Network Operations Center (NOC) Design Best Practices

The Network Operations Center (NOC) forms the central location of a data center for monitoring work on medium or large networks. In it, NOC engineers monitor and respond to network problems. NOC services form an important link between detecting network problems and implementing the solution (usually a technician is dispatched to a remote site).

Many network operations center (yes, the word "center" is redundant, but useful to understand) are open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, but not always. Some companies are in a period of transition of growth. Its network is large enough to justify an investment in the construction of the NOC center, but it cannot justify the cost of staff outside normal or even extended business hours. . In this case, the company uses overtime alarm notifications (via email or phone) to alert on-call technicians of alarms on the network.

At the heart of the noc team is one (or more) central master console. This console accepts input from a few, hundreds, or thousands of remote devices on your network.

When building a NOC from scratch, avoid some common pitfalls that negatively affect performance.

You must work hard to be able to consolidate all the alarms on your network into a single integrated surveillance system. Otherwise, personnel requirements increase due to difficulties associated with alarm monitoring. If you have never experienced the need to monitor a large number of incompatible surveillance systems, you really cannot understand how tedious it is. You must turn your head, learn many interfaces, and struggle to link related alarms from different systems (divided by device compatibility rather than logical division like geography).

You should also make sure that the center console you implement in your networks operations can filter out unwanted alarms. Each network has an adequate number of alarms to log, but does not actually require operator response. The more they are included in the NOC, the more often the NOC technician will be trained to ignore the warning message. A good center console can hide unimportant messages from staff and show truly important messages at the top of the list.

To better understand what CBs need, it is helpful to review the sample kit. I like to use the T / Mon LNX center console. This is because it contains many of the concepts just described.

The most useful thing about T / Mon is that it can know many protocols (both newer and legacy). The count at this point is actually approximately 25, allowing the T / Mon to avoid the multiscreen headache described above. All alarms are likely to be centralized in a central system, allowing the computer to do busy work rather than personnel.

T / Mon intelligently filter incoming alarm messages, allowing your staff to focus on important alarms. You can configure a simple rule that T / Mon will use to decide to show / hide each new alarm message. T / Mon logs all incoming alarms received in the Network Action Center, so you can see all the alarms received after the incident.

When choosing a NOC center console, it is also important to choose a console that has a convenient and intuitive interface. Don't waste time trying to figure out what an alarm means when staff can react to it. Every minute you waste your NOC monitoring, you pay more, and you're more likely to miss issues that can extend network security downtime.

T / Mon contains a pair of interfaces that comply with this standard. The most used within the NOC is the T / GFX software. This was done in Microsoft Windows and used a MapPoint map as the background for the alarm. Reminders are displayed on the actual geographic map rather than a non-visual text message list, so staff (even if not well-trained) can easily see where the alarm is occurring. I will. This is especially useful if you are trying to interpret the root cause of a large number of simultaneous alarms. Knowing that alarms are concentrated in a single area makes it very clear where the problem lies.

However, there are cases in which you do not participate in the NOC. Sometimes you have to go outdoors. You can access the T / Mon Web 2.0 interface from anywhere you have a PC workstation, including laptops at remote sites with LAN access. This web interface is designed for quick alarm review and is color-coded rather than a geographic map.

Of course, the best thing about the alarm interface is that you don't have to install any software to use it. Just enter the IP address of your T / Mon in your web browser and press "Enter". After a page has been loaded for a few seconds, T / Mon no longer needs to refresh the page. This is a feature of Web 2.0 technology. The page updates automatically, but traditional update is not required. Always have current alarm data.