Table of Contents

TDF EPM Manager

About

The TDF EPM Manager connector is an Experience and Performance Management connector, and as such it is designed to handle large amounts of data from the deployed infrastructures. It manages and monitors devices across various Equipment Management Systems (EMSs), maintaining relational data and aggregating data that can be viewed through a central frontend interface and the DataMiner Topology app.

A deployed EPM Solution consists of one TDF EPM Manager frontend element and can have one or multiple backend elements (using the same connector). The TDF EPM Manager frontend element is responsible for top-level data aggregation from different backend elements. Each backend element handles data aggregation from the collectors.

The geographical topology is presented in the TDF EPM Manager and represents a connected entity from top to bottom:

  • Geographical

    • Zone
    • Department
    • Site
    • Equipment

  • Configuration

    • Allows you to place Visual Overview layouts on a separate chain.

Configuration

Connections

Virtual Connection - Main

This connector uses a virtual connection and does not require any input during element creation.

Initialization

When creating the managers manually, follow these steps:

  1. Create a single frontend element and configure it as follows:

    1. On the Configuration page, change the Element Manager Type to Frontend.

    2. In the Import Settings, fill in the import directory where the provisioning files are located.

    3. In the Export Settings, fill in the location from which the backend elements will be importing.

    4. In the Helios Settings, specify the import directory where Helios files, such as device and site files, are located.

  2. Create as many backend elements as needed.

    Typically, the frontend element should be on a DMA of its own, and there should be a backend element on all other DMAs. If the DMS only consists of one DMA, then it can have one frontend and one backend element.

  3. In the Import Settings on the Configuration page of the backend elements, fill in the directory where the frontend element will export.

  4. In the Export Settings on the Configuration page of the backend elements, fill in the directory from which the collectors will import.

  5. In the frontend element, fill in the necessary DMA ID/Element IDs:

    1. In Frontend Registration table, fill in the DMA ID/Element ID of the frontend element.

    2. In the Backend Registration table, fill in all DMA ID/Element IDs of the backend elements in the system.

    3. In the Collector Registration table, fill in all DMA ID/Element IDs of the collector elements in the system.

  6. In the backend elements, fill in the necessary DMA ID/Element IDs:

    1. In the Backend Registration table, fill in the DMA ID/Element ID of the current backend element.

    2. In the Collector Registration table, fill in all DMA ID/Element IDs of the collector elements on the same DMA.

  7. On the Configuration page of the frontend element, click the Import button to begin the provisioning.

Redundancy

There is no redundancy defined.

How to use

Once the EPM Manager elements are configured, the only required procedure is for the frontend element to import the following CSV files and initiate the ID assignment process:

  • Zones.csv
  • Departments.csv
  • Sites.csv
  • Device.csv (contains all devices across the EMSs that are not available in their inventories)
  • Device.csv per EMS/collector (if available)

After the ID assignment is completed, the frontend element exports a series of CSVs. These files are then imported by the backend and collector elements. To initiate this process, the frontend element notifies the respective backend/collector element to process these files using an InterApp message.

Notes

The frontend element creates structured files with unique IDs per entity for the backend and collector elements. Additionally, an extra file is generated per collector, containing equipment and site-related information from the Helios DB inventory with equipment and site metadata for all service types.

This file is created based on two other files that are regularly generated by the TDF Helios Database connector:

  • Helios DB-Equipments.csv
  • Helios DB-Sites.csv
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