2 research outputs found
A mid-level framework for independent network services configuration management
Tese doutoramento do Programa Doutoral em TelecomunicaçõesDecades of evolution in communication network’s resulted in a high diversity of solutions,
not only in terms of network elements but also in terms of the way they are managed.
From a management perspective, having heterogeneous elements was a feasible scenario
over the last decades, where management activities were mostly considered as additional
features. However, with the most recent advances on network technology, that includes
proposals for future Internet as well as requirements for automation, scale and efficiency,
new management methods are required and integrated network management became an
essential issue.
Most recent solutions aiming to integrate the management of heterogeneous network
elements, rely on the application of semantic data translations to obtain a common representation
between heterogeneous managed elements, thus enabling their management
integration. However, the realization of semantic translations is very complex to be effectively
achieved, requiring extensive processing of data to find equivalent representation,
besides requiring the administrator’s intervention to create and validate conversions,
since contemporary data models lack a formal semantic representation.
From these constrains a research question arose: Is it possible to integrate the con g-
uration management of heterogeneous network elements overcoming the use of manage-
ment translations? In this thesis the author uses a network service abstraction to propose
a framework for network service management, which comprehends the two essential management
operations: monitoring and configuring. This thesis focus on describing and
experimenting the subsystem responsible for the network services configurations management,
named Mid-level Network Service Configuration (MiNSC), being the thesis
most important contribution.
The MiNSC subsystem proposes a new configuration management interface for integrated
network service management based on standard technologies that includes an
universal information model implemented on unique data models. This overcomes the
use of management translations while providing advanced management functionalities,
only available in more advanced research projects, that includes scalability and resilience
improvement methods. Such functionalities are provided by using a two-layer distributed
architecture, as well as over-provisioning of network elements. To demonstrate MiNSC’s
management capabilities, a group of experiments was conducted, that included, configuration
deployment, instance migration and expansion using a DNS management system
as test bed. Since MiNSC represents a new architectural approach, with no direct reference for
a quantitative evaluation, a theoretical analysis was conducted in order to evaluate it
against important integrated network management perspectives. It was concluded that
there is a tendency to apply management translations, being the most straightforward solution
when integrating the management of heterogeneous management interfaces and/or
data models. However, management translations are very complex to be realized, being
its effectiveness questionable for highly heterogeneous environments. The implementation
of MiNSC’s standard configuration management interface provides a simplified
perspective that, by using universal configurations, removes translations from the management
system. Its distributed architecture uses independent/universal configurations
and over-provisioning of network elements to improve the service’s resilience and scalability,
enabling as well a more efficient resource management by dynamically allocating
resources as needed