Symphonica – Element Manager/Controller API Troubleshooting in The Blink of an Eye

The Symphonica platform orchestrates multi-domain service orders based on TMF-compliant service orders, allowing them to be decomposed and orchestrated into actions, which are then executed on network elements and end-to-end services. The solution replaces manual provisioning with real-time action executions. Symphonica helps operators provide dynamic, agile responses to meet our customers’ ever-changing needs.

Symphonica interacts with network element managers or network controllers through their APIs. These API interfaces can be proprietary or aligned to industry standards. We use the TMF641 interface as our primary northbound interface.

As an orchestrator, Symphonica uses these interfaces to send commands to the orchestrated elements and obtain status and configuration information from them. This information flow can be used to make decisions throughout points in the workflow or be stored in its inventory.

During an Operator’s product life cycle and day-to-day activities, a service offer or particular workflow may require a change, or the changes suddenly appear as troubles/errors. Symphonica can:

• Adapt to changes in the Service
  Symphonica provides the ability, through its no-code configuration interfaces, for new APIs or business flows to be aligned with the new requirements without needing a development team to carry out the change.
• Resolve Errors in the Operation
  Additionally, the changes in the APIs are not always well advertised or documented, and sometimes, the warnings are lost. But, before the impact of this situation is felt on the production network, Symphonica’s workflow detects it. An example is when the team responsible for the operation finds that part of the orders executed against an interface fail. Symphonica allows us to change the interface configuration quickly, no code, restoring the operation to the normal state.

In addition to the above, Symphonica allows CPSs to manage different versions of workflows by applying business rules. Using those, Symphonica users can validate the workflow before the change. For example, view it in a separate flow and implement the change with a click. Also, this feature allows us to execute a rollback if the results obtained are not the desired ones.

All activities referenced above are done using the product’s graphical console, SymphonicaWeb GUI. Through easy navigation of interactive menus, we can generate the required changes.

For example, we have illustrated this unannounced/undocumented change in an SDWAN controller API below.

“Interface error: 500 Internal Server error due to a lack of information in the new API version”

After analyzing the issue, the error was detected using the Symphonica execution log window. There, the message “Unknown topology when creating tunnels” was shown.

As soon as the error was discovered, the “site-to-site” parameter was added with just a small configuration task, using Symphonica SDK.

After implementing the changes, the error situation turns into a no-error state!

For this reason, Symphonica helps us, on the one hand, to be able to respond in an agile way to the changes that our industry requires and to solve problems in operation in a similar way.

I invite you to learn more about Symphonica at www.symphonica.com

Remember to leave your thoughts in the section below. If you want to know more about this topic, please contact me at santiago.gonzalez@intraway.com.