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ECOMP

Q. Where is the power in ECOMP?
A. The power of ECOMP is the data. Many data center and system management products focus on the delivery of the information- the web interface and screen displays, because "glitz sells". While it is important to have sound, user friendly interfaces, ECOMP was designed from the data out. The data relationships in ECOMP came out of many years of background and experience in managing and optim izing complex data center operations. IT components can be tied to applications, business function, DR requirements, facility capacity, change impact, insurance requirements, escalation procedures, and more. The ECOMP data base provides the capability to analyze your critical IT components from multiple points of view and to make sound data center decisions by considering all critical factors .

Q. Can I just implement the Configuration Management Data Base (CMDB) function of ECOMP?
A. Yes, ECOMP has two primary functions that can be implemented together or individually. They are the CMDB component and Operations Management. The CMDB component has three sub-functions. They are:

A full function IT inventory repository

A data center change request and approval process, and

An integrated power management and tracking function to support facility planning

Q. What exactly can the ECOMP inventory management function track?
A. The IT inventory is a multi-level integrated data base that provides the capability to track as much detail about IT equipment as deemed necessary. Basic inventory information such as name, model, manufacturer, location (from building and floor to rack and XY coordinate), equipment owner, applications supported, installation date, physical specifications, serial number s and electrical circuit connections are samples of what is saved. In addition, you can choose to store and track detail information related to equipment service history, financial data, maintenance contract status, installed components (hardware and soft ware), network connections and much more.

Q. How does the ECOMP Incident Management feature receive and record events, such as alerts or workload failure incident records?
A. ECOMP supplies a task that runs as a Windows Sys tem Service that is continuously active. This task "monitors" the designated MQ message queues where alerts and incidents are posted and retrieves the messages to post them to the ECOMP data base. The ECOMP web application (event monitor screens) reads the information fro m the data base and post the alerts via these screens. Email messages and/or pages can be sent as well.

Q. What is overall architecture of ECOMP?
A. The ECOMP web application runs as a standard MS IIS application and the integrated data is stored in an MS SQL Server database. In addition, f or incident management, ECOMP use MQ messaging services to field and post alerts.

Q. How does ECOMP control access?
A. ECOMP has a internal user table which can be used to define users who can access ECOMP and perform selected ECOMP functions. The Logon interface can also use the current validated Windows user-id and the interface can be customized to use Active Directory authorities mapped to ECOMP functions.

Q. Can ECOMP service management functions be used to standardize my operations service requests?
A. Yes, ECOMP can be used to implement a standardized process for requesting services fro m operations. Requests that were paper or email based can be customized as ECOMP forms and then take advantage of the integrated multi-level approval facilities. Another advantage of using ECOMP to manage and track these request, is the audit value of sto ring these requests within the ECOMP data base.

Q. Can ECOMP help me raise the awareness of the criticality of the service delivery team (operations staff)?
A. Yes, by supplying consistent and current information to the IT and end user community through a high tech web portal, the visibility of the operations and the data center management organization can be increased and enhanced.