Managing Your IP Telephony Environment with HP OpenView The Growing Need to Manage IP Telephony...2 Designing an IP Telephony Solution...2 Installing and Configuring an IP Telephony Solution...4 Maintaining an IP Telephony Solution...5 Integrated Management with HP OpenView...8 Managing Specific IP Telephony Environments...8 Getting the Most from Your Investment...8 For more information...9
The Growing Need to Manage IP Telephony The IP Telephony market is rapidly growing as more and more enterprises recognize the benefits of using IP telephony in their enterprise infrastructures: a single network for data, voice and video, drastic drops in moves, adds and changes, allowing IT to truly track their cost savings and new applications for building customer relationships and increasing employee collaboration. Existing enterprise sites are migrating to IP telephony technology while new buildings are being wired from the start for IP telephony. An estimated 50 percent of Global 200 organizations have implemented some type of Voice over IP (VoIP) or IP telephony network. In fact, industry analyst International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts that Minutes of Use (MOU) for IP telephony will surpass circuitswitched voice use in 2006. As the deployment and use of IP telephony systems increases, so does the need to manage converged voice and data systems. Users expect high-availability networking as well as an always on dial tone with good voice quality. To ensure you meet those needs, you need complete management capabilities. If not managed correctly, IP telephony can cripple the network and provide poor service. Management tools are particularly required at every stage of migrating an enterprise to IP telephony, from design to installation and configuration to ongoing maintenance. Regardless of whether you are migrating to IP telephony or installing a green field IP telephony solution, HP offers management tools that can help you every step of the way. Designing an IP Telephony Solution When rolling out an IP telephony solution, you need to prepare your network. You can t just plug in thousands of IP phones and expect things to work correctly. The rollout of IP telephony services requires a significant amount of information gathering. You will need to collect information about sites, users and IP and Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) infrastructures. You should conduct a comprehensive baseline of your current network performance and determine how well your service provider is performing. Do you have enough bandwidth with sufficient performance to add voice traffic? Are there problems within your network or your service provider s? Do you need to update your service agreement? HP OpenView Performance Insight performs both baselining and forecasting to help you answer these questions. With HP OpenView Performance Insight, you can track key metrics, such as jitter, latency and packet loss by link, so that you can see how busy or slow your network is before adding voice traffic. HP OpenView Performance Insight also lets you drill down to see interface-specific information. You can immediately identify the busiest interfaces or links within your network. And, you can determine potential problems with your interfaces and links based on today s configuration and traffic patterns in preparation for additional voice traffic. With this data, you can build a business case to justify new equipment or service provider upgrades, show your management how busy or slow the network is and forecast future needs. 2
Figure 1. HP OpenView Performance Insight reports, such as Interface Reporting, displays both historical performance information as well as forecasting based on performance trends for all your network components. By understanding how your network is currently performing, you can optimize your IT resources for IP telephony. And, HP OpenView Network Node Manager can create a snapshot of your current network topology to help you quickly see how your network is currently configured and may need to change to support IP telephony. 3
Figure 2. HP OpenView Network Node Manager displays current network configurations to help you determine any changes you may need to support IP telephony. Installing and Configuring an IP Telephony Solution When rolling out your IP telephony solution, you need to consider two key elements: control paths and voice paths. Control paths are connections between the phones and the soft switch and help determine service reliability. Voice paths are the shortest paths between phones and require high availability. Additionally, routers become critical to the success of your IP telephony implementation, because they ensure voice quality of service (QoS). With autodiscovery, HP OpenView Network Node Manager can automatically identify the routers that need QoS policies. You can then use that list with equipment vendors consoles such as Cisco QPM for configuring multiple routers at the same time and establishing policies for them. When tuning your configurations to better enable voice and troubleshoot your routers, you can use HP OpenView Network Node Manager to identify real-time faults. HP OpenView Network Node Manager allows you to discover and isolate faults and perform root cause analysis based on a true level 2 topology, a must for today s switched environments. With HP OpenView Network Node Manager, you can get VLAN information, Cisco neighbor views and path analysisviews. From HP OpenView Network Node Manager, you can launch into the leading IP telephony-provided management consoles for more detailed tuning. HP OpenView Network Node Manager can launch directly into CiscoWorks, the ProCurve Web interface and Avaya Integrated Management. This direct integration saves time and helps you resolve problems more quickly. 4
Figure 3. HP OpenView Network Node Manager integrates with the leading IP Telephony management systems, including CiscoWorks. Events can be displayed in both systems, and operators can launch one system directly from the other for maximum manageability. Maintaining an IP Telephony Solution Once your IP telephony solution is installed and configured, you can use HP OpenView Performance Insight to monitor how your network is performing. With HP OpenView Performance Insight, you can bracket different parts of your infrastructure. For example, you can track traffic volume, jitter, latency and packet loss within the enterprise campuses and at the interface points between the carrier and the enterprise (demarc routers) to determine whether issues are within the enterprise or in the service provider s connection. You can also use HP OpenView Performance Insight to forecast future needs based on historical data. 5
Figure 4. HP OpenView Performance Insight includes Service Assurance reports that can track key Quality of Service statistics such as availability, call duration, call success ratio, call volume, disconnect cause, jitter, latency and lost packets. Managing gateways is another critical requirement for a successful IP telephony solution. Gateways act as the bridge between the IP network and various PSTN networks. They can be special boxes or exist as additional functionality for an existing router. Because links to the PSTN are expensive, you will need to monitor which gateways are being used heavily. At the same time, you will want to ensure that gateways are not being under-used and that you are not paying for expensive lines that you don t need. HP OpenView Performance Insight includes reports that analyze gateway usage and forecast expected usage. Reports show call leg and call volume information. They also show gateways with the greatest projected increase in call volume. Drill-down charts present forecasted call volume metrics. With these reports, you can determine where to move traffic most cost effectively. 6
Figure 5. HP OpenView Performance Insight offers unprecedented insight into how gateways are performing, showing: Quality of Service for specific gateways, lost packets, jitter, latency, call volume, call duration, call success ration and disconnect cause by gateway, and gateway utilization by Cisco CallManager to see how well CallManagers are utilizing remote gateways. In addition to an optimal network configuration, an IP telephony implementation depends upon many underlying managed services. Numerous processes are needed to support IP telephony applications, such as call management systems, voicemail, personal assistant and emergency response applications. Plus, IP phones support many applications: Internet directory services, weather, stock market and flight information to mention a few. Many industries also offer special services, such as inventory checking for the retail market. Phones simply won t work if these services are down. From HP OpenView Network Node Manager, you can launch into the specific device application managers for managing these services. 7
Integrated Management with HP OpenView For managing your IP telephony environments, you can choose the HP OpenView management tools that best meet your needs. However, because IP telephony requires a variety of management solutions, you can also benefit from the tight integration of HP OpenView s management portfolio. All HP OpenView products work together to give you a better management solution. For example, the tools work with a single, coordinated list of nodes to reduce duplicate discovery and polling. You can also launch into relevant information without losing context. For example, you can identify a fault with a network interface or link in real-time using HP OpenView Network Node Manager, then launch into an HP OpenView Performance Insight report to see if this is a problem that has been building up over time and can be prevented in the future. And, all of your IP telephony data can roll up into a consolidated view, using HP OpenView Operations, to see network, operations and application information. Managing Specific IP Telephony Environments HP partners with the leading IP telephony equipment vendors, including Cisco and Avaya, to deliver integrated IP telephony management solutions. HP has certified OpenView products for the Cisco AVVID platform and has partnered with Cisco to develop HP OpenView Performance Insight reports for Cisco IP telephony installations. HP and Avaya have partnered to integrate Avaya Integrated Management and HP OpenView Network Node Manager. Getting the Most from Your Investment HP provides high-quality software services that address all aspects of your software application lifecycle needs and align with your business goals. With HP as your partner, you have access to standards-based, modular, multi-platform software, coupled with HP s best-in-class services and support portfolio. HP offers premier on-site deployment assistance and development support, in addition to Consulting, outsourcing, financing, education, extensive online self-help and mission-critical support options. All of these offerings are focused on helping you to maximize the return on your investment. HP Services offers a comprehensive suite of IP Telephony Services including: IP Telephony Assessment- to evaluate the impact of IP telephony on your environment IP Telephony Architecture, Plan & Design - including needs analysis, solution design, and identification of critical success factors IP Telephony Pilot- to help you evaluate the benefits and viability of an IP telephony system IP Telephony Implementation - including a detailed project plan, phased implementation, and integration with your existing infrastructure For more information on HP software services available to meet your specific business needs, visit: www.openview.hp.com/services 8
For more information http://www.openview.hp.com/products/nnm/prod_nnm_0002.html http://www.hp.com/hps/network/nw_iptelephony.html http://www.hp.com/hps/spotlight/index_ipt.html 2003 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein. Itanium is a trademark or registered trademark of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and other countries and is used under license. 11/2003