NMS OAM components

NMS Communications operations, administration, and maintenance (OAM) software is the component of the Natural Access development environment that enables you to administer and maintain NMS resources in a system. NMS OAM can manage hardware components such as NMS boards, or software components such as the NMS Hot Swap and H.100/H.110 clock management processes.

This topic presents:

NMS OAM architecture

NMS OAM software includes the following components:

The following illustration shows NMS OAM components:

NMS OAM Supervisor

The NMS OAM Supervisor provides the main NMS OAM logic. It performs the following tasks:

The NMS OAM Supervisor is an integral part of the Natural Access Server (ctdaemon). To use the NMS OAM software, Natural Access must be installed on your system and ctdaemon must be running. To learn how to start ctdaemon, refer to Starting the Natural Access Server.

Board plug-ins

NMS OAM communicates with boards through software extensions called board plug-ins, one for each board family. The NMS OAM board plug-ins support the AG, CG, CX, and QX PCI and CompactPCI board models. The board plug-ins do not support TX boards.

When the Supervisor starts up, it loads all plug-ins that it finds. The Supervisor looks for these modules in the \nms\bin directory (/opt/nms/lib under UNIX). Plug-in files have the extension .bpi.

Extended management components (EMCs)

EMCs are software modules that add functionality to NMS OAM. NMS OAM provides the following EMCs:

When the Supervisor starts up, it loads all EMCs that it finds. The Supervisor looks for these modules in the \nms\bin directory (/opt/nms/lib under UNIX). EMC files have the extension .emc.

Performing OAM tasks

You can perform the following tasks using NMS OAM:

Use the following NMS OAM components to perform OAM tasks:

In a multiple-host NMS OAM configuration, these utilities reside on the management host and communicate with the resource hosts over the IP network.

The following illustration shows the relationships between NMS OAM components:

To use any NMS OAM utility on any host, the Natural Access Server (ctdaemon) must be running on the target host and have the NMS OAM Supervisor started within it. Refer to Starting the Natural Access Server for more information.

oamsys

To configure and start managed components on a host, use the oamsys utility. This utility creates records for components in the NMS OAM database on a resource host based on system configuration files you supply. It then attempts to start all boards in the database.

Configuration parameter values for each managed component are listed in the system configuration file. If the component is a board, this information includes the board's ID information.

oamsys completely renews the database each time it runs and restarts all boards. Any parameters not listed in the configuration file are reset to their default settings. Thus oamsys makes it easy to track the configuration of an entire host.

Note: If you are migrating to NMS OAM, utilities are available to assist in the transition from agmon to NMS OAM. Refer to Summary of changes for more information.

To perform its tasks, the oamsys utility makes multiple calls to the oamcfg utility.

Use oamsys to set up both local and remote configurations. Refer to Using oamsys for more information.

oamcfg

oamcfg provides access to individual NMS OAM configuration functions. Using this utility, you can:

oamcfg can perform one or more operations for a single component. Alternatively, the utility can perform operations on all board components in the database with one call. All oamcfg operations can be performed on both local and remote resources.

Use oamcfg to update components. oamcfg can be cumbersome if you use it to update many components in a complex system. Use oamsys for this purpose. Refer to oamcfg overview for more information.

oammon

The oammon utility enables you to access NMS OAM monitoring functions. Using oammon, you can:

oammon can monitor both local and remote resources. Refer to Using oammon for more information.

oaminfo

The oaminfo utility enables you to access keywords from the command line. oaminfo can display all keywords for a component, or specific keywords and values. It can also search for text in keyword names and set keyword values.

oaminfo can perform its functions on both local and remote hosts. For more information about oaminfo, refer to the NMS OAM Service Developer's Reference Manual.

NMS OAM service

You can program access to NMS OAM functionality using the NMS OAM service. NMS OAM is implemented as a service under the Natural Access development environment. Natural Access provides standard programming interfaces for hardware-independent functions. Under Natural Access, logically related functions (NMS OAM operations, for example) are divided into groups called services, which have similar APIs.

NMS OAM utilities make calls to the NMS OAM service to perform their operations.

For information about using the NMS OAM service, refer to the NMS OAM Service Developer's Reference Manual.