Driver framework capabilities

Capabilities summary

The NFM-P driver framework offers a robust feature set that all drivers can employ to attain management parity with NEs natively managed by the NFM-P. The extent to which each driver takes advantage of the capabilities of the NFM-P driver framework varies from driver to driver, however.

In conjunction with the NFM-P driver framework, drivers enable users to discover, provision, and manage other vendors’ equipment and services using the same XML API, script and GUI workflows as are used for natively managed Nokia devices and services. When a driver is employed, the NEs become available in NFM-P map and service topology views, and configuration management is synchronized through the GUI or through an XML API interface.

The driver architecture supports SNMP, NETCONF, and CLI management protocols.

Note: Manual or scheduled resynchronization of a device is required if any direct CLI changes are made while the device is managed by the NFM-P.

The NFM-P discovers the NEs that will be managed by drivers using a GNE Profile. The NE and the driver are associated with a GNE Profile through the standard sysObjectId MIB attribute of the NE and the “Driver module” selection, respectively. Once this association is made, the NFM-P expects a driver to be used for all NEs of that type. You can either manage all nodes of a particular SNMP sysOID with a driver or all nodes as a GNE. In most cases, a GNE Profile for the driver is automatically created in the NFM-P.

Extended management features

The NFM-P driver framework supports drivers designed to extend NE management in the following areas:

• node, shelf and port discovery and display in the GUI topologies

• MPLS dynamic LSP and SDP discovery and provisioning

• VLL Epipe service discovery and provisioning

• VPRN service discovery and provisioning (PE-CE IP, OSPF, BGP, static routes, loopback on L3 access interface, L3 access interface on physical ports)

• VPLS service discovery and provisioning (RSVP-TE and LDP)

• LLDP link endpoint specification at the physical port level rather than GNE interface level

• alarm integration, correlation and aggregation

• QoS and policer control policy definition

• interface statistics and plotting

For information about RCA audits for Epipe, VPLS, and VPRN services with multi-vendor NE sites, see RCA audit for services with multi-vendor NE sites.