OAM diagnostic test overview
Introduction to OAM diagnostic tests
The NFM-P provides a set of configurable in-band or out-of-band, packet-based OAM diagnostic tests that allows you to pro-actively manage networks and customer SLAs including:
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on-demand or scheduled service performance monitoring, and SLA verification to ensure that a service meets its guaranteed performance settings in a controlled test time
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networking troubleshooting activities including fault detection, fault verification, and fault isolation
This chapter provides information about each OAM diagnostic test that can be configured using the NFM-P. See Chapter 89, Service Test Manager for information about higher-level functions that can be performed with each OAM diagnostic test using the STM, such as creating STM test policies and STM test suites.
The correct delivery of services requires that a number of operations must occur correctly at different levels in the service. For example, operations such as the association of packets to a service, VC labels to a service, and each service to a service tunnel, must be performed successfully for the service to pass traffic to subscribers according to their SLAs. Even when tunnels are operating correctly and are correctly bound to services, incorrect information may cause connectivity issues.
For in-band, packet-based testing, the OAM packets closely resemble customer packets to effectively test the forwarding path. However, these packets are distinguishable from customer packets, so they are kept within the service provider network and not forwarded to the customer. For out-of-band testing, OAM packets are sent across a portion of the transport network; for example, across LSPs to test reachability.
On-demand OAM diagnostic test configuration
You can create, manage, and run most OAM diagnostic tests on-demand from the NFM-P STM as a single test entity.
Some OAM diagnostic tests can be configured from alternate launch points on the NFM-P GUI, including the following:
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from a network object or NE Properties form; for example, LSP pings from the LSP Properties form
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from the service topology or composite service flat topology view on service flat topology maps; see Chapter 4, Topology map management for information.
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using a user-defined CLI script; for example, creating a device-specific ping and traceroute script for troubleshooting issues on an OmniSwitch
The following table lists the OAM diagnostic tests that are accessible from the NFM-P GUI and provides a link to the appropriate test description and applicable procedure.
Table 90-1: NFM-P supported OAM diagnostic tests and configurations
Multiple OAM diagnostic test configuration
You can also create, schedule, and run test suites that contain groups of OAM diagnostic tests using the NFM-P STM. The use of test suites is especially valuable when multiple objects of the same type require testing. Test suites can be scheduled to run on a regular basis to provide continual network performance feedback.
See Chapter 89, Service Test Manager for information about configuring multiple OAM diagnostic tests as part of a test suite using the STM.
See Chapter 5, NFM-P-based schedules for information about scheduled tasks.