Introduction

The Oracle Communications Session Monitor Release Notes provide information about new features, enhancements, and changed functionality in release 4.2

Session Monitor Supported Hardware

The products within the Oracle Communications Session Monitor suite are supported on Oracle, Sun, and HP systems.

Table 1-1 Supported Hardware for Oracle systems

Component Requirement
Server The following severs are supported:
  • Oracle Server X7-2
  • Oracle Server X6-2
  • Oracle Server X6-2L
  • Oracle Server X5-2
  • Oracle Server X5-2L
Network Adapter The following adapters are supported:
  • Oracle Quad Port 10GBase-T Adapter

Note:

The Oracle X7-2 server supports only Session Monitor Installation using RPM installer.

The following table lists the hardware supported for Oracle systems.

Table 1-2 Supported Hardware for Oracle Sun systems

Component Requirement
Server The following severs are supported:
  • Oracle Sun Server X4-2
  • Oracle Sun Server X4-2L
  • Oracle Sun Server X3-2
  • Oracle Sun Server X2-4
Network Adapter The following network adapters are supported:
  • Sun Dual Port 10 GbE PCle 2.0 Networking Card with Intel 82599 10 GbE Controller
  • Sun Quad Port GbE PCIe 2.0 Low Profile Adapter, UTP
  • Sun Dual Port GbE PCIe 2.0 Low Profile Adapter, MMF

The following table lists the hardware supported for HP systems.

Table 1-3 Supported Hardware for HP Systems

Component Requirement
Server The following servers are supported:
  • HP DL580 G9
  • HP DL380 G9
  • HP DL380p G8
  • HP DL580 G7
Network Adapter The following network adapter s are supported:
  • HP NC365T PCIe Quad Port Gigabit Server Adapter
  • HP NC364T PCIe Quad Port Gigabit Server Adapter
  • HP Ethernet 1Gb 4-port 366FLR Adapter
Driver/Chipsets The following drivers/chipsets are supported:
  • e1000 (82540, 82545, 82546)
  • e1000e (82571, 82574, 82583, ICH8..ICH10, PCH..PCH2)
  • igb (82575, 82576, 82580, I210, I211, I350, I354, DH89xx)
  • ixgbe (82598, 82599, X540, X550)
  • enic
  • i40e
  • Mellanox (mlx4, mlx5)

Hardware Requirements for Production Systems

For production systems, Oracle recommends completing a sizing exercise with Oracle Customer Support. Higher performance hardware may be required, for example, in cases with:

  • High levels of monitored traffic
  • High numbers of concurrent users
  • High volumes of historical information

On the Mediation Engine machines, Oracle recommends using a RAID-10 array for the operating system and the database. A separate RAID-5 array is recommended for storing long-term data.

Hardware Requirements for Demonstration Systems

For development or demonstrations systems with little network traffic, the following table lists the minimum requirements to install any of the Session Monitor machine types.

Table 1-4 Hardware Requirements for Demonstration Systems

Component Minimum Requirement
Processor 2.6 GHz Intel Xeon processor, 64-bit with 8 processing threads
Memory 8 GB RAM
Disk Space 80 GB storage on a hardware RAID controller
Ports 2 Ethernet ports

Session Monitor Virtualization Support

This section describes the software and hardware requirements for Session Monitor virtualization.

Hypervisor Support

The following hypervisors are supported:

  • Oracle VM version 3.4
  • VMware vSphere ESXi 5.x/6.x
  • Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)

Virtual Machine Requirements

The following table lists the minimum requirements for the virtual machines.

Table 1-5 Hardware Requirements for Virtual Machines

Component Requirement
Processor 8 vCPUs
Memory 8GB RAM
Disk Space 80GB
NIC Card 1Gbps vNIC

In virtualized Mediation Engines, 50,000 concurrent calls (1 SIP leg per call) have been tested successfully.

Host Machine Requirements

The physical machine that hosts the virtual machines should contain at a minimum the hardware resources that are required to host all the virtual machines, in addition to the hardware that is required for the hypervisor.

Session Monitor Operating System Requirements

Oracle Communications Sessions Monitor (OCSM) is offered as a set of Linux applications. The latest version of OCSM 4.2 is tested, benchmarked and certified on Oracle Linux platform. Oracle Linux is binary compatible with RHEL kernel, and OCSM has been tested with RedHat Compatible Kernel. Customers who want to use OCSM with RHEL are encouraged to load and test OCSM on the version of Linux on which they are planning to deploy. In this case, performance and capacity characteristics may vary from those tested while running OCSM on Oracle Linux. When OCSM is deployed on RHEL, Oracle will continue to support OCSM, and in case of issues that Oracle Support determines to be related to RHEL, the customer will be directed to work with RedHat support organization for issue resolution.

The following table lists the supported operating systems for running Session Monitor.

Table 1-6 Supported Operating Systems

Product Version Notes
Oracle Linux 7 x86-64 (64 bit) 7 or higher (with Oracle UE Kernel for Linux) By default Oracle Linux installs Kernel 3.

Oracle recommends that the latest Unbreakable Enterprise (UE) Kernel 4 for Linux is installed.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 7 See clarification above.

Note:

  • You must configure a network device when installing Oracle Linux 7.
  • If required, update the DPDK drivers.

Session Monitor Connectivity

Following are Session Monitor connectivity details:

  • One AE (OCOM's MEC feature): Supports up to 64 MEs
  • One ME (OCOM, OCCPM): Supports up to
    • Native-Only Probes:
      • Media+Sig ; Signalling-Only: 128
      • Packet Inspector: 16
    • Embedded-Only Probes (SBC as a probe):
      • < 500 parallel calls per SBC: 1k (might require some manual tweaking, unlimit open files)
      • >= 500 parallel calls per SBC: 128
  • Mixture of SBC and native probes: 128 (individual limits still apply)
  • One Probe (OCOM, OCCPM) or SBC-probe can be connected to up to:
    • Probe: 2 MEs
    • SBC: 8 MEs
  • One ME (OCOM, OCCPM): Connected to up to 1 AE

Session Monitor Software Requirements

The table lists the supported client browsers:

Table 1-7 Supported Client Browsers

Browser Version
Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 or higher
Mozilla Firefox 1.5 or higher (on any operating system)
Apple Safari Any version, including Safari for iPad
Google Chrome Any version
Opera 9 or higher (on any operating system)

Compatibility Matrix for Session Monitor

The following products can be configured with Session Monitor:
Product Name Version
DPDK 18.11
ISR 6.0, 6.2*
SP-SBC 8.3 or lower

Works with Operations Monitor and Enterprise Operations Monitor

E-SBC 8.3 or lower

Works with Operations Monitor and Enterprise Operations Monitor

Note:

The * marked version recordings at ISR should not be segmented.

Compatibility Matrix for Fraud Monitor

The following products can be configured with Fraud Monitor:
Product Name Version
DPDK 18.11
ISR

6.0, 6.2*

SP-SBC 8.3 or lower

Works with Fraud Monitor and Enterprise Telephony Fraud Monitor

E-SBC 7.5 or higher

Works with Fraud Monitor and Enterprise Telephony Fraud Monitor

SDM 8.2

Note:

The * marked version recordings at ISR should not be segmented.

Note:

Fraud Monitor 4.2 is supported only with Session Monitor 4.2.

Session Border Controller Supported Versions

The table lists supported Session Border Controller (SBC) versions.

Table 1-8 Supported Session Border Controller Versions

Product Versions
Enterprise Session Border Controller (E-SBC)
  • SCZ830
  • SCZ820
  • ECZ800
  • ECZ750
  • ECZ740
  • ECZ730
Session Border Controller (SBC)
  • SCZ830
  • SCZ820
  • SCZ800
  • SCZ750
  • SCZ740
  • SCZ730

Database Support

The following databases run in concert with Oracle Communications Session Monitor.

MySQL Enterprise Edition

This release is compatible with the following versions of MySQL Enterprise Edition:
  • 5.5.54
  • 5.7.10
  • 5.7.24

Session Monitor System Architecture

The Session Monitor system works by capturing the traffic from your network, correlating it in real-time, and storing it in indexed formats so that they are available for the various reports offered by the web interface.

The Session Monitor system architecture has three layers:

  • Probe layer: This layer is responsible for capturing the traffic from your network and performing the Media Quality analysis. The probes send meta-data for each of the signaling messages to the Mediation Engine layer and analyze the RTP streams locally, sending the results of this analysis to the Mediation Engine layer.
  • Mediation Engine (ME) layer: This layer is responsible for understanding in real-time the traffic received, correlating it and storing it for future reference. This layer is also responsible for measuring, managing, and storing the KPIs. In the common case, there is one ME per geographical site. It is possible, however, to have the probes from multiple geographical sites sending the traffic to a single ME. It is also possible to have multiple ME installations in the same geographical site.
  • Aggregation Engine (AE) layer: This layer is responsible for aggregating the global KPIs from all the MEs linked to it, and for the global search features. In a typical setup, there is only one AE for the whole network.

OCSM system architecture

Each of the three layers supports high-availability by deploying two identical servers in active-passive or active-active modes of operation. For small setups, it is possible to run the probe layer and the ME layer on the same physical hardware. The AE layer always requires its own hardware.

From the Session Monitor products perspective, the Operations Monitor and the Control Plane Monitor (CPM) run on the Mediation Engine (ME) while the Mediation Engine Connector (MEC) and the Fraud Monitor products run on the Aggregation Engine (AE).

Upgrade Information

DPDK upgrade is required. Release 4.2 and above supports DPDK version 18.11 only. After upgrading to 4.2, see the Session Monitor Installation Guide for information on upgrading DPDK.

Note:

Please check the pre-requisites in the Upgrade Guide before upgrading to 4.2p1.

Note:

It is recommended to have both Probe and Mediation Engine in the same version of 4.2p1.

Licensing Changes

As of November 5, 2019, two new licenses for Enterprise Operations Monitor are available:
  • L107092 Enterprise Operations Monitor with Fraud Protection
  • L107093 Enterprise Operations Monitor, Basic Edition

These changes affect the Enterprise product portfolio only.

The Enterprise Operations Monitor base capacity license (L98611) and the Fraud Monitor license (L106475) are not available for new purchases starting November 5. Please refer to the Enterprise Operations Monitor licensing document for details on license descriptions/restrictions/dependencies for the new licenses.

Documentation Changes

The following information lists and describes the changes made to the Oracle Communications Session Monitor documentation set for release 4.2

ePub and Mobi

The documentation no longer supports ePub and Mobi formats.

Patches Included In This Release