The Nortel DMS Operational Metrics (OM) cartridge pack provides functionality to retrieve files containing OM records from various telecom switches and send them to external systems. The OM node chain does not modify OM records; there are no EP or AP nodes.

The OM node chain includes two nodes, OM Collector CC node and the OM Distributor DC node.

The OM Collector CC node receives OM files from DMS-100 switches. The node uses FTP to periodically connect and pull files from each switch. A single node can retrieve files from multiple switches. The polling period is a single value used for all switches that are assigned to the node. On a single switch, OM files can be found on multiple volumes, so the node polls multiple directories on each switch.

The OM Collector CC node retrieves files from one or more DMS switches, re-names the files and transfers them to a local directory. The node does not parse or process the individual OM records. Therefore, the node does not produce a NAR file and Offline Mediation Controller is unaware of the contents of the OM records.

The OM Collector CC node re-names the files in the following way:

• DMS file name: R040625145027OM

• OM CC file name: AAA_R040625145027OM.done

The node adds a three letter prefix, underscore and appends .done to the incoming file name. The three letters range in the following way: [A-Z][A-Z][A-Za-z]. The prefix differentiates input files from different IP addresses, port numbers and disk volume combinations. Note that the prefix can change if the device configuration is modified.

In the event that the OM Collector CC node cannot communicate with a DMS-100, it attempts to re-establish a connection after a configurable delay. You can also configure the number of times the node attempts to re-establish the connection before raising a critical alarm. The node raises the alarm in both the GUI and via SNMP and logs the incident to the cartridges log file. At this point, the node considers the poll to have failed and does not attempt to re-establish a connection with the switch until the next scheduled poll.

You can provision a backup OM Collector CC node as a means to recover from a polling failure rather than wait for the next scheduled poll. For example, if the log file of the primary node indicates a polling failure, you can manually configure the backup node to have a short polling interval, such as 5 minutes, for a specific switch. The backup node will collect the files the primary node failed to capture. After the files have been transferred successfully, you can stop the backup node. This backup method can be used to manually initiate polls to switches instead of waiting a longer period for the primary node to attempt to re-establish the connection.

The OM Distributor DC node receives DIRP encoded OM files from the OM Collector CC node and transfers these files to downstream applications using FTP.