Big gains await those who have UC service management tools at their fingertips. These tools allow UC teams to prevent outages, improve end user experience and right size resources across the network. Analysts estimate that the introduction of UC service management reduces reactive break-fix activity by up to 80 percent – an effective warning system at the top of the cliff is always better than an ambulance parked at the bottom.
So, equipped with the right tools, what should you monitor and measure in your Avaya environment?
Here’s our Top 10 List:
1. UC SOLUTION HEALTH
Processor occupancy, memory utilization and disk space. Is your UC application working within manufacturer specifications? How about resiliency? Are your standby servers ready to operate when you need them? Is every duplicated and standby component in good health and ready for work? And what about solution control? High quality, low latency network connections between critical UC components are just as important as voice quality. Are your port networks, media gateways, session managers and session border controllers happy with network performance?
2. ADJUNCT APPLICATION HEALTH
UC is an ecosystem – understanding and managing connecting configuration and hardware is essential to uptime. Capacity matters just as much in this space. Is every component working within manufacturer specifications? Is there sufficient hardware to cater to the message rate on CTI links? Can you see overflowing buffers that might knock adjunct applications out of sync with telephony state?
3. ALARMS AND EVENTS
Monitoring applications is the best indication of UC service quality experienced by users – and the best way to predict and prevent outages. SNMP traps for alarm information don’t do the job, because more often than not the alarms they raise are after the fact; they’re too late. For example, can you tell if a media gateway or port network is already struggling to communicate with the ACM application server and will likely restart if the network stutters a little?
4 LICENSES
Licensed vs consumed – can you tell? Paying for too many licenses is a double whammy when you factor in maintenance. Is every configured item actually used, and can you exclude redundant configurations from licensing calculations? Are you able to accurately forecast the point in time when all licenses are used?
5. HARDWARE
IT resources required to support Avaya environments do not have unlimited capacity. Many and varied resources are required to maintain application performance, and they must function at the right levels in various locations across a network. Do you have sufficient media resources, trunks and announcement capacity at each location? Are you unknowingly playing music or announcement files across WAN connections?
6. QUALITY OF EXPERIENCE
Call quality starts with correct configuration. When quality suffers, diving headlong into network performance may not get you far. Do you know the settings for every IP endpoint? And are IP endpoints in the correct V-Lan? IP network region design and call admission control must support real time queues set by network teams.
7. SECURITY
Recognizing suspicious behavior as it happens is the only way to stop it from causing damage.
8. CHANGE
Who made the changes? What was changed? Which commands did they use? What are the old settings and the new settings? Can the changes be reversed without disrupting performance?
9. SOFTWARE RELEASES
How does your environment stack up with Avaya’s recommendations and global benchmarks for similarly architected organizations? Are you happy to be the first to deploy new software?
10. BACKUPS
Are your backups running? Are they stored off-site? And are they viable?