Table of Contents

Product Overview
Key Features and Benefits
Specifications
Ordering Information

CiscoWorks2000: Service Management Solution (NT, Solaris)

Product Overview

The CiscoWorks2000 Service Management Solution enables network managers to validate their level of service for wide-area connections and network services. It combines open, standards-based management application program interfaces (APIs) and Cisco IOS-embedded agents, scalable service-level management applications, and third-party product integration to produce an end-to-end service-level view and complete management capabilities. As a result, customers can now deploy with confidence such new applications as voice over IP (VoIP), IP telephony, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), and e-business solutions; differentiate their services; create higher end-user satisfaction; simultaneously monitor multiple service-level agreements (SLAs); tune and refine networks; and customize the reporting of problems. At the same time, third-party application developers and systems integrators can acquire network-layer data in a consistent way and begin to standardize the definition and collection of SLA metric.

The components of this solution are:

• Management Engine 1110

  A hardware device that can be deployed remotely in the network, allows for a highly scalable and flexible solution for data collection. The ME1110 is specifically designed to collect service metric data from Cisco devices, allows for management server outages, and, as data collection needs grow, additional ME1110s can be added.

• Service Level Manager

  Provides an end-to-end service-level view of a variety of service metrics. Based upon open XML APIs and available to partners for third-party application integration.

• Service Assurance Agent

  A Cisco IOS feature used to determine service-level metric data required to validate that service levels are being met. The SA agent (SAA) technology is embedded in Cisco IOS software, and is leveraged by the Service Management Solution allowing it to analyze service agreements with minimal cost impact or disruption to the network infrastructure.

Key Features and Benefits

• Management Engine 1110 performs network polling for data which offloads expensive or limited server CPU cycles

• Remote deployment capability of the ME 1110 enables it to be placed close to routers, so polling is localized which will reduce network bandwidth. If the link to the central management system fails, the ME continues to collect data for three days

• Standards-based solution (XML and HTTP) creates a consistent, programmatic way to look at SLAs, which can be shared between user communities in a consistent fashion

• Easy generation of high-level and detailed reports. Drill-down capabilities enable administrators to identify and solve problems quickly

• SA agent"s synthetic operations provide Service Level metric data from network element to network element. SA agent is embedded in Cisco IOS and is ready for use without the need to add new hardware or probes.

Specifications

Ordering Information

Posted: Wed Sep 27 05:13:31 PDT 2000
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