Product Spec: Solstice Enterprise Manager

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Solstice EM complements Solstice SunNet Manager / Product Overview / Product Highlights / Scalability through Distributed Architecture / Product Components / Standards Support / Hardware Configuration Information / Software Configuration Information / Ordering Information

SunSoft's Solstice(TM) Enterprise Manager(TM) (formerly Project ENCOMPASS) software is a multi-user distributed fault, event and performance management system. It complements Solstice(TM) SunNet Manager(TM) for more demanding and larger enterprise management service providers.

Solstice Enterprise Manager (Solstice(TM) EM) is the first commercially available system designed to address customer requirements for managing larger and more complex network computing environments. Based on modular architecture and standard networked interfaces, Solstice EM enables new levels of management application integration.

Solstice EM 1.0 OEM/Partners Release features and functions are targeted at customers performing system evaluations and developing pilot projects. Solstice EM 1.0 OEM/Partners Release is not recommended for production environments. Like any product with breakthrough technology, Solstice EM is a multi-year project. This release is for early adopters, OEMs, Partners, and channel training.

Solstice EM complements Solstice SunNet Manager

Solstice SunNet Manager continues to fill a significant position in the SunSoft Solstice line of management products. Solstice SunNet Manager is the marketshare leader among UNIX(R) based management platforms. Solstice SunNet Manager and Solstice(TM) Cooperative Consoles(TM) functionality and price points are well positioned for departmental and medium-sized organizations.

Solstice SunNet Manager applications will run on Solstice EM software and over time, Solstice Cooperative Consoles software will be used to connect Solstice SunNet Manager and Solstice EM on a network.

Solstice EM 1.0 OEM/Partners Release provides advanced management tools, robust network modelling technology, and management protocol interfaces targeted at large organizations developing a management infrastructure. Packaging includes run-time products and developers kits.

Product Overview

Solstice Enterprise Manager (Solstice EM) 1.0 OEM/Partners Release is an important new product reinforcing Sun's position in distributed computing. Solstice EM represents Sun's commitment and ability to provide customers with tools to control and monitor distributed network and systems resources.

Solstice EM is an advanced management platform. Solstice EM provides the core functionality every network manager needs: an application launcher providing a consistent method of starting management tools; a flexible map providing topology and state information; an advanced request management mechanism for simplifying complex operations and filtering events; and a comprehensive logging system for storing network events and performance information.

Solstice EM software is based on state-of-the-art network modelling technology enabling multiple operators to access management information simultaneously. This technology provides a robust network model and a set of management services for monitoring and controlling network and system resources. The network model and management services enable Solstice EM to scale effectively to match the size and complexity of emerging distributed computing environments. By adding object definitions and management protocols, customers and ISVs can extend the network model to support many different configurations. Solstice EM supports the internet SNMP protocol, the OSI CMIP protocol, and the Solstice SunNet Manager RPC interface. The Solstice SunNet Manager RPC interface supports other protocols such as SNMP version 2 and DEC NICE through proxy agents.

Solstice EM 1.0 OEM/Partners Release includes the DiMONS 3G 1.0 Kernel and Nerve Center technology licensed from NetLabs, Inc. In addition, Solstice EM preserves two interfaces in common with 3G: the portable management interface (PMI) and the protocols between the two companies' servers.

The Solstice EM Developer's Kit enables ISVs and end-users to develop innovative applications leveraging the network model and management services. The Solstice EM Developer's Kit includes the SPARCworks(TM) Professional C++ development tools.

Product Highlights

Advanced Standard Tools

Network operators, and their managers, have grown accustomed to the productivity resulting from the functionality found in expensive element management systems. Much of this functionality (e.g. color-coded alarm log displays) is common to element managers used in production environments. To maximize the effectiveness of training and documentation expenses, today's management platforms must enable this common functionality to be extended to all management domains and situations.

Solstice EM Basic Tools provide common functionality that can be extended to all management domains and situations.

Distributed Object-Oriented Network Model

"Management " means the ability to monitor or control resources. Management stations execute operations to monitor and control resources. Resources, through agents, send notifications to management stations to support monitoring functions. As distributed computing environments become larger and more complex, the communication between management stations and managed resources becomes more complex.

In addition, customers want to manage in terms of services that are meaningful to end-users. For example, while a connection may be provided by a combination of hubs, routers, and serial lines, end-users are concerned in up-time. End-users are not concerned with intermediate re-routing. However, operations center managers may be concerned if excessive rerouting occurs.

A robust and flexible network model is required to enable effective manager/agent communications and to support the multiple perspectives required by different users. A network model consists of object definitions of resources and the relationships between them. Management applications and agents interact through the network model, rather than directly with one another.

Solstice EM software contains the Management Information Server (MIS), an object oriented network model. The MIS is state-of-the-art technology enabling object definitions to be stored and manipulated by management applications and agents. The MIS network model enables a new class of integrated and scalable management applications.

Integrated management applications simplify operator access to consistent management information (i.e. configuration, state, and performance information). Integration also enables operations to be executed across multiple domains and resources efficiently. The MIS network model uses object oriented concepts such classing, inheritance and scoping to represent complex resources and simplify complex operations.

Object oriented technology also enables Solstice EM to scale effectively to meet large-scale management requirements. Multiple MISs running on multiple workstations can be integrated to present applications with a comprehensive network model.

Multi-User Support

Because of scarce skill-sets, customers need to distribute management responsibility across multiple operators and applications. Collaboration has become essential between generalists, generalist-to-expert, and expert-to-expert. Management platforms must provide multi-user support enabling simultaneous and coordinated execution of management tasks across these groups.

When management of a resource crosses multiple operators or applications, the information describing that resource must be consistent. A change must be reflected across all relevant management domains. In addition, more than one operator or application must be able to take control of a resource.

The Solstice EM multi-user capabilities revolve around the ability to give all components of the management solution (e.g. operators, tools, applications, other management systems) access to consistent management data. This enables management tasks to be divided across organizations and geography with confidence that all users will see the same view of the management information and status. This is particularly useful in fault management scenarios where cooperation among staff members leads to quicker problem resolution.

Multiple instances of all Solstice EM Basic Tools can run and access management information concurrently. In addition, all ISV applications written to the Solstice EM API, the Portable Management Interface (PMI), can access the same management data concurrently.

Advanced Request Management

Solstice EM software detects user-defined conditions in a network and takes action in response to the conditions automatically.

The Solstice EM Nerve Center enables applications called "Requests " to poll for attributes and receive notifications from agents of managed objects. The results of the Requests can be displayed, logged, or cause an action such as a executing another Request, activating a visual indicator or executing a UNIX command.

Requests can detect simple conditions (i.e. when a counter equals N, the state changes from "up " to "down "). Or the conditions can be more complex. For example, assume that Solstice EM momentarily loses communications with a workstation, with robust communications, the link is reestablished and no one notices the momentary outage. Even though Solstice EM will know that the brief interruptions occurred (i.e through an event or trap), the customer may not want to conclude that the workstation is down. The customer could define a condition where a specific number of occurrences of the event/trap describing the outage put the workstation into a "missed " rather than "down " state. In addition, the customer could define another condition where once the workstation is in the missed state and a specific number of occurrences of the event/trap occur, the workstation could then be placed in a down state.

Complex conditions can also involve comparing event streams from two or more resources to derive a single conclusion. For example, events describing an increasing bit error rate from serial link could be compared with an event stream describing an increasing retransmission rate. This could lead an operator to determine that diminishing response time can be resolved with a telephone call to the transmission service provider.

TMN Q3 Interface

Successful management tools in the Telecommunications market support key standards such as "Telecommunications Management Network" (TMN).

The TMN standard describes the architecture of a network to monitor and control another network.

The Solstice EM TMN Q3 Interface option enables Solstice EM to comply with many of the TMN functions. The TMN Q3 interface uses the OSI CMIP protocol to enable manager/agent and manager/manager communications.

Scalability through Distributed Architecture

Solstice Enterprise Manager is a multi-user distributed fault, event and performance management system. Distribution enables Solstice EM to scale cost-effectively. The Solstice EM architecture distributes two key functions: the network model; and application processing.

Distributed Network Model

To manage a large number of resources, or to increase system availability, a Solstice EM configuration may distribute the network model over multiple workstations and servers. Distribution of management information, event management, control, and authority is accomplished by distributing and interconnecting multiple Solstice EM Management Information Servers (MISs).

Users, ISVs, and OEMs can extend the "network model " provided by the MIS to support application-specific objects. All applications writing to the Solstice EM API, the Portable Management Interface (PMI), can access these objects. This capability enables a unique level of application integration.

Remote Application Execution

The Basic Tools provided with Solstice EM and any tools that use the PMI can run remotely from the MIS. This client/server architecture provides both operational and financial benefits.

From an operational perspective, the ability to run applications remotely means that tools can be provided in locations where they are needed. Solstice EM enables tools and applications to be located to match the management task and the skill-set of the operators. For example, when a technician is paged to address a problem, the technician would not have to go to the operations center to access the required management tools. Similarly, in off hours, senior analysts would not need to come into the operations center to begin resolving an escalation. While running on a remote processor, the tools would have access to the same management information available to the operations center staff.

The financial benefits from enabling applications to operate remotely come from bandwidth savings, training, and hardware. Other management platforms use X Windows technology to redirect displays to remote devices. While addressing the need to extend the availability of the tools, management platforms and applications relying on X Windows for remote distribution are bandwidth intensive. This is costly when using wide area facilities such as leased lines. By sending just management information rather than graphical user interface overhead, Solstice EM is bandwidth efficient.

By enabling applications to run remotely from the management information, Solstice EM can also help reduce training requirements. Operators in the remote sites can concentrate on tools and not be concerned with the configuration of the management platform (i.e. administering data stores and agent connectivity). In addition, hardware requirements decrease since less processor capacity and disk space are required when running just an application.

Product Components

The Solstice EM management environment consists of three architectural components, each with a particular function and separated from the others by well-defined interfaces through which all interaction is mediated. The three architectural components are the Basic Tools, Management Information Server and the Management Protocol Adapters.

Basic Tools

Solstice EM Basic Tools include a Application Launcher, Viewer, Discover, Request Designer, Log Manager, Object Editor/Browser (OBED), Alarm Manager, Grapher, Configure Applications Tool, and Relational Database Logging Daemon.

Management Information Server (MIS)

The MIS is a repository of static and dynamic management data. This repository represents a "network model " to monitor and control resources in the network. Applications (i.e. Solstice EM Basic Tools and ISV applications) interact with the network model to deal effectively with large and complex networks.

The network model can be extended to reflect the managed objects in the management domain. Compilers are used to load object class definitions into the MIS. Class definitions are defined in terms of SNMP MIBs, OSI GDMO (Guidelines for the Definition of Managed Objects) templates, and Solstice SunNet Manager Schema.

Solstice EM MIS provides services for detecting conditions in a network and taking action in response to the conditions. Collectively, this MIS functionality and related tools are referred to the Solstice EM Nerve Center.

Management Protocol Adapter and Protocol Driver Modules

A Management Protocol Adapter (MPA) provides access to management protocols for the purpose of communicating with agents of managed objects.

An MPA communicates to and from specific management protocols outside of Solstice EM. An MPA supports one management protocol. Like a Solstice SunNet Manager Proxy Agent, an MPA can run remotely from the MIS to load balance and to provide customers with flexibility to choose transport protocol.

Solstice EM 1.0 provides an MPA supporting the Common Management Information Protocol (CMIP). The CMIP MPA is packaged in the "TMN Q3 Interface " option.

SNMP and Solstice SunNet Manager RPC are supported through a direct connection to the MIS. This direct connection is called a "Protocol Driver Module" (PDM).

Developer's Kit

The Solstice EM Developer's Kit provides powerful interfaces and tools enabling a new generation of integrated management applications. The Solstice EM development environment provides features and utilities enabling developers to build applications efficiently and effectively. These include classes and macros useful for debugging and for exception handling, as well as several utilities useful for extending or inspecting the contents of the MIS.

The Development Kit includes the SunSoft Professional C++ compiler and debug tool.

Standards Support

The Solstice EM Management Information Server (MIS) implements the following OSI System Management functions:

The Solstice EM MIS also implements the OSI Management Information Model including:

The Solstice EM Basic Tools implement the following System Management Functional Areas:

Solstice EM software ships with the following OSI and OMNIPoint 1 GDMO/ASN.1 files:

*dmi.gdmo              *infofw.asn1
*vol1.gdmo             *vol1.asn1
*vol4.gdmo             *vol2.asn1
*acse.asn1             *vol4.asn1
*asn1.asn1             *x711.asn1
*dmi.asn1


Hardware Configuration Information

Solstice EM 1.0 OEM/Partners Release runs on Sun(TM) SPARC machines with a minimum of 64 Mb of RAM installed.

SPARC 5 or greater is recommended.

Solstice EM 1.0 OEM/Partners Release requires the following disk space availability in the following locations:

Software Configuration Information

Solstice EM 1.0 OEM/Partners Release runs on Solaris(TM) 2.3 or later (SunOS(TM) 5.3 or later and OpenWindows(TM) version 3.3 or later). The product software also runs in the Motif(R) window manager (mwm) from Motif version 1.2 that is part of the SUNWmotif package.

The SPARCworks 3.0.1 and SPARCcompiler C++ 4.0.1 compiler is used to compile programs with the Solstice EM Portable Management Interface (PMI) or the Nerve Center Interface Library. This compiler is included in the Solstice EM Developer's Kit.

Developing Motif applications requires Motif 1.2. The Solaris 2.3 System Developer's Kit includes Motif 1.2.

A user-provided RDBMS server is required when using the Relational Database Logging daemon(s) to export log data to a RDBMS. The Sybase(R) interface requires SYBASE SQL Server Release 4.9.2 and SYBASE Transact-SQL. Customers must also obtain a valid SYBASE DB-Library product license. The Oracle(R) interface requires Oracle 7.1.3.

To communicate with CMIP agents, Solstice EM 1.0 OEM/Partners Release requires the CMIP MPA, SunLink(R) CMIP, and SunLink OSI. SunLink CMIP 8.1 runs over SunLink 8.0 OSI. The CMIP MPA and both SunLink products are included in the TMN Q3 Interface option.

Ordering Information

To purchase Solstice Enterprise Manager, in the U.S., please call 1-800-SUN-SOFT.

Outside the U.S., please call +1-415-960-3200 for the location of the SunSoft office closest to you.