1 Introduction

This document provides information about the role of Oracle Communications Network Analytics Data Director (OCNADD) in the Network Analytics suite of products and how to configure and use OCNADD services and managed objects.

1.1 Overview

OCNADD is a specialized Network Data Broker (NDB) in 5G Network Architecture.

OCNADD installation is supported over the following platforms:

  • Oracle Communications Cloud Native Core, Cloud Native Environment (CNE)
  • VMware Tanzu Application Platform (TANZU)
  • Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)

For more information, see Oracle Communications Network Analytics Data Director Installation, Upgrade, and Fault Recovery Guide.

OCNADD receives the network traffic data from various sources, 5G network functions (NFs) and Non-5G NFs. It performs replication and aggregation on the received data according to the rules implemented by the subscribed third-party consumers. OCNADD sends the replicated and aggregated data to the subscribed third-party consumer applications or platforms in a secure manner.

OCNADD ensures data security, low latency, and redundancy while collecting and processing the data. It enables Communication Service Providers (CSPs) to correlate and transform the acquired data as per their data feed configuration to create comprehensive dashboards and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) thereby achieving meaningful insights about all functions in 5G Network Architecture. This information can be used for monetising, providing good quality of service, reducing downtime, easing network scalability, and minimizing losses. The OCNADD generated data can be beneficial for monitoring and troubleshooting issues during a network failure.

Note:

The performance and capacity of the OCNADD system may vary based on the call model, Feature/Interface configuration, and underlying CNE and hardware environment.

The following diagram provides the high-level overview of OCNADD functionality:

Functional Architecture

OCNADD performs the following key functions:

  • Data aggregation: Collects and aggregates network traffic data from multiple NFs, such as SCP, SEPP, PCF, BSF, and NRF. The NFs can be available at a single site or different sites. OCNADD routes the consolidated traffic data to third-party consumer applications or monitoring tools that have subscribed to receive the traffic data.
  • Data replication: Routes the consolidated data to multiple third-party consumer applications that use the data for monitoring, troubleshooting, or security purpose. Multiple data feeds are received based on the filtering configurations specified by the third-party consumer applications. OCNADD replicates these feeds to more than one third-party consumer application. It also provides the feed to multiple third-party systems, such as monitoring, troubleshooting, and security tools with the collected data.

    Note:

    OCNADD supports the replication for maximum five third-party consumer applications.
  • Synthetic Packet Data generation: Enables OCNADD to convert incoming JSON data into network transfer wire format and send the converted packets to the 3rd party monitoring probes securely. The 3rd party probe feeds the synthetic packets to the internal monitoring applications. The feature helps 3rd party vendors to eliminate the need of creating additional applications for receiving JSON data and convert the data into the probe-compatible format, thereby saving critical compute resources and associated costs.
  • Secure data transport (TLS): Provides a secure data communication between producer NFs and 3rd-party consumer applications. The incoming data streaming towards OCNADD and outgoing data streaming towards 3rd-party applications are TLS encrypted.
  • Operational dashboard: Provides a dashboard with different visualization operations and a panel for configuring metrics, KPIs, and monitoring alarms to track the system health.
  • Data governance: Supports data governance by managing the availability, usability, integrity, and security of data in the enterprise systems based on Oracle data standards and policies that control data usage.
  • Health monitoring: Supports a health monitoring functionality that to monitor the readiness and liveness of each of the microservice instances. The health monitoring feature also provides each OCNADD service's health report, which can be monitored on demand or periodically using the OCNADD dashboard.
  • Backup and restore: Provides a backup and restore functionality to enable high availability and quick recovery from any failures. The configuration backup is taken periodically from already deployed setup, so that if a cluster fails, it can be restored quickly.
  • High availability: The OCNADD instance is deployed in pods in the Kubernetes clusters that ensures high availability of the services, and in case of a failure, new instance of the services is available immediately. In case of a Kubernetes cluster failure, the OCNADD deployment is restored to a different cluster.
  • Message Sequencing: Provides sequence message delivery to third-party apps with configuration options (TIME_WINDOW, REQUEST_RESPONSE and TRANSACTION).

Note:

It is recommended to configure a maximum of two Data Feeds if a higher MPS rate is required—for example, to match the Ingress MPS rate. Additionally, note that replicated feeds are supported up to an ingress rate of 135K MPS

1.2 References

Refer to the following documents for more information:

  • Oracle Communications Network Analytics Data Director User Guide
  • Oracle Communications Network Analytics Data Director Installation, Upgrade, and Fault Recovery Guide
  • Oracle Communications Network Analytics Data Director Troubleshooting Guide
  • Oracle Communications Network Analytics Data Director Benchmarking Guide
  • Oracle Communications Network Analytics Suite Security Guide
  • Oracle Communications Cloud Native Core, Cloud Native Environment Installation, Upgrade, and Fault Recovery Guide
  • Oracle Communications Cloud Native Core, cnDBTier Installation, Upgrade, and Fault Recovery Guide
  • Oracle Communications Cloud Native Configuration Console Installation, Upgrade, and Fault Recovery Guide
  • Oracle Communications Cloud Native Configuration Console Troubleshooting Guide