Sharmila Rajendra Deshpande
Lucent Technologies, Communications Software

Capacity planning challenges using K, N and V platforms for Wireless and Wireline network provisioning systems

I would like to share my experience with capacity planning for Wireless and Wireline network provisioning systems. In addition to providing an overview of the platforms being used, I would like to present a list of features that I think will enhance the current Hewlett-Packard platforms from operational perspective. The application software that I work with is ACTIVIEW. ACTIVIEW is a set of applications that enables Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLECs) and Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers (ILECs) to automate the provisioning of Wireless or Wireline network(s) for end users.

ACTIVIEW applications have been deployed in the Far East, Europe and North and South American regions. These characteristics of our product present unique opportunities and challenges for recommending initial configurations that meet the customer's immediate processing needs and budgetary constraints while providing scalability to meet future growth. ACTIVIEW applications are based on client-server architecture. Clients use Wintel architecture and interact with Hewlett-Packard servers. K, N and V platforms are being currently being used. Configurations range from two to three-tiered systems. Criteria for selecting a platform are as follows:
  • Load - Number of ACTIVIEW provisioning requests per hour.
  • Complexity of provisioning requests i.e., sequence of tasks required to process a provisioning request from creation to close.
  • Disk space requirement, based on number of requests, complexity of data and customer's data retention requirement.
Detailed capacity planning models are used to accurately match resource requirements with platform capabilities. Typical two-tiered configuration involve a client interacting with a K580 server using HP-UX 10.20. While, a typica l three-tiered configuration consists of client interacting with a K580 (one or more) and a database server. ACTIVIEW applications are horizontally scalable. Therefore, when processing needs exceed those that can be satisfied by a single 6-way K580, multiple servers are necessary at the application layer. Based on the processing needs, the database server platforms are either N or V.

Database disk needs for most ACTIVIEW applications are less than 25 GB of visible data. Therefore, these needs are easily satisfied by either a Jamaica enclosure or a FC-10 or HC-10. However, one of the more recent ACTIVIEW applications, the Customer Record Database Manager (CRDM) has a large disk requirement. Therefore, some customers have used XP256 for their disk storage needs. Here are some of the features that I'd like to see from a physical resource perspective,perhaps some of these have been implemented already:
  • Benchmarking application performance on new platforms with minimal investment of time from the application performance engineers. This will enable us to more accurately estimate performance gains provided by newer platforms.
  • High end disk storage on an as needed basis.

    From Operations, Administration and Management (OA&M) perspective, software such as OmniBack and MC/ServiceGuard have been easy to integrate and maintain. However, I see a need for similar software for disaster recovery. While software for implementing disaster recovery is available, ease of integration of this software with the application software needs to be further enhanced.