Event Correlation Services Designer

As of Network Node Manager (NNM) version 6.4, most customers will not require the Event Correlation Services (ECS) Designer product functionality. NNM now comes bundled with a new easier to use event correlation utility known as the Correlation Composer. Future releases of Operations will also include this new correlation functionality.

The critical challenge for network and system operators today is dealing with the massive amount of information related to network, system and application problems. This information comes in many forms and the key is for your management solution to accurately understand what is important to present to your operators, what can be discarded, and what is needed for use by specialists who may need to follow a “bread-crumb trail” when diagnosing very complex problems.

The Correlation Composer (herein after referred to as Composer) is a graphical user interface used to tune the prepackaged Correlators included with NNM 6.4, and simplifies the development of customer developed Correlators. Correlators are created using the Composer and uniquely identify a unit of logic to be applied to an event or set of events. Correlators can be used out of the box or can be easily fine tuned to fit your environment like a glove without requiring programming skills.

The Composer comes prepackaged with six Correlator Templates (event suppression, transient states, duplicate events, event timing, event create and annotation), which ease the creation of correlation solutions by providing correlation models for the most common correlation tasks. The Composer with the Correlator Templates form the basis for simplied correlation tuning and development.

HP OpenView Event Correlation Services (ECS) Designer is a powerful product that offers customers sophisticated capabilities to create customized rules for specific Network Node Manager (NNM) or HP OpenView Operations event correlation requirements. The graphical user interface of ECS Designer makes the complex process of event correlation design intuitive and user-friendly.

ECS Designer integrates fully with NNM to correlate network-related events. It integrates with Operations to correlate events coming from the different layers of the network environment, such as network systems, applications, databases, and the Internet.

Integration with both these OpenView products offers customers the ability to pinpoint exactly what’s wrong because NNM and OpenView Operations will filter events coming from the environment, correlate the event storm, and alert administrators to the real source of the problem.

Features

Integration with operations

Operations offers event correlation on the management server and on supported managed nodes, uniquely allowing event correlation to be distributed among systems, networks, applications, and database events. In addition, Operations can leverage already correlated SNMP events from NNM to offer even stronger distributed event correlation, resulting in even less network traffic.

Integration with network node manager

The customized correlation logic that is created using ECS Designer complements the four pre-defined logic systems that make up the ECS Engine, which comes free with NNM (and Operations). Together, the customized logic of ECS Designer and the pre-defined logic systems of ECS Engine give third-party vendors the opportunity to develop correlation logic for their customers, and deploy that logic to any NNM management or collection station. The flexible ECS Designer Configuration interface let vendors customize logic parameters, too.

In addition, when events are correlated into high-level alarms, there is no loss of information. Customers can drill down to see the associated events that make up the high-level alarm. Third-party vendors can sell the correlation logic systems they develop, bundle them with other products and services they offer, or simply give them away.