The Policy and Charging > Configuration GUI pages for Policy and Charging components provide fields for entering the information needed to manage Policy and Charging configuration in the DSR.
The Policy and Charging application must be activated in the system before Policy and Charging configuration can be performed.
The DSR 3-tiered Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (
OAM) topology is required for the Policy and Charging application. 3-tiered OAM topology consists of the following tiers:
- A pair of NOAM servers running in active/standby redundancy
OAM configuration is performed on the NOAM.
As shown in Figure 1, network-wide Policy and Charging configuration is performed on the NOAM.
- A pair, triplet, or quadruplet of SOAM servers at each site running in active/standby, active/standby/spare redundancy, or or active/standby/spare/spare redundancy
Diameter protocol configuration is done on the SOAM.
Most of the OAM configuration components are viewable on the SOAM.
Most DSR Application configuration is done on the SOAM.
As shown in Figure 2, site-specific configuration for Policy and Charging is performed on the SOAM; some network-wide Policy and Charging configuration components are viewable on the SOAM.
- A set of MP servers, which can host signaling protocol stacks (for example, DA-MPs), or in-memory database servers (for example, Session Binding Repository [SBR])
An optional pair of Disaster Recovery NOAMs can be configured to manually take over in the event of loss of both the active and standby NOAMs
The three tiers allow configured data to be replicated down to the MP servers, and measurements, events, and alarms to be merged up to the OAM servers.
3-tiered topology allows administrators to access all DSR GUI pages from a single sign-on. An administrator can access the DSR SOAM when logged into the DSR NOAM, without needing to re-enter login credentials.
GUI Structure for 3-tiered DSR Topology with Policy and Charging for NOAM![](NOAM.PNG)
GUI Structure for 3-tiered DSR Topology with Policy and Charging for SOAM![](SOAM.PNG)
NOAM and SOAM Configuration
Configuration data is divided into two categories depending on the scope of the data:
- Network-wide data is configured at the NOAM and is called A-scope data.
- Per-site data is configured at the SOAM for a given site and is called B-scope data.
In general, topology data like creation of sites, assignment of servers to sites, creation of server groups, and so on is A-scope data. DSR data configuration is generally site-scoped, or B-scope data.
Some Policy and Charging Application data must be configured at the A-scope level and some data must be configured at the B-scope level.
Policy related data configured at the NOAM include:
- Assignment of Servers to Site Places
- Assignment of Servers to SBR Server Groups
- Assignment of SBR Server Groups to Session and/or Binding Resource Domains
- Assignment of DSR Multi-active Cluster Server Groups to PCA Resource Domains
- Assignment of Site Places to PCA Mated Pair Place Associations
- Assignment of Site Places to PCA Binding Region Place Associations
PCA-specific data configured at the NOAM include:
- Alarm Thresholds for:
- PCA Application Ingress Message Rate
- Session Database Capacity
- Policy Binding Database Capacity
- Policy DRA and Online Charging DRA function disabling/enabling
- Number of Binding / Session Server groups
- Default Audit options
- OCS/Realm Session State
- Access Point Names (APN)
- Maximum Session Inactivity Time per APN
- PCRF Pools and PCRF Sub-Pool Selection Rules
PCA-specific data configured at the SOAM include:
- PCRFs adjacent to the site
- Binding Key Priority for the site
- Topology Hiding configuration for the site
- OCSs and CTFs for OC-DRA
- Error response configuration for the site
- Congestion handling options
For more information, see PCA Capacity Constraints.