SPX Module
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Optimise the efficiency of your service and manage the whole IP lifecycle - the constant development of new added-value services offered by operators needs the definition of a strategy of IP addressing management associated to these services—VOIP, MPLS, NGN.
The EfficientIP Service Provider eXtensions - SPX - Module is a Plug-and-Play software add-on module to the SOLIDserver™ range of physical and virtualised DHCP, DNS & IPAM (DDI) appliances.
SOLIDserver™ is a unique market solution providing built-in functionalities allowing registration, provisioning, planning and management of the full life-cycle of IP addressing and naming services for operators’ networks. Efficient IP's solutions manage the global life cycle management of the IP addressing plans and DNS and DHCP services. These solutions offer the ability to quickly deploy new services whilst creating robust architectures.
SOLIDserver™ brings solutions for:
- Optimising the consumption of IP resources (addresses, subnets, blocks)
- Modeling, standardising and automating administrative procedures
- Simplifying the delegation of resource deployment with collaborative work tools
The operational benefits are as follows:
- Speed of services deployment: reduction of the "Time to market"
- Reduction in the functioning costs
- Business and IT alignment
Modeling Complex Addressing Plan Designs
SOLIDserver™ enables the modeling of multiple IP addressing plans depending on the Network Providers’ organization, e.g. services (VRF, MPLS, IP-VPN, BGP AS, circuits, network peering, NOC's loopbacks), geographic zones (points of presence location) or entities (subsidiaries, customers).
It is possible to mix and match models to build a tailor-made address structure. There is no limitation on the number of levels and depth of the IP plan that can be defined. All branches of this tailor-made tree structure can be independent or not. The flexibility and scalability of hierarchical tree structures ensure ease of modification. It is possible to quickly reorganise, extend or migrate IP addressing plans according to network evolutions and company restructuring.
Each part of the addressing plan can have its own IPAM rules of resource consumption, documentation and its own methods of organisation. Based on this unique approach it is possible to apply your IPAM policies on top of the IP addressing plan to streamline IP consumption and qualification.
IPAM Provisioning Process Modeling and Automation
A Service Provider’s business service delivery relies upon their IP addressing plan which is the foundation of the service deployment. As a consequence IPAM processes are at the heart of the business delivery and have to be managed not only from a technical perspective but also from a business perspective:
- Faster business services deployment
- Cutting costs and increasing productivity at the same time
- Increasing global Service Level Agreement compliance and customer satisfaction by eliminating errors
- IPAM reflects the structure of the company organisation
SOLIDserver™ allows you to model and automate all IPAM provisioning processes in a methodological and accurate way. SOLIDserver™ applies user-defined IPAM provisioning policies to consistently select the appropriate IP resources at the appropriate place within your IP plan organisation in concordance with your best practices, rules and constraints (naming convention, automatic choice of label, address or subnet mask). This frees administrators from the headaches of searching for available IP addresses or ranges to provision and the help them to manage complexity of enforcing engineering rules.
SOLIDserver™ helps you improve your business agility and capacity utilisation, shrinks provisioning time, and improves administrator productivity.
Streamline IP Addressing Plan Documentation
Daily network operations require deployments of IPAM resources which are both rapid and coherent. SOLIDserver™ enables you to create graphically unlimited numbers of fully customised templates of forms for IP objects. Each IP object template, named "Class", can have a specific list of user-defined fields of metadata such as device location, Circuit Number, Line Speed, serial number or whatever is important to be qualified by the user according to the company's needs. Thus it is possible to create dedicated Classes for specific network objects for the deployment of routers, servers, agency subnets or external DNS zones.
Classes are a simple tool designed to guarantee consistency and efficiency of the IP qualification by:
- Streamlining data qualification
- Eliminating all configuration and qualification errors
- Guiding system administrators
- Ensuring consistency in deployment
IP Space Fragmentation Control and Management
SOLIDserver™ ensures a maximum optimisation of subnet consumption for optimal summarisation. It identifies available subnets, according to required user-defined criteria (location, size,), generating less fragmentation in the address space, allowing the administrator to organise the creation of contiguous address ranges in an optimum way. SOLIDserver™ facilitates CIDR utilisation in the network and minimises the number of routes.
Unify Processes with Built-In Work Flow Features
SOLIDserver™ offers a unique working methodology to Service Providers, through the application of a homogeneous management policy of request processing. Requests are user-defined forms. The content of each form can be defined according to the type of request —technical information, services, request justification.
By allowing address attribution and liberation request management, the Workflow Management provision built in to SOLIDserver™ offers four key benefits:
- Streamlining resource requests with user-defined forms for all IP resources
- Unifying IPAM processes and synchronising activities of network teams
- Advanced status management and follow-up (new, handled, cancelled, rejected, in progress)
- Historical tracking of all requests with Email exchange archiving
Complete Life-cycle RIR Declaration Management and Automation
The assignment of Internet IP addresses is governed by rules to which the operators have to refer to and comply with. SOLIDserver™ integrates these rules in order to streamline and industrialise the declarations to the RIR:
- Aggregation: Ensure the assignment of 80% of allocated IP addresses by the RIR before requesting new allocation
- Registration: Register all required IP address assignments
- Conservation: Archive all exchanges with the RIR
Thanks to graphical assistants, the user is guided step-by-step, to allocate the addresses for their customers. SOLIDserver™ completes those processes by automatically checking required information such as the assignment window, by covering registration deletions, by importing data and storing all exchanges to the RIR. All specific RIR objects have built-in life-cycle management: Person, Maintainer, Inetnum, Inet6num, Allocated PA / PI, Assigned PI / PA, LIR partition, Domain, Suballocation, Autnum/AS Number, Maintainer & Multi-Maintainer.
OSS Integration
Thanks to its open architecture built on non-proprietary technologies SOLIDserver™ can be integrated into any existing OSS (Operating Support System) using on-demand requests based on web service (SOAP/XML/WSDL). The data exchanges between SOLIDserver™ and an external referer ensures the continuity of the information flow in the information systems.
