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CA Spectrum Webclient - What, Why, How..

By kiran_diwakar posted Aug 17, 2015 06:51 AM

  

Hello Team,


After x64, there is tremendous interest in the CA Spectrum webclient. We are very excited as well, and there is a demo scheduled  for the community too.

While we do that, I wanted to make the team aware of our rationale behind the work and also our thinking direction. The idea is for you all to review our scenarios and requirements and shout out if you think we are missing something. Here  is our story below..

 

Monitoring is mostly read/view only operations that revolve around alarm/events and triage of those situations – typically done by operators, whose numbers in most deployments could range from 10s to 100s

Administration is the configuration aspects of the tool itself – Spectrum in this case – typically done by administrators, whose numbers in most cases are very small

The philosophy would be to let administrators continue to use the Java OC Client and the operators can then be shown the Web Based View of Spectrum to do the key triage operations.

.

Below are the key capabilities being considered for the solution:

1.       Alarm and View with info like in the OC client

a.       Ability to see GCs on the left hand pane

b.      Ability to select alarm/event on right hand pane, with details of the alarm on the right bottom pane

                                                               i.      Alarm type, severity, probable cause, root case, impacted devices etc

                                                             ii.      Try to replicate as much information as possible from events tab

2.       Ability to acknowledge, clear, open ticket for the alarm

3.       Basic diagnostic capabilities for device on which alarm is asserted (ping, poll, traceroute etc)

4.       Ability to get “Alarm Filters” and show alarms per the filter

5.       Ability to see the visual representation of the IT environment (aka topology). This is difficult and hence try for neighbors view first and then full topology

6.       Ability to not get onto VPN for OC Web (good to have) (use https)

7.       Ability to get alarms/events from Spectrum automatically (near real time), without needing to click refresh

8.      Ability to set Session Timeout.

9.      Ability to logout from Web Client.

10       Ability to see hierarchy of GCs in the left pane, in addition to the normal GC list

11      Ability to run diagnostics from the SS, specifically traceroute, else it is useless for the users for triage, if run from OC server itself

                  * Also should consider SDC environment for these

12      Add  the numeric value of the impact in the alarm tab – this will help users gauge the impact

13      Ability to send the selected alarms as email to an user

                               In addition to the alarm details, it would be good to have the link back to the alarm as well

14      Ability to see Custom attributes added by users, as columns, in the main alarm view – this is needed as at times users need to sort alarms on that custom value

15      Ability to have custom actions, preferably script – this will help users to drive actions, including, but not limited to opening other tools in context, to help triage better

                      If complete script for action is not currently possible, launching UIM and PM, preferably in context at the minimum should be there

16      Ability to have “themes” or CSS’ for visualization. This will help users to be able to pull the theme/s from the other tools  - will allow to drive usability and efficiency

                    At the minimum is having two themes "Performance Management" and "UIM" – since the Spectrum Web View could be embedded in those products, and having a  

                     similar look / feel will enhance the integration

17.       Ability to view model events as well. The use case would be that there is an alarm but also be able to view the events that may have led up/contributed to the alarm but

           didn't generate their own alarm.

 

Please review this everyone, and please call out if you think we have missed something. My list was upto 12 and the remaining ones got newly added based on my 1:1 reviews till now. So please provide your feedback and critique, we listen

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