Product overview

IBM Netcool Agile Service Manager provides operations teams with complete up-to-date visibility and control over dynamic infrastructure and services. Agile Service Manager lets you query a specific networked resource, and then presents a configurable topology view of it within its ecosystem of relationships and states, both in real time and within a definable time window.

Benefits of Netcool Agile Service Manager

Services and applications are increasingly deployed in environments that take advantage of distributed and often virtualized infrastructure. For example, parts of a network might be cloud-based, with other connected elements contained within, or tethered to, legacy systems that exploit tried and tested on-prem capability. The result is often a highly distributed and increasingly complex hybrid network that requires an agile and dynamic operations management solution in order to leverage and exploit its rapidly evolving technologies.

Netcool Agile Service Manager allows the real-time view, support and management of highly dynamic infrastructures and services. By visualizing complex network topologies in real-time, updated dynamically or on-demand, and allowing further investigation of events, incidents and performance, operational efficiency is improved, problems are detected and solved faster, false alarms are reduced, and automation and collaboration between operational teams is improved. Also, data can be leveraged more efficiently both in real time and historically, thereby empowering teams and systems to create and nurture differentiated services for different customers.

IBM Netcool Agile Service Manager is cloud-born, and built on secure, robust and proven technologies. It is designed to be flexible and can be extended as needed using plug-in components and micro-services to cater for highly specific environments.

Agile Service Manager observers

Observers are Agile Service Manager's means of obtaining topology information from a specific source, which may be inclusive of state. Typically, an observer aims to get a near-real-time stream of data from a source, but in cases where this is not possible or applicable, they can revert to other techniques, such as database or REST API queries.

Each observer minimally needs to run one 'job' and provides a set of REST APIs to enable job management. Once an observer has been given a job request on behalf of a tenant, it runs the job and sends data to the Agile Service Manager topology service; predominantly via Kafka, although some meta-data exchange is done RESTfully.

The data originating from an observer is considered to be name-spaced by the tenant ID running the job and the notion of a 'provider', which is up to the observer to determine. For example, the File Observer's provider is the string 'FILE.OBSERVER:file name to load'. This ensures that subsequent loads of data for the same file can be replaced or updated as needed.

Basic deployment

Netcool Agile Service Manager is deployed with IBM Tivoli Netcool Operations Insight as part of an integrated solution. This figure depicts the basic Agile Service Manager on-prem architecture.

Deployment scenarios

Network Manager: You want to use Netcool Agile Service Manager to analyze the resource data discovered by Network Manager.; You configure the ITNM Observer to load topology data, and then monitor Network Manager for updates.; You define a seed resource in the Agile Service Manager UI, and then dynamically render a topology view centered around that resource, which can display linked resources up to four hops away.; You use this visualization to delve into the states, histories and relationships of the resources displayed.; New data is harvested continuously, which you can then analyze further.
Netcool/OMNIbus: You want to extend your analysis of Netcool/OMNIbus events.; You configure the Agile Service Manager status service and the probe and gateway services to monitor the Netcool/OMNIbus ObjectServer for new events.; You configure the probe and gateway services to synchronize event views across the Netcool Agile Service Topology Viewer and the Netcool/OMNIbus Event Viewer.; You display a topology based on a specific resource (event), and then exploit Netcool Agile Service Manager's functionality to gain further insights into the displayed events.
OpenStack: You use the OpenStack Observer to render detailed OpenStack topologies, and delve further into their states, histories and relationships.
Bespoke topologies using the REST APIs: You want to load resource data from your own source in order to use the Netcool Agile Service Manager functionality to render topologies for analysis.; You use the REST APIs to configure a data source, load your data, and then use the Netcool Agile Service Manager UI to focus on a specific seed resource, before extending your topology outward.