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The increasing dependence of businesses and organizations on networked applications and the Internet, together with the convergence of voice with data, is creating increased requirements for highly available applications. System downtime of any sort can mean huge losses in revenue, credibility, and customer satisfaction. For many Cisco customers, end-to-end performance, network health, availability and long-term scalability are key to strategic business goals.
Once considered a tactical advantage, high-availability computing is now a strategic necessity for these organizations. To date, network managers have faced increasing challenges that obstruct their ability to support these business strategies. These challenges include lack of expertise (particularly in emerging or complex technologies), insufficient tools, business consolidation, massive growth usage, and time sensitivity.
The Network Supported Accounts-High Availability Service (NSA HAS) program delivers an integrated solution that combines services (audits and assessments), action plans, technical experts, and tools.
The deployment of this solution helps ensure that customers will:
Minimize financial loss resulting from network unavailability
Minimize lost productivity resulting from network unavailability
Experience improved internal user satisfaction
Improve external customer satisfaction and loyalty
Enjoy reduced reactive IT support costs, with a simultaneous increase in IT productivity and the deployment of business-driven applications
The Cisco Systems NSA HAS program augments the services delivered by the program with services specifically designed to improve network health and availability. Network health and availability is a function of product quality (both reliable devices and resilient technologies) network design, operational practices and management tools. Without the synergy of these components, the health and availability of a network are at risk.
The High Availability Service program complements the Cisco superior software technology and exceptionally reliable, available, and serviceable hardware by combining design, best practices, high-availability expertise, and tool components into a high-availability service focused on 99.9% and above availability.
Having the appropriate level of expertise and resources is critical to enabling high-availability networks. The following resources are typically engaged during a NSA HAS contract:
High Availability Network Consultant (HANC) — an expert at conducting high-availability assessment and identifying availability issues in large network environments.
High Availability Program Manager — has experience with the NSA HAS and overall program and project management skills needed to drive network availability initiatives.
NSA Consulting Engineers — senior members (Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert [CCIE] certification and recognized as experts in their field) of the NSA staff.
NSA HAS Virtual Team — includes a highly skilled audit team, NSA design consultants, and a corporate NSA HAS development team dedicated to NSA HAS tools and services.
Network Test Consulting Engineer (NTCE) — focused on providing support for the Network Verification Tool.
Net Lifecycle Assessment: includes interviews with the customers` network engineering group, network operations manager, network operations staff, systems operations and users.
Net Resiliency Assessment: accomplished by performing a series of interviews with the network engineering and infrastructure groups. In addition, the network hardware availability tool and the Netsys configuration verification tool are used in the assessment.
Net Management Assessment: closely evaluates the current network management applications and practices used in managing the network. The result is a comprehensive recommendation for network management solutions. The report will detail configuration recommendations, tool recommendations and specific SNMP-related variables that are recommended in the particular environment.
Net Audits: baseline the stability and resiliency of the network in terms of device resources, media issues and protocol requirements. Whereas the lifecycle assessment and resiliency assessments investigate the life-cycle practices and design, the network audits look at empirical data from the network itself. The NSA HAS program has a wide range of network audits suitable for many enterprise and service provider environments.
Router Stability Audit — the router stability is a baseline snapshot of device resource utilization issues.
LAN Switching Stability Audit — the LAN Switching Stability Audit is a baseline snapshot of utilization and stability issues for Cisco LAN switches, including the Catalyst 5000 family of products.
LS1010 Stability Audit — the LightStream 1010 Stability Audit is a baseline snapshot of utilization and stability for LightStream 1010 ATM switches.
WAN Stability Audit — the WAN Stability Audit is a baseline snapshot of utilization and stability for the WAN switching family of products, including the BPX and IGX switches.
Dial Stability Audit — the Dial Stability Audit is a baseline snapshot of the stability issues for the access-server family of products.
Y2K Compliance Audit — identifies Y2K and non-Y2K compliant devices for Cisco routers and switches.
Media Audits — media audits cover a wide range of resource and resiliency issues relevant to individual media types.
Ethernet
Protocol Audits — protocol audits cover a wide range of resource and resiliency issues relevant to specific protocol types.
Network Availability Monitor: provides data that supports availability service-level agreements or availability targets associated with the High Availability Services program. In addition, valuable information is obtained regarding periods of non-availability that allows the NSA HAS program manager and customer to focus on current key availability issues. The tool contains several features critical to monitoring, reporting and understanding availability issues in the network.
Network Verification Service: augments the expertise and success of the Cisco NSA program and is part of NSA HAS as well as several leading-edge software test suites also developed by Cisco. NVS provides the customer the opportunity to extensively test complex networks in a lab environment, assess the impact, and modify, if necessary, the implementation plan prior to production integration. NVS directly addresses customer needs by providing:
The ability to extensively test complex networks
The ability to emulate potential changes prior to production integration
A manageable suite of comprehensive test tools
On-going design and test consulting
Service-Level Agreements: the integration of process improvement, best practices, technical expertise, and availability management tools provides the necessary ingredients for a healthy and highly available network. For customers committing to this rigorous process, Cisco is able to provide health and availability assurances in the form of Service-Level Agreements (SLAs).
After the planning phase is completed and the Network Availability Plan (NAP) is finalized and validated, the NSA HAS program initiates service-level agreements of 99.9% availability and higher. When NAP initiatives are completed, availability SLAs will increase by availability group in a stepped fashion over a period of time. The penalties for missed SLAs include additional high-availability technical resources to fix the availability issue and increased escalation as well as financial penalties. SLAs are the company`s means of providing:
Clear performance goals
Assurances of heightened awareness, attention, and accountability
Strong linkage between network performance and availability goals and the business
Requirements of the customer
The seamless integration of network upgrades and updates, and the introduction of product enhancements, are ongoing challenges for network administrators. IT professionals deal continually with the dilemma of minimizing or eliminating impact to the production network while executing these changes in a timely fashion. For large enterprise or service provider organizations, the challenges and risks can cause gridlock and inhibit expansion and growth.
Currently, a lack of manageable tools, knowledgeable consulting expertise and the availability of a comprehensive suite of software test components are a barrier to successfully balancing those competing needs.
The Network Verification Service (NVS) leverages the expertise and success of services such as the Cisco Network Supported Accounts (NSA) and NSA-High Availability Service (NSA HAS) programs as well as several leading-edge software test suites developed by Cisco. NVS provides the customer with the opportunity to extensively test complex networks in a lab environment, assess the impact, and modify if necessary the implementation plan prior to production integration.
NVS directly addresses customer needs by providing:
The ability to extensively test complex networks in a lab environment utilizing a collapsed topology
The ability to emulate potential changes prior to production integration
A manageable suite of comprehensive test tools
On-going design and test consulting
The primary resource key to the success of the NVS program is the Network Test Consulting Engineer (NTCE). The NTCE serves as the primary contact with the customer`s networking operations, engineering, and management staff during the engagement. As the primary contact, the NTCE performs the initial audit of the customer`s network, provides documentation and recommendations to the customer, and performs technical consulting at an expert level. Additionally, the NTCE serves as a backup resource working with the customer`s networking operations, engineering, and management staff during the engagement. After deployment of the customer`s lab network, the NTCE installs and deploys the Network Verification Tool (NVT) at the customer site and is the prime contact for NVT-related issues while the unit is at the customer site.
The toolset is comprised of:
NVT Server
Cisco routers (not included) utilizing a special software image
A comprehensive test tool suite which includes:
Large Network Emulators for populating routing tables of specified routers using multiple routing protocols including RIP, BGP, and OSPF.
Session Emulators for generating verified data traffic by emulating a busy network service.
Traffic Analyzer for monitoring, capturing and decoding network packets, including AppleTalk, CLNS, DECnet, ICMP, IGMP, IP, IPX, TCP, UDP, Vines, and XNS
Traffic Generator for generating multi-protocol traffic streams and raw packet rates.
Script for automating and executing procedural steps such as issuing commands to control a device, view device-level activity, and create complex profiles.
Queries for retrieving and displaying information about various task activities such as utilization rates, number of routes or status information from a specified device.
To qualify for NSA HAS, the customer must have the NSA program and
NSA or NSA HAS
Base level support on all lab equipment designated to support the NVS engagement