Out of the Box Test - Network Monitor

 

The purpose of this tutorial is to show how to use Network Monitoring Functionalities.

Network Monitor in this tutorial is a software component developed by Amarisoft that can provide features listed as below.

• Shows the status of eNB/gNB and UEsim software without requiring to ssh connection to the system. You can check on those status via WebGUI
• Detects a specific event/alarm set in the configuration file and (if you want) send the those event/alarm to specific users via email
• Collect a specific set of statistics and save them as files
• Perform a certain set of operations to the system as follows.
• Restart the service
• Reboot the host
• Download / Upload configuration files

 

Test Procedure Summary

Monitor is a specific component in WebGUI. So you need to make it sure that the basic WebGUI functionality is working properly before you try anything about Monitor.

Step 1 : Monitor is not a part of default installation. you need to install the callbox software with '--monitor' option to install the monitor component. (Refer to Monitor Installation tutorial for the details)

Step 2 : Make it sure all the configuration and setups are properly done for WebGUI operation (Refer to WebGUI tutorial for the details of WebGUI operation)

Step 3 : Specify the monitor configuration by editing the file linked to /root/monitor/config/config.cfg

Step 4 : Run callbox or UEsim software (i.e, run lte service)

Step 5 : Make it sure all the components are connected

Step 6 : Specify the log options for monitor component

Step 7 : Perform the test and see if you are getting the monitor results as intended.

 

Table of Contents

• Out of the Box Test - Network Monitor
• Test Procedure Summary
• Before you start
• Test Setup
• Run Monitor in WebGUI
• Functions in MONITOR
• Setting Up Email for Alarm Notification
• Setting Up Alarm Notificatio">
• Setting Up Alarm Notification
• Alarm Notification - Test 1
• Alarm Notification - Test 2
• Setting Up Statistics
• Statistics - Test 1

 

 

Before you start

Since Network Monitor is not the default components of the installation package, you need to check if your system is installed with network monitor or not before you try anything in this tutorial. Check the tutorial : Installation_Monitor for this check up.

 

Test Setup

Test setup for this tutorial is as shown below. (NOTE : Basically it doesn't matter with exact hardware setup to utilize the Command Line Commands. You can use the information in this page for any test setup you are using)

• Since this test is for Out of the box testing, I used the default configuration(cfg) file without changing anything in it
• SIM Card used in this tutorial is the one delivered with the system as it is.
• If you want to change the configuration, The tutorial Information_Config_Guide.pdf would help

 

Run Monitor in WebGUI

If Monitor installation is properly done, the monitor is executed as part of lte service. no specialy procedure is required for monitor execution only.  Just start or restart the lteservice as follows.

If you open up WebGUI, you would see 'MONITOR' component is added as shown below.

You may set the filters for MONITOR log as shown below.  

The Logs panel has 'MINITOR' column and the MONITOR log is printed as shown below.

[Optional] If you want to display MONITOR log only, you may specify layers which belong to MONITOR component.

 

Functions in MONITOR

If you go into MONITOR tab, you would have the list of the components you can manipulate with monitor as shown below.

If you right mouse click on the root node of the list, you would get a menu as shown below. I think each of the menu items are self explanatory and you may not need any further explanation.

If you right mouse click on the each component in the list, you would get a menu as shown below. I think each of the menu items are self explanatory and you may not need any further explanation.

 

Setting Up Email for Alarm Notification

For now, Alarm is notified only by email. so you need to make it sure that the email is working properly with your system before you configure any alarm. This section would explain on how to configure email and test if email works or not.

First, configure email in /root/monitor/ssmtp.conf as shown below. This is just a template and don't copy & paste it as it is. The configuration in this file is for Sender email account for the alarm notification email.

If you go to /root/monitor directory, you would find the email test script : test-email.sh as shown below.

Try send a test email as shown below. (NOTE : In this example, I used the same email address for sender and reciever, but you can use any valid email for the reciever. But sender email should be the one specified in ssmtp.conf file)

You would get the test email as shown below if the email setup (ssmtp.conf) is properly done.

 

Setting Up Alarm Notification

Once you comfirmed that the email is working as in previous section, you can now specify a specific alarm in monitor.cfg and get notified by the email whenever the alarm condition is met.

 

Alarm Notification - Test 1

Configure the alarm  in monitor.cfg which you want to get notifified about. This is just an example of the possible alarms and you can find various other types of alarms in ltemonitor document.

Now specify email in monitor.cfg as shown below. You should specify [from] parameter with the email you configured in ssmpt.conf, but you can configure any valid email in [to] parameter.

Now start lte service and make it sure that MONITOR and other components are running.

Now let's try to make an intentional error that would trigger the alarm (NOTE : Of course, you wouldn't make this kind of intentional error in real operation. This is just for the test). There can be various ways to trigger the alarm specified in this example. I will trigger the alarm by killing IMS process.

Kill the IMS process.

Now you would see the error message printed MONITOR log. (NOTE : When IMS service gets killed, OTS service would try run the service again and IMS service would get back on. Sometimes this error recovery is done so quickly and the alarm may not get triggered. If you don't get the alarm triggered in this way, you can try another method as described in next example).

Once the alarm is triggered, you would receive the email notification as shown below.

 

Alarm Notification - Test 2

This example is almost same as the previous example. The only difference is the different [to] email is used (in this example, the email with different domain name than [from] email) and the method to trigger alarm is different.

Configure the alarm  in monitor.cfg which you want to get notifified about. This is just an example of the possible alarms and you can find various other types of alarms in ltemonitor document.

Now specify email in monitor.cfg as shown below. You should specify [from] parameter with the email you configured in ssmpt.conf, but you can configure any valid email in [to] parameter.

Now start lte service and make it sure that MONITOR and other components are running.

Now let's try to make an intentional error that would trigger the alarm (NOTE : Of course, you wouldn't make this kind of intentional error in real operation. This is just for the test). There can be various ways to trigger the alarm specified in this example. In this example, I will kill IMS service in screen console.

First switch to [IMS] console and Press [Ctrl + C]

IMS service get killed and gets restarted soon by OTS service.

Now you would see the error message printed MONITOR log.

Once the alarm is triggered, you would receive the email notification as shown below.

 

Setting Up Statistics

You can let MONITOR generate statistics data in certain interval that you want.  In this section, I will show you how to enable 'statistics data collection'.

 

Statistics - Test 1

You can enable (configure) stats parameter in monitor.cfg as shown below. You can specify when the stat data should be collected, where the data should be stored and how long those files should be reserved. (NOTE : For the description of each configuration parameters used here, refer to the monitor document )

Once MONITOR runs, you would see a new directory is created as specified in 'store' parameter in monitor.cfg as shown below.

You would see another subdirectory is created in stats (store directory) as shown below.

within the subdirectory, you would see the statistic data gets stored with the intervals specified in monitor.cfg.

If you open up the file, you would see the information printed in JSON format as shown below.

You can print the json file in more readable format as shown below (NOTE : You may write your own script/program to parse / extract the specific data that you want to get)