Verifying the ECE Installation

8 Verifying the ECE Installation

Learn how to verify that Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management (BRM) Elastic Charging Engine (ECE) was installed correctly.

Topics in this document:

About Verifying the ECE Installation

In general, you verify the ECE installation by starting the ECE nodes in the cluster, loading the data needed for rating, and generating usage to verify that usage requests can be processed and customer balances can be impacted.

The specific tasks involved in verifying the ECE installation depend on whether you installed an ECE standalone installation or an ECE integrated installation.

About Verifying an ECE Standalone Installation

Verifying an ECE standalone installation involves using sample data to verify that ECE can process requests when working with other applications such as Pricing Design Center (PDC) and Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management (BRM) without having to connect to those applications. The ECE installer installs the sample data that you need for verifying the installation. Sample data includes request specification data, sample customer accounts, sample configuration data (such as credit card profile information), and sample pricing data.

About Verifying an ECE Integrated Installation

Verifying an ECE integrated installation involves performing tasks that require all products in the integrated system so you can verify that all product integration points are configured correctly.

The following are some general tasks involved in verifying an ECE integrated installation.

Defining your pricing in PDC and successfully loading the pricing data into ECE
Extracting data from BRM and successfully loading it into ECE
Creating a new customer in BRM and having the customer successfully updated in ECE
Rating usage requests in ECE and successfully creating CDR files of the rated events by the BrmCdrPluginDirect Plug-in
Loading CDR files into BRM and successfully updating the customer balances in BRM from the loading of those files into the BRM database
Generating usage to verify that usage requests can be processed and customer balances can be impacted
Create usage requests and successfully submitting them to ECE for processing
Rating usage requests in ECE and successfully created CDR files containing the rated events
Loading the CDR files into BRM and successfully updating the customer balances in BRM

For verifying an integrated installation in the most minimal way, you need only set up one product offering in PDC and create one customer account in BRM.

Verifying an ECE Standalone Installation

To verify an ECE standalone installation, perform these tasks:

Starting ECE Nodes in the Cluster

To start all ECE charging server nodes in the cluster:

Log on to the driver machine.
Change directory to the ECE_home/oceceserver/bin directory.
Start the Elastic Charging Controller (ECC):
```
./ecc
```
Start the ECE nodes by running the following command:
```
start
```

To verify that the ECE nodes are running:

Access the ECE MBeans:
1. Log on to the driver machine.
2. Start the ECE charging servers (if they are not started).
3. Start a JMX editor, such as JConosle, that enables you to edit MBean attributes.
4. Connect to the ECE charging server node set to start CohMgt = true in the ECE_home/oceceserver/config/eceTopology.conf file.
  
  The eceTopology.conf file also contains the host name and port number for the node.
5. In the editor's MBean hierarchy, expand the ECE State Machine node.
Expand StateManager.
Expand Attributes.
Verify that the stateName attribute is set to Initial.

This means the ECE nodes are running.

Loading Sample Data

You load sample data so that you can rate simulated usage by using the ECE simulator.

This procedure assumes you are in the ECE_home/oceceserver/bin directory and have started the ECE nodes. See "Starting ECE Nodes in the Cluster" for instructions on starting the ECE nodes.

To load sample data, run the following commands:

start configLoader
start pricingLoader
start customerLoader

The loader utility generates and loads the sample data and puts the nodes in a usage processing state. The customerLoader utility loads both the cross-reference data and the customer data.

To verify that the ECE nodes are in a usage processing state:

Access the ECE MBeans:
1. Log on to the driver machine.
2. Start the ECE charging servers (if they are not started).
3. Start a JMX editor, such as JConsole, that enables you to edit MBean attributes.
4. Connect to the ECE charging server node set to start CohMgt = true in the ECE_home/oceceserver/config/eceTopology.conf file.
  
  The eceTopology.conf file also contains the host name and port number for the node.
5. In the editor's MBean hierarchy, expand the ECE State Machine node.
Expand StateManager.
Expand Attributes.
Verify that the stateName attribute is set to UsageProcessing.

This means the ECE nodes are running in a usage processing state.

Verifying that Usage Requests Can Be Processed for a Standalone Installation

You use the ECE simulator to run a sample workload and verify that usage requests can be processed. The simulator emulates network traffic coming from network mediation software and uses the sample data that you loaded to process the usage requests. You use the Coherence query tool to verify that the usage has impacted the sample customer's balance.

The simulator allows you to control the types of usage requests sent and the number and type of subscribers sending the usage requests. See "Running the Simulator to Send Usage Requests" in ECE Implementing Charging for more information.

This procedure assumes you are in the ECE_home/oceceserver/bin directory and have started the ECE nodes and loaded sample data. See "Starting ECE Nodes in the Cluster" and "Loading Sample Data" for instructions.

To verify that usage requests can be processed:

Start the ECE simulator:
```
start simulator
```
Initialize the simulator:
```
init simulator
```
Run the sample workload:
```
simulate simulator
```
The simulator will take a few seconds to complete processing the workload.

This command sends requests to the ECE charging server.
Open the invocation.log file located in ECE_home/oceceserver. You should see statistics for the sample workload.
From the ECE_home/oceceserver/bin directory, enter the following commands to run the Coherence query tool:
```
./query.sh
select * from Customer
```
This command returns all customer information.
In the results of the query that are returned, locate the following string:
```
{currentBalance=UnitValue{quantity=amount, unit=Money{cur=USD}
```
where amount shows the quantity amount of the balance impact.

Verifying an ECE Integrated Installation

To verify that you can start charging server nodes in an integrated installation, see "Starting Charging Server Nodes in a Distributed Environment".

Starting Charging Server Nodes in a Distributed Environment

To start all ECE charging server nodes across the cluster in a distributed environment (over multiple physical server machines):

Log on to the driver machine.
Change directory to the bin directory:
```
cd ECE_home/oceceserver/bin
```
Start ECC:
```
./ecc
```
Start ECE charging server nodes on all server machines in your distributed environment by running the following command:
```
start
```

To verify that the ECE charging server nodes are running:

Access the ECE MBeans:
1. Log on to the driver machine.
2. Start the ECE charging servers (if they are not started).
3. Start a JMX editor, such as JConsole, that enables you to edit MBean attributes.
4. Connect to the ECE charging server node set to start CohMgt = true in the ECE_home/oceceserver/config/eceTopology.conf file.
  
  The eceTopology.conf file also contains the host name and port number for the node.
5. In the editor's MBean hierarchy, expand the ECE State Machine node.
Expand StateManager.
Expand Attributes.
Verify that the stateName attribute is set to Initial.

This means the ECE charging server nodes are running.

Troubleshooting the ECE Installation

The ECE installer writes information to log files. You can check these log files for information about errors and actions performed during the installation.

Installation Log Files

The ECE installation logs can be found at CentralInventorylocationoraInventory/logs, where CentralInventorylocation is the directory path to the oraInventory directory. You can specify any inventory path.

You use the following log files to monitor installation and post-installations:

installActionTimeStamp.log
oraInstallTimeStamp.err
oraInstallTimeStamp.out
silentInstallTimeStamp.log (for silent mode installation)

Next Steps

After installing and verifying the ECE installation, you perform additional tasks to set up your test or production system:

Complete the integration between ECE, BRM, and PDC:
- Define your event definitions in PDC.
- Set up all your product offerings in PDC and publish them to the JMS pricing component queue.
- Synchronize your PDC product offerings with BRM.
Set up ECE system security.
Configure the ECE system.
Configure ECE to purge rated events that are no longer needed from the Oracle NoSQL Database so that rated events can be maintained at a manageable level.