FCAPS is the ISOTelecommunications Management Network model and framework for network management. FCAPS is an acronym for fault, configuration, accounting, performance, security, the management categories into which the ISO model defines network management tasks. In non-billing organizations accounting is sometimes replaced with administration.
The ISO, under the direction of the OSI group, has created a network management model as the primary means for understanding the major functions of network management systems. The model in question is interchangeably called either the OSI network management model or ISO network management model so the full name could be the OSI/ISO network management model.
The comprehensive management of an organization's information technology (IT) infrastructure is a fundamental requirement. Employees and customers rely on IT services where availability and performance are mandated, and problems can be quickly identified and resolved. Mean time to repair (MTTR) must be as short as possible to avoid system downtimes where a loss of revenue or lives is possible.
History
In the early 1980s the term FCAPS was introduced within the first Working Drafts (N1719) of ISO 10040, the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) Systems Management Overview (SMO) standard. At that time the intention was to define five separate protocol standards, one for each functional area. Since initial experiences showed that these protocols would become very similar, the ISO working group responsible for the development of these protocols (ISO/TC97/SC16/WG4, later renamed into ISO-IEC/JTC1/SC21/WG4) decided to create a single protocol for all five areas instead. This protocol is called common management information protocol (CMIP). In the 1990s the ITU-T, as part of their work on Telecommunications Management Network (TMN), further refined the FCAPS as part of the TMN recommendation on Management Functions (M.3400). The idea of FCAPS turned out to be very useful for teaching network management functions; most textbooks therefore start with a section that explains the FCAPS.
The five areas of function of the model
The OSI network management model categorizes five areas of function, sometimes referred to as the "FCAPS model:" FCAPS can be seen as the predecessor of the newer FAB model defined in the Business Process Framework (eTOM). FAB is short for fulfillment, assurance, billing. As guideline, you can map the two models as follows:
A fault is an event that has a lot of significance. The goal of fault management is to recognize, isolate, correct and log faults that occur in the network. Furthermore, it uses trend analysis to predict errors so that the network is always available. This can be established by monitoring different things for abnormal behavior.
When a fault or event occurs, a network component will often send a notification to the network operator using either a proprietary or open protocol such as SNMP (such as WhatsUp Gold, HP OpenView or Sun Solstice–formerly Net Manager), to collect information about network devices or at least write a message to its console for a console server to catch and log/page. In turn, the management station can be configured to make a network administrator aware of problems (by email, paging, or on-screen messages), allowing appropriate action to be taken. This notification is supposed to trigger manual or automatic activities. For example, the gathering of more data to identify the nature and severity of the problem or to bring backup equipment on-line.
Fault logs are one input used to compile statistics to determine the provided service level of individual network elements, as well as sub-networks or the whole network. They are also used to determine apparently fragile network components that require further attention. Errors primarily occur in the areas of fault management and configuration management.
Network elements produce alarms (also known as "traps" or "indications") that are monitored by a Fault management system. This function is known as alarm surveillance.[1] Fault management systems include HP Network Node Manager i,[2]IBM Tivoli,[3] EMC Smarts, CA Spectrum, NetIQ, TTI Telecom Netrac, Objective Systems IntegratorsNETeXPERT, opEvents by Opmantek,[4] Centina's vSure, Infosim StableNet,[5] iReveal,[6] ERAMON etc. Fault isolation tools like Delphi are also available, which are basically used to isolate the fault in any telecom network. A Fault management system is usually the primary feature of a network operations center.
to gather and store configurations from network devices (this can be done locally or remotely).
to simplify the configuration of the device
to track changes that are made to the configuration
to configure ('provision') circuits or paths through non-switched networks
to plan for future expansion and scaling
Configuration management is concerned with monitoring system configuration information, and any changes that take place. This area is especially important, since many network issues arise as a direct result of changes made to configuration files, updated software versions, or changes to system hardware. A proper configuration management strategy involves tracking all changes made to network hardware and software. Examples include altering the running configuration of a device, updating the OS version of a router or switch, or adding a new modular interface card. While it is possible to track these changes manually, a more common approach is to gather this information using configuration management software, such as CiscoWorks 2000, HP Network Automation,[7] ERAMON and Infosim. Opmantek and WhatsUp Gold uses Simple Network Management Protocol and Windows Management Instrumentation to collect application performance management, configuration management and infrastructure management information.[8][9] Open source solutions are also available like Open-AudIT.
Accounting management
The goal is to gather usage statistics for users.
Accounting management is concerned with tracking network utilization information, such that individual users, departments, or business units can be appropriately billed or charged for accounting purposes. While this may not be applicable to all companies, in many larger organizations, the IT department is considered a cost center that accrues revenues according to resource utilization by individual departments or business units. For non-billed networks, "administration" replaces "accounting". The goals of administration are to administer the set of authorized users by establishing users, passwords, and permissions, and to administer the operations of the equipment such as by performing software backup and synchronization.
Accounting is often referred to as billing management. Using the statistics, the users can be billed and usage quotas can be enforced. These can be disk usage, link utilization, CPU time, etc.
Performance management
Performance management is focused on ensuring that network performance remains at acceptable levels. It enables the manager to prepare the network for the future, as well as to determine the efficiency of the current network, for example, in relation to the investments done to set it up. The network performance addresses the throughput, network response times, packet loss rates, link utilization, percentage utilization, error rates and so forth.
This information is usually gathered through the implementation of an SNMP management system, either actively monitored, or configured to alert administrators when performance moves above or below predefined thresholds. Actively monitoring current network performance is an important step in identifying problems before they occur, as part of a proactive network management strategy. By collecting and analysing performance data, the network health can be monitored. Trends can indicate capacity or reliability issues before they affect services. Also, performance thresholds can be set in order to trigger an alarm. The alarm would be handled by the normal fault management process (see above). Alarms vary depending upon the severity of the problem. Tivoli Netcool/Proviso[10] by IBM, CA Performance Management by CA Technologies,[11] opEvents by Opmantek[12] and SolarWinds[13] are some of the products used for performance monitoring.
Security management is not only concerned with ensuring that a network environment is secure, but also that gathered security-related information is analyzed regularly. Security management functions include managing network authentication, authorization, and auditing, such that both internal and external users only have access to appropriate network resources. Other common tasks include the configuration and management of network firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and security policies (such as access lists). Network elements keep log files, which are examined during a security audit. Many telecommunications network elements produce a security alarm[14] when a security violation is suspected. This will be monitored along with all other alarms in the normal alarm surveillance function[15] of fault management. Technicians in a network operations center will see this immediately and take appropriate action.
Network management system
In terms of the network management model, a network management station (NMS) is one that executes network management applications (NMAs) that monitor and control network elements (NE) such as hosts, gateways and terminal servers.[citation needed] These network elements use a management agent (MA) to perform the network management functions requested by the network management stations. The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is used to communicate management information between the network management stations and the agents in the network elements. NMS is described in RFC 1157 "A Simple Network Management Protocol".
An NMS provides FCAPS functionality for the whole network. FCAPS: Fault, Configuration, Accounting, Performance, Security, are the categories defined by the ISO model. In non-billing organizations accounting is sometimes replaced with administration.
Looking into the industry aspects, there are various players in the market like Nokia - NetAct, IBM - NetCool or Opmantek. Open source NMS solutions are also available like NMIS or OpenNMS.
The Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model is a reference model from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) that "provides a common basis for the coordination of standards development for the purpose of systems interconnection." In the OSI reference model, the communications between systems are split into seven different abstraction layers: Physical, Data Link, Network, Transport, Session, Presentation, and Application.
The Common Management Information Service (CMIS) is the service interface specified in ITU-T Recommendation X.710, ISO/IEC International Standard 9595 that is employed by OSI network elements for network management. It defines the service interface that is implemented by the Common Management Information Protocol (CMIP) as specified in ITU-T Recommendation X.711, ISO/IEC International Standard 9596-1. CMIS is part of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) body of international network standards.
Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an Internet Standard protocol for collecting and organizing information about managed devices on IP networks and for modifying that information to change device behavior. Devices that typically support SNMP include cable modems, routers, network switches, servers, workstations, printers, and more.
Cacti is an open-source, web-based network monitoring, performance, fault and configuration management framework designed as a front-end application for the open-source, industry-standard data logging tool RRDtool. Cacti allows a user to poll services at predetermined intervals and graph the resulting data. Through the use of Cacti plugins, it has been extended to encompass all of the FCAPS operational management categories. It is generally used to graph time-series data of metrics such as CPU load and network bandwidth utilization. A common usage is to monitor network traffic by polling a network switch or router interface via Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP).
In computer networks, a network element is a manageable logical entity uniting one or more physical devices. This allows distributed devices to be managed in a unified way using one management system.
The Common Management Information Protocol (CMIP) is the OSI specified network management protocol.
A management information base (MIB) is a database used for managing the entities in a communication network. Most often associated with the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), the term is also used more generically in contexts such as in OSI/ISO Network management model. While intended to refer to the complete collection of management information available on an entity, it is often used to refer to a particular subset, more correctly referred to as MIB-module.
The Telecommunications Management Network is a protocol model defined by ITU-T for managing open systems in a communications network. It is part of the ITU-T Recommendation series M.3000 and is based on the OSI management specifications in ITU-T Recommendation series X.700.
The Open Systems Interconnection protocols are a family of information exchange standards developed jointly by the ISO and the ITU-T. The standardization process began in 1977.
Systems management refers to enterprise-wide administration of distributed systems including computer systems. Systems management is strongly influenced by network management initiatives in telecommunications. The application performance management (APM) technologies are now a subset of Systems management. Maximum productivity can be achieved more efficiently through event correlation, system automation and predictive analysis which is now all part of APM.
In computer networks, network traffic measurement is the process of measuring the amount and type of traffic on a particular network. This is especially important with regard to effective bandwidth management.
Operations, administration, and management or operations, administration, and maintenance are the processes, activities, tools, and standards involved with operating, administering, managing and maintaining any system. This commonly applies to telecommunication, computer networks, and computer hardware.
OpenNMS is a free and open-source enterprise grade network monitoring and network management platform. It is developed and supported by a community of users and developers and by the OpenNMS Group, offering commercial services, training and support.
The Remote Network Monitoring (RMON) MIB was developed by the IETF to support monitoring and protocol analysis of local area networks (LANs). The original version focused on OSI layer 1 and layer 2 information in Ethernet and Token Ring networks. It has been extended by RMON2 which adds support for Network- and Application-layer monitoring and by SMON which adds support for switched networks. It is an industry-standard specification that provides much of the functionality offered by proprietary network analyzers. RMON agents are built into many high-end switches and routers.
An element management system (EMS) consists of systems and applications for managing network elements (NE) on the network element-management layer (NEL) of the Telecommunications Management Network (TMN) model.
With current network management technologies, management functions typically reside outside the network in management stations and servers, which interact with network elements and devices via network protocols for management, in order to execute management tasks, including fault, configuration, accounting, performance, and security management, or, short (FCAPS). Most of these tasks are performed on a per-device basis. During network operation, for instance, a management station periodically polls individual devices in its domain for the values of local variables, such as devices counters or performance parameters. These variables are then processed on the management station to compute an estimate of a network-wide state, which is analyzed and acted upon by management applications. This paradigm of interaction between the management system and managed system underlies traditional management frameworks and protocols, including SNMP, TMN and OSI-SM.
Network management software is software that is used to provision, discover, monitor and maintain computer networks.
Operations support systems (OSS), operational support systems in British usage, or Operation System (OpS) in NTT are computer systems used by telecommunications service providers to manage their networks. They support management functions such as network inventory, service provisioning, network configuration and fault management.
In digital communications networks, packet processing refers to the wide variety of algorithms that are applied to a packet of data or information as it moves through the various network elements of a communications network. With the increased performance of network interfaces, there is a corresponding need for faster packet processing.
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