Case Study
One of our largest clients is Telstra, Australia. Telstra operates several very large OmniLink systems. They wanted GenSZAI and GenWatch3 NetVista to handle their monumental management reports and airtime billing collection. The scale of this enterprise required us to take a new approach. Using a Distributed Architecture approach, we gave birth to GenSZAI Enterprise Edition.
Diagnostics Capture
Get it Before it Goes *Poof*
Here's little-known fact: Older Motorola SmartZone systems have the ability to send system DIAG information to a printer that can be attached to the System Manager Terminal. Through a COM port, which can be configured from SmartZone Administration, all DIAG messages can be routed to that printer. The crazy thing is, once they are printed, the DIAG information goes bye-bye!
GZ DiagCapture — a feature of GenSZAI — listens to the COM port and captures the information that would normally go to the printer and puts it in a SQL database for further use. The table contains the following fields:
- Date/Time
- Source of the DIAG
- Device sending the DIAG
- Action Taken
- Cause
News for SmartZone and ASTRO
For 7.x and newer ASTRO® systems, watch for an announcement in the coming months for yet another Genesis enhancement for capturing diagnostics, and much more! For users of Motorola's UEM (Unified Event Manager), we will become an agent (listener) to everything that is happening on ASTRO networks. This is SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) data. Genesis stores that data and allows reporting on it, just like ATIA activity. When this update is released, it will include screens which will display live information and diagnostics on the ASTRO network, allow for Triggers and notifications to be set, show how many times a channel failed in the last "x" months, and lots more!
More Links
Diagrams
GenSZAI Enterprise Edition
A GenSZAI Distributed Architecture approach can handle the largest of any SmartZone or OmniLink deployments. It is fault tolerant with redundant machines, as well as tolerant of network outages at any point in the enterprise. The only limit on the amount of online data that can be stored is the amount of available hard disk space.
Each design of GenSZAI Enterprise is solely contingent on a system's call volume. Quantity of sites is not an important factor. A system's call volume determines the amount of hard disk storage needed as well as processing power. Through extensive internal and field testing, we have found that the CPUs in this design are mostly "coasting." This requires network pre-planning to be sure that all of the proper links from the zone sites to the operations center are adequate and in place. Contact Genesis for configuration planning assistance.
Benefits
- Cost-effective hardware requirements
- Low cost Reader at each zone
- Medium cost Data Processor machine at a centralized location
- Single high end data Storage Warehouse
- Capable of being utilized on 3 zones
- Capable of load balancing with additional servers
- Data buffering in case of network outages
- Single query can look at an entire OmniLink
Seriously Wicked Data Processing
Each GenSZAI Data Processor machine can handle up to 6000 packets per minute (with our recommended hardware configuration). Typically, ATIA streams deliver an average of 800-900 packets per minute. The theoretical maximum is 3,000 PPM. The Data Processor features a small local queue to handle variations in traffic. In the event of loss of connectivity with the Database Server, it will tell the GenSZAI Reader to stop sending packets and the major buffering will happen at the reader.