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This release adds three significant enhancements to the VPN Traffic feature introduced in the 8.01 release. VPN Traffic provides comprehensive network-wide visibility within an MPLS core to traffic by Customer, by CoS, by Source and/or Destination PE, and by Application group. A rich set of analytic tools and reports help the Network Engineer and Network operator to monitor, analyze, and manage the MPLS core infrastructure. The operator can also set alerts based on various traffic conditions such as aggregate volume, traffic by CoS, etc., and be notified when such conditions are met.

The following enhancements for VPN Traffic are added in the 8.10 release:

• Customer Usage Reports

Service Providers would like to provide "usage" reports to their key customers periodically either as a paid service or simply for informational purposes.

In this release, we provide an additional reporting capability that allows the Service Provider to generate reports for their enterprise customers. The data for the reports is obtained via the XML RPC APIs. The Service Provider can select up to 100 of their enterprise customers for whom the report data will be generated. The Service Provider can then extract the reports via the API and present them to their customers via a reports portal. The VPN Customer Reports license needs to be installed in order to use this feature. After installation of the VPN Customer Reports license, it is likely that the query server might not work for the VPN Customer Report APIs. Hence, it is recommended that the Modeling Engine be rebooted in order to rectify this problem.

The following reports are available per customer:

1. WAN Connection traffic report
2. Site-to-Site traffic report
3. VPN Customer CoS traffic report
4. WAN Connection CoS traffic report
5. Site Top-sources traffic report
6. Site Top-destinations traffic report
7. Site Top-Protocols traffic report
8. Site Top-Conversations traffic report

As an adjunct to this release, a sample implementation of scripts that use the API to extract information and present them in a web portal is available. This sample implementation can be downloaded from: ftp://hpovrams.external.hp.com/rams/portal/vpnPortal.readme and ftp://hpovrams.external.hp.com/rams/portal/vpnPortal.tar. A Service Provider can use these scripts as an initial starting point to incorporate the VPN Traffic Customer Reports into the Service Provider's own portal.

• Combined Class-of-Service groups

This feature provides the ability to configure CoS groups that will track together both native IPv4 traffic and VPN traffic having a specified set of CoS code points. For IPv4, the code points can be interpreted either as DSCP or ToS; these can be grouped with EXP code points for VPN traffic. The CoS groups enable tracking traffic in MPLS-VPNs, in native IPv4, and as IPv4 traffic encapsulated in MPLS packets (but not in a VPN).

Reports are provided to display bit rate and utilization statistics for traffic in the CoS groups separately for IPv4 or VPN traffic, or as an aggregate.

This feature is in parallel with the previously available capability to define more detailed Traffic Groups based on a combination of protocols, ports and CoS.

• Top Traffic Change Reports

This feature provides the ability to highlight top traffic changes across the entire network on a daily, weekly or monthly basis comparing the current interval to the previous one. The change is tracked for both average and 95th percentile of the following statistics:

• Link utilization
• Neighbor AS bitrate
• Link utilization by CoS

In this release we provide an additional recorder to collect static network topology information from the routers using SNMP. The list of routers that will be queried by this recorder is constructed by the RAMS appliance from its knowledge about routers participating in IGPs or BGP. The list may be filtered by user configuration.

The information collected includes router names, software versions, interfaces (type, address and speed), and optionally, static routes. This information was available previously for EIGRP networks but not OSPF or ISIS. Now the information collected with SNMP is presented in the same manner as it was for EIGRP in the various GUI reports and in the node and link info panels on the topology map. The interface speed is used to automatically determine link capacity for traffic utilization calculations.

Links are created between routers having interfaces with matching prefixes so that network areas connected only by static routing will become connected on the map.

The SNMP collector will query routers periodically with a period specified by the user so that the recorder will not place an inappropriate load to the routers that it queries. SNMP v2 or v3 can be used to query the routers. The SNMP v2 community strings and the SNMP v3 profiles are configured by the user.

In a distributed RAMS deployment, multiple SNMP collectors can be configured to query the separate areas of the network.

• The RAMS Administrator's Guide covers setup, configuration and administration of the appliances.
• The RAMS User's Guide covers the GUI that operators will use on a day-to-day basis.

Before installing RAMS or Traffic Analysis, make sure that your system meets the following minimum requirements:

Supported Hardware Platform in descending list of preference:

1. HP ProLiant DL 380 G5
2. DL 360 G5
3. DL 380 G4
4. DL 360 G4p
5. DL 360 G4
6. DL 360 G3

NOTE: Starting with the release of RAMS 8.01, the hardware component requirements specified in the RAMS 8.01/RAMS 8.10 Support matrix must be adhered. Problems related to inadequate hardware configuration which do not follow the recommended guidelines will not be supported.

IMPORTANT: Consider your disk space requirements and fault tolerance needs and ensure that all available physical drives are installed before powering up the HP ProLiant server for the first time.

Starting with the RAMS 8.01 release, the Flow Collector is only supported on a DL 380 G5 hardware platform. RAMS will require two logical drives be configured for a Flow Collector unit - the first logical drive must be set at RAID 1 + 0, the second logical drive set at RAID 0. If you have an existing Flow Collector unit running a pre-6.1 software version, you must re-configure the server with two logical volumes and install the 6.1 software version from a CD image. Failing to do so can cause unexpected behavior. Cases reported as such will not be supported.

When using a DL 380 G5 hardware platform as the Flow Collector unit, it is required that the HP RAMS Flow Collector HiCap SW LTU license be purchased and installed.

For all non-Flow Collector units, RAMS will only utilize a single logical drive as configured on the ProLiant DL380/360 hardware; this means any extra physical disks configured in a second logical drive will be not be recognized by RAMS.

For detailed steps to configure a RAMS 8.10 Flow Collector, it is recommended that you use a HP Proliant SmartStart CD (shipped with the server). The SmartStart CD provides a more comprehensive Array Configuration Utility interface. Please refer to instructions in the RAMS Appliance Setup Guide.

The following describes a quick way to configure a single logical drive.

During the initial power-up of a new server, an auto-configuration process uses all of the physical drives on the HP Smart Array controller to set up a single logical drive. The default RAID (fault tolerance) level used for the logical drive depends on the number of physical drives as listed below:

• 1 drive = RAID 0
• 2 drives = RAID 1 +0 (Mirrored set, total disk space* is the size of smallest disk)
• 3 or more drives = RAID 5 (Striped set with 1 drive used for parity, parity drive is not included in total disk space*)

* The available disk space is ~5% less than the disk's reported size. Every physical drive in an array will have the usable capacity of the smallest drive in the array.

NOTE: Multiple drives configured as a RAID 0 striped set will provide maximum disk space but will NOT provide any fault tolerance. If you install more than one drive intended for maximum disk space usage, i.e., not for fault tolerance, you MUST configure to use RAID 0 or the hardware will default to RAID 1 +0.

During the initial hardware boot sequence, you have the opportunity to accept the default logical drive configuration as shown above, or you can create the logical drive based on your drive space and fault tolerance needs. Watch for the following message during the boot process:

Slot 0 HP Smart Array Controller

Press <F8> to run the Option ROM Configuration for Arrays Utility

Press <F7> to Accept the default configuration - 2 drives in RAID 1 +0

Refer to the HP Smart Array Controller Reference Guide for configuration options and details.

IMPORTANT: Make sure the logical drive is configured as needed before installing RAMS. Any changes to the logical drive configuration, e.g., adding drives or changing the RAID level, will require a reload of the RAMS software and a restore (from backup) of the RAMS configuration and databases.

• RAMS 8.10 uses a licensing version different from RAMS 5.x. For this reason, supported migrations of previous versions of RAMS (5.x) license keys must be migrated (http://webware.hp.com/) for use in RAMS 8.10.
• A software update from 5.x version of a Flow Collector to the 6.5 software version in RAMS 8.10 without reconfiguring the hardware minimally with two logical drives is not supported . See text in the above "Hardware Requirements" section for more information.
• After you update from 5.x to 8.10, if you ask to revert to the alternate software and OS, you will receive a warning that the appliance is reset to factory defaults. If you choose to go ahead, all recording configuration, databases, user accounts, etc., are deleted.
• When updating to a new software release, update the master unit first, and let it finish coming up after the reboot before rebooting the client units.
• When updating from pre-8.01 versions, any custom configurations done for the alerts in the previous versions will also have to be manually migrated. This is required since the PD-ROUTE_EXPLORER MIB mib-tree structure has been changed in order to provide a streamlined, smaller set of well-understood, concise alerts in the 8.01 version. Consequently RAMS SNMP trap OIDs from the RAMS 8.01 release are not compatible with previous versions of RAMS.
• Software update to software version 8.10 is only supported from 5.2 and 5.5 releases; updating from pre-5.x requires updating to 5.5 first. [10535]
• When updating from a 5.x software version, the databases are automatically renamed with a "Pre60X" prefix because the database table structure has changed. The older databases can still be viewed, but recording to them is not allowed.
• When updating the software from a pre-6.1 software version release, the existing accounts configured on each unit will be transferred into the new local authentication server running on that unit. To switch to a single authentication server on the master unit, a common shared secret must be configured on the master and each client unit.

• Important: RAMS integration with NNM
  
  • Since the RAMS 8.01 release, the integration of RAMS is with the NNMi series alone. The integration of RAMS 8.01 and upwards with the NNM 7.x series is not supported.
  • No separate NNM Integration Module is available for RAMS 8.01 and RAMS 8.10 apart from the integration that is part of the NNMi series.
• Reverting to RAMS version 5.5 from RAMS 8.01 or RAMS 8.10 hangs at grub
  

  This requires the deletion and recreation of the logical drive. The steps to perform that are detailed below:

  • During the boot sequence, the following message would appear:
    

    Slot 0 HP Smart Array Controller
    

    Press < F8 > to run the Option ROM Configuration for Arrays Utility

    Press < F7 > to Accept the default configuration - 2 drives in RAID 1 +0
    

    At this point,

    • Press F8 to enter the array configuration utility.
    • Delete the existing logical drives first.
    • Create a new single logical drive containing the 2 disks.
    • Reboot the system and proceed with the RAMS 5.5 installation.
• When starting static topology recording and IGP recording at the same time on new (empty) databases, the SNMP based network discovery will not query any routers initially because the list of routers to explore, obtained from the IGP, will still be empty. SNMP discovery will start after a period equal to the configured router query interval.
• If the next hop of a static route is to an interface and the interface of a multi-access type, then the path finding will show a path that is incomplete at the pseudonode because it is unknown to which other router on the LAN the packet should be delivered.
• In 6.x, the Recorder Configuration allows only a single top-level administrative domain to be created. Users who need multiple domains to configure different portions of their network should create one top-level domain and then subdomains under it. For existing configurations that already contain more than one top-level administrative domain, only the lexicographically first of those domains can have alerts configured. If a recorder client that already contains some configuration is added, that configuration will be pulled up to the master, possibly creating a new top-level domain. This might cause a problem if it comes first.
• If a client unit fails and must be replaced, before adding the replacement unit as a client of the master unit, you must stop replication on the master unit. Then after adding the client, start replication again. This will rename the replicated database on the master and start replicating anew from the database on the replacement client.
• The last TCP ACK packet sent in response to an XML RPC API query sometimes may have a malformed TCP header, causing the user's client to retransmit FIN/ACK packets until giving up. All the data is transferred successfully before this. [8832]
• The latest version (8.2) of the StarNet X-Win32 X Window Server for MS Windows causes progress register dialogs to be left on the screen. As a workaround, the link provided on the RAMS system web server Support page will access the 8.0 version. [8946]
• After installation of the VPN Customer Reports license, it is likely that the query server might not work for the VPN Customer Report APIs. Hence, it is recommended that the Modeling Engine be rebooted in order to rectify this problem.
• If the VNC server was not stopped prior to updating from a 5.x version, the VNC "started" state is retained after the update to 8.10 version. If the RAMS GUI is opened via VNC display 1 soon after the update completes, the RAMS GUI will display a " No valid GUI and router count license" error message. The fix is to stop and restart the VNC server. Note: VNC displays 2 and higher do not exhibit this behavior.

Following are selected fixes and enhancements since RAMS 8.01 (Appliance version 6.1.19-R) release.

• QXCR1000746390: SNMP agent now allows configuration of the SNMP v2 community string and/or v3 authentication parameters. In previous releases, the default v2 community string "public" was always enabled. In this release, there is no default community string, so if you were using the default access as public before updating, you will need to set the community string to "public" after updating. [4306, 9735, 9896]
• Added the ability to independently backup and restore the application properties (layouts, RT/communities). In previous releases, these properties were only backed up and restored in combination one or more databases or the system configuration. [6523]
• Added the ability to create link groups based on the Forwarding Adjacencies (RFC 4206) for ISIS and hide them from the map if desired. [9268]
• Duplicate OSPF Database Description packets are detected and handled correctly. In previous releases reception of Duplicate Database packets were being interpreted as Sequence Number mismatch and initiation of Database exchange sequence. [11041]
• It is no longer necessary to include "service = ppp protocol =ssh" in the configuration of a user account on a remote TACACS+ server. [9428]
• In this release we allow the installation of an SSL certificate signed by a customer's Certificate Authority as an alternative to the built-in certificate self-signed by the appliance. The certificate signed by a customer's CA is generated externally and then pasted into the appliance's web UI. [8624]
• A problem has been fixed where if one was editing a router group in the router groups dialog, finishing the edits caused all groups to expand. [10053]
• Corrected implementation of RFC 3784 with respect to handling IS-IS TLV 134 in the recorder. If TLV 132 and 134 are both present we will prefer TLV 134 as the IP address of the router. [10649]
• We have removed the limitation that a backup requires 5% of the total capacity of a SMB share to be free. We have included checks to make sure that the backup will fit in the SMB share before we initiate a backup. [10751]
• We have made optimizations in memory usage for storing large topologies, and especially topologies with a large number of BGP attributes. [10762]
• Fixed an issue where a timed-out link reappears on the map when the node belongs to a group and the group is closed thus presenting a group link on the map. The group link was not properly timed-out. [10943]
• Fixed an issue where a AAA shared secret containing the #character causes authentication failure. [11023]
• When opening the events monitor to monitor "live" events using the online mode of the event viewer, an event used to be displayed for only 10 seconds before disappearing. Now events remain for as long as "Event panel default time interval" which is 5 minutes. [11062]
• In this release we have rate limited some error messages in the Flow Recorder to avoid the possibility of filling log files. [11110]
• Fixed an EIGRP recorder CLI parsing error due to another IOS output format change present in Version 12.2(44)SE, RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc1) and Version 12.2(46)SE, RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc2). The parsing error was related to "EIGRP-IPv4:(1) neighbors for process" CLI output. [11205]
• VPN Routing Reports now consistently include or exclude routes with non-RT community attributes in tables and graphs depending upon the "Show only RT communities" preference option. [7300]
• For those customers using the Login Message feature, the message is now displayed in a fixed-width font for ssh and VNC logins so that the presentation will be consistent with that shown on the web page login. [10598]