A Brief History of Network Management Systems

Yup. The title. Presentation gives a history of the network and management systems, and how and why I chose a particular one for my purposes.

Transcript

1. Network Management Systems SHH! They’re a Secret!
2. About the Presenter • Father of Two • Decade of Professional Sysadmin Experience • Have deployed dozens of NMS’ over the last 10 years • I work in more of an engineering focused environment than IT focused one. • Don’t do windows, don’t ask
3. The Presentation... ... or why you may want to go find something better to do right now
4. About the Presentation • This is mostly from book research, although there is a lot of personal experience involved. • There are very few right and wrong answers on how to get to a well managed network, but I’ll offer a few. • The topic of management has been mostly a shrouded art during the concept of an NMS. • Yes, I know I’m a systems guy and there’s a lot of network talk. Remember McNealy said “The Network is the Computer”. • Let’s talk a bit...
5. Network Management Systems I’d love to define this now but as you’ll see, this has always been the crux of the problem.
6. BC Network Management - Circa 1990 • In the beginning, there was Cabletron. • What did a network look like then? • Primarily single-vendor deployments. • No seriously, there’s nothing beyond layer 2. Move on. • Your average corporate network didn’t have a PC at every desk • ZERO Convergence, lots of fat stacks (VINES Anyone?) • Networking focused on how you adapted around the CPE
7. Network Management Systems in BC Era • Network hardware vendors gobbled up companies that did early management systems or they grew them in-house, such as Cabletron’s Spectrum. • The NMS came from your vendor and it was specialized for your deployment • They largely didn’t exist outside large operations • Commercially available packages were prohibitively expensive, and I hope you don’t want patches with those... • Standards were kept in the realm of ISO and the ITU, go away little guys!
8. THEN THE MID TO LATE 1990’S HAPPENED!!!
9. Internet Adoption • Brought TCP/IP into the realm of the average human being • Trumpet Winsock (1992? 1993?) • Geocities (1994) • ICQ (1996) • BSD, VAX, and this new guy called Linux are all the rage! • Commercial network convergence makes leaps and bounds with Windows NT
10. ...And a Screeching Halt of All Progress • Until now, concepts of Network Management fit the models of the vendors who sold the networks, interoperability was not of much concern. • Interoperability standards were defined by the ITU and to a lesser extent, ISO. • New standards orgs such as IETF and ICANN operated in a vastly different manner, and therefore, different languages were spoken by different parties. • Standards? Sure, you can have them, for $50,000 to start!
11. ENTER INTERNET SUPERHERO CARL MALAMUD “To be public, a document must be visible and on the Internet. A standard cannot be secret and still be a standard.”
12. Who? What? • Former Chairman of the Internet Software Consortium • Author of eight books, including “Exploring the Internet” amongst others. • Created first Internet Radio Station • Responsible for publishing more public data online than any other human could possibly be credited for in their lifetime. See public.resource.org for everything. Literally. • Currently working on digitizing every piece of government video ever, as well as many other projects.
13. So What Do? • Carl visits ITU official without a title Tony Rutokowski circa 1990 and continues conversations with this follow through the time we’re talking about now. • All Telecom standards at this point were kept in the ITU’s Blue Book. • Carl realizes the absurdity of unpublished standards. • Carl realizes the ITU has no determinate legal basis for asserting copyright over the 20,000+ pages of the Blue Book. • He makes the ballsiest move in the history of the Internet...
14. The “Idle Threat” • Through many conversations, they eventually get to the point where Carl says he’s going to get a copy of the Blue Book, scan every page, run each one through OCR software and publish it all to an FTP server. • The “threat” in his own words were that someone was making a lot of money from the Blue Book sales as it cost about $1 a page at the time and that it had to impact someone’s bottom line. • Does not backfire! Mr. Malamud finds himself in Geneva, by invitation, a year later to free all the ITU’s documents. The ITU tells a different story than Mr. Malamud’s book “Exploring the Internet”. They word it as an “Experiment”. In 2007 it starts, and continues till this day. • Important for us? The papers defining FCAPS.
15. What Changes? • Free availability for everyone to start having conversations in the same language. • We as admins can all focus on how we adapt our practices to meet published accepted practices. • Conversations happen between ourselves and our vendors in this same language. • Little guys can now be involved and play catch up. • Freedom to read the most boring self referential documents ever written!
16. A Falling Out for Network Management Platforms • Since we now have sanctioned interoperability, vendors have no need to maintain management systems in their stacks. The Layer 1 and Layer 2 cartels are dismantled. • Big expensive management systems are still in place, there are no replacements for telecoms... yet. • NMS Platforms are spun off from the parent companies, such as Cabletron’s Spectrum being sold to CA. Many companies end up going defunct completely. • A new era, but there’s this huge void!
17. The Post Transition Era (2000-2004) • Lots of folks enter the game in infancy • SolarWinds • OpenNMS gets spun off from Oculan • This little app called Netsaint • Neat graphing tool called MRTG to measure “adult content” • COUNTLESS OTHERS
18. Modern Era of The NMS (2004-Present) • We’re still in a relative infancy • A veritable explosion of management options • Open Source projects are forked like crazy • Lots of new players • Commercial • Open Source • “Open Core”
19. What did we get from the ITU?
20. I mentioned FCAPS, Didn’t I? • Fault • Configuration • Accounting/Administration • Performance • Security
21. What about.... • IP SLA Reports • Trend Prediction • Maps, Diagrams, Charts • Scriptable Interfaces • Long Term Analytics • Deep Packet Inspection/Dissection
22. I just made most of that up.
23. Our options, according to Wikipedia...
24. Feature Matrix’d! http://bit.ly/Hyr1Z
25. Fighting through FUD and Feature Bombardment ... or how I ended up with OpenNMS
26. My Requirements • Full FCAPS oriented suite • As much logging as possible • Flexible alarming and notification system • Agentless • Reports for management, simple view for NOC. • I don’t want to know it’s there • Scalability and flexibility
27. After Analysis • Partial Fits • Nagios • Cacti • Full Fits with Problems • Netcool • OpenView
28. How OpenNMS Fit • Eats all operational data as events with flexible retention. • Modular notification system (It can tweet!) • No arbitrary limits on scalability • Based on open standards like SNMP • Open Source model insures interoperability with my vendor’s equipment and other management apps. • Baked in Jasper reports
29. How OpenNMS Fit... continued • Dashboard, reports, or don’t even login at all. Choose your level of involvement. • Tight coupling of the concept of performance data being linked to faults. • A single go-to place for operational data including • Historical data for faults, performance, and events. • Asset information • SLM by arbitrary groups such as equipment by vendor or by location
30. How OpenNMS Fit... continued • Awesome community, commercial support available • Most importantly, it was flexible enough for everyone to have input on from operations, engineering, NOC staff, and management, and let us all collaborate on issues in simple terms in the most efficient way possible. I needed something for everyone, not just admins.
31. Conversation Break • What are you using? • Are you happy with what you have? What’s wrong with it? What’s good? • How many different products are you using to meet these goals? • What’s the technical and non-technical levels of involvement at your organization around these products?
32. OpenNMS Tour Overview
33. Key Concepts • Provisioning and Asset Management • The Node • Interfaces and services • Surveillance categories • Events • Alarms • Notifications
34. OpenNMS Tour Time Yes, this is the last slide.