Overview
A network management system (NMS) regularly performs various tests on the managed network equipment. The Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) and the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) are typically used. Root cause analysis (RCA) is a method for identifying the root causes of observed faults or issues based on the test results in combination with a model of the monitored network and equipment. Given a failed test set, the RCA aims to identify the most probable root cause(s). The next step is establishing the causality between the root causes and other related failures. Continuous network discovery ensures the model of the network is always up to date. The Optanix NMS is based on a generic notion of entities, usually associated with a single specific test. In this setting, a simple link or device failure usually results in numerous failed tests. Reporting each test failure to the network operations team would require them to identify the root cause based on their network knowledge manually. This project aimed to automate that process and point the engineers directly to the failed components, thus enabling them to take corrective actions quickly.