architecture

Presentation
and
integration

Data
aggregation
and
warehousing

Data
collection

Enterprise
headquarters

VPN site #1

OSS connected

partner applications

• Performance
and SLA
management

• OSS integration

• TCP performance sample
data collection

• Collection load-balancing

• Data processing

Data center
video office

MS-ISA

Service portal

• Customized
operator and
customer
web portals

5670 RAM DCP

5670 RAM

5670 RAM Reporter

5670 RAM Server

5620 SAM

• Report generation

• Trend analysis

• Threshold crossing alerts

• Web content publishing

• AA statistics aggregation
and warehousing

• Data management

• OSS interface

• MS-ISA configuration

• Application definition

• Raw AA accounting
Statistics collection

Enterprise
branch offices

Internet

Policy control

5750 SSC / 5780 DSC

VPN site #2

VPN site #3

Residential triple play

Alcatel- Lucent 5670 RAM | Release 3.0 | Data She et2

Access

node

7750 SR

Metro

aggregation

MS-ISA

7450 ESS

BSA

MS-ISA

7750 SR

BSR/BNG

IP/MPLS

backbone

MS-ISA

7750 SR

BSR/BNG

Service

edge

MS-ISA

7450 ESS

BSA

Access

node

Key features

Distributed architecture

The Alcatel-Lucent 5670 RAM supports
a distributed architecture for secure
data warehousing and remote archival
and restoration of very high volumes
of raw and aggregated statistics. It
offers high performance for efficient,
long-term analysis and optimal
reporting visualization of current
patterns and historical trends.

With data aggregation and reporting
distributed across separate systems,
service providers benefit from
increased scalability and reliability to
help them address the needs of the
largest business VPN and triple play
architectures. They gain maximum
performance in aggregating and
warehousing millions of raw statistics
in short intervals. For example, the
5670 RAM Server aggregates raw
statistics into hourly aggregates, then
it uses the hourly data to compute
daily aggregates, which are used to
create weekly aggregates.

Server scalability and reliability
Data aggregation and reporting
distributed across separate systems:

• 5670 RAM DCP systems

¬ Collects samples of raw cflowd

application-level performance
data

¬ Processes and aggregates cflowd

data into TCP performance
statistics for reporting

• 5670 RAM Server

¬ Aggregates raw interval (5/10/15

minutes, for example) accounting
statistics data from the 5620 SAM
into hourly, daily and weekly
aggregates

• 5670 RAM Reporter

¬ Based on meta-data model that

maps to the RAM Server statistics
database scheme

¬ Provides a set of pre-defined

reports stored in the 5670 RAM
Server database

Northbound interfaces and
OSS integration

The Alcatel-Lucent 5670 RAM Server
allows for integration with third-party
OSS billing, performance, and SLA
management and policy control
applications through its OSS interface.
For example, the billing-grade
accounting data from the 5670 RAM
Server can be integrated with third­party billing systems to allow
application-aware subscriber billing,
including tiered-pricing models,
“zero-rated” metering, usage-based
service packages, etc. As another
example, policy control applications
can be integrated to apply policies
that limit social-applications over the

business WAN during core-business

hours, and to apply other customized

application-aware policy configurations

specific for each enterprise VPN

customer.

The 5670 RAM Reporter provides

Web Services Remote Portlet (WSRP)

Release 1.0 support so that WSRP

portlets can be embedded in third-

party web portals and applications. In

addition, third-party WSRP Release 1.0

portlets can be embedded in the

5670 RAM web portal.

Reporting

The 5670 RAM Reporter provides a

wide variety of pre-defined report

types, customizable report capabilities

and web portal features — all of which

can be used for business or operational

purposes. For example, accounting

reporting can be used for utilization

volume trend analysis, performance

reporting for operational audits on

customer experience, and TCP flow

utilization reporting on “routes of

interest” for network optimization

and capacity planning.

Table 1 summarizes the report types

available from the 5670 RAM Reporter.

Table 1. 5670 R AM Reporter report t ypes and descriptions

REPORT T YPE DESC RIP TIO NS

VPN site or subscriber analysis • VPN site or subscriber trends and usage in a specified time span

• Top applications or residential users

Application analysis • Application trends and usage in a specified time span

• Top applications, application groups, protocols

Application distribution • Application distribution in an application group

TCP flow analysis • 5670 RAM DCP cflowd sampled point-to-point TCP flow statistics

¬ View per application utilization and performance on “routes of interest”

(Source-to-Destination) for insight into optimization and capacity planning

• Performance metrics include:
¬ Application level client, server and network trip delay
¬ Application packet and byte loss ratios
¬ Application delay variation (jitter)

APDEX score (an ITIL key performance metric) • “Stop light” style view into operational health of applications

¬ Includes application performance, bandwidth usage, and other key indicators

• Executive level 5670 RAM dashboard APDEX score views
¬ Includes drill-down reports with threshold cross alerts (TCAs)

Alcatel- Lucent 5670 RAM | Release 3.0 | Data She et 3