HP OpenView System Administration Handbook [Electronic resources] : Network Node Manager, Customer Views, Service Information Portal, HP OpenView Operations

10.1 THE FIVE ADDITIONAL VIEWS

CV allows service providers to group and access their network resource relationships by defining organizations. The organizations may be individuals, businesses, or any entity with network resource relationships to the service provider. CV provides two types of organizations, including

• Customers Customers rely on the service provider for resource access.

• Providers Providers supply access to resources.

When installed, CV adds five container symbols to NNM's root submap, as shown in Figure 10-1. These symbols provide the following five additional views:

CV consists of two applications that are tightly integrated into NNM. The

Hierarchical Submap Builder (HSB) application is managed by the

submBld process. The HSB is responsible for the Sites, Internet Links, Customers, and Devices view. The

Key Resources application is managed by the

keySys process and is responsible for the Key Resources view. Because these processes integrate with NNM, CV must reside on the same system as NNM. These processes can be listed on a UNIX system by executing

ps ef | more . The processes are found in the task manager on Windows.

10.1.1 The Key Resources View

The purpose of defining key resources is to identify critical network devices. Key resources are identified by the object attribute

isKeyDevice . This attribute is added to NNM by CV and appears under General Attributes, as shown in Figure 10-2. The attribute

isKeyDevice may be modified via the NNM GUI. It may also be configured with the

ovcustomer utility.

10.1.2 The Customers View

The purpose of defining customers is to allow logical, organizational groups of devices based on device ownership. NNM provides the physical layout of devices but has no way of determining which devices belong to an organization. With the

ovcustomer utility, you can define customer organizations and associate devices that exist within the NNM database to an organization. The Customers view looks similar to that shown in Figure 10-3.

10.1.3 The Devices View

The Devices view provides three types of device groups, including

• Routers Automatically populated by CV

• Servers Must be defined with

  ovcustomer

• Switches Automatically populated by CV

These three groups are shown in Figure 10-4. CV automatically builds the devices hierarchy when a map is created. This is the only CV hierarchy that is partially populated automatically. When devices are discovered by netmon, the device type is determined based on the object attributes listed in Table 10.1. The device type cannot be modified via the NNM GUI. The

ovcustomer utility may be used to modify the device attributes.

Table 10.1. CV Device Types

Because the object attributes

isRouter and

isConnector are set by NNM discovery, the Routers and Switches containers are automatically populated when CV is installed. However, CV adds an additional object attribute,

isServer , to NNM. This attribute is used to identify servers that are considered critical to a customer's enterprise. The attribute

isServer is added to the

Capabilities section of the object attribute, as shown in Figure 10-5. The

isServer attribute cannot be modified via the NNM GUI. In fact, the

isServer field does not appear in the Capabilities or in the object database (

ovobjprint s

selectionname ) until it is configured via the

ovcustomer utility.

The Routers container consists of all devices having the object attributes

isRouter and

isConnector set to TRUE. The view looks similar to Figure 10-6. CV automatically populates the Routers container.

By default, nothing exists in the Servers container. This container is populated with devices having the attribute

isServer set to TRUE. Because this attribute is added by the CV application, it must be configured. This attribute is configured with

ovcustomer .

The Switches container consists of devices with object attributes

isConnector set to TRUE and

isRouter set to FALSE. It is automatically be populated by CV. The Switches submap looks similar to Figure 10-7.

10.1.4 The Internet Links View

The purpose of defining Internet Links is to discern between customer and provider equipment. Two different types of organizations may be defined in CV: customers and providers. When a customer is defined with

ovcustomer , the customer appears under the Customers container submap. When a provider is defined with

ovcustomer , the provider appears under the Internet Links view. The Internet Links view is similar to the view shown in Figure 10-8.

10.1.5 The Sites View

The Sites view shows the deployment of network devices in logical or geographical groups. Sites may be used to represent a building, a city, or a state, as shown in Figure 10-9. Location containers for the sites are created using the

ovcustomer utility. Sites can consist of the following four location types:

• Network Operations Center (NOC) A location for central resource management.

• Point of Presence (POP) A location that extends the services area but it does not provide the services of an NOC.

• Peering Point A location for sharing of service resources between service providers.

• General A location, such as a city or state, that allows for customizing the Sites hierarchy.

Sites can be cascaded to represent a building within a city, and a city within a state. For example, Mass and Peabody are created as Sites. Peabody is associated with Mass such that Peabody appears in the Mass container, as shown in Figure 10-10.

After the site hierarchy has been created, devices are associated with a site. Depending on the site type, the hierarchy looks similar to those shown in Figures 10-11 and 10-12. Peabody is a general site (Figure 10-11) and PeabodyNOC is a NOC site (Figure 10-12).