Integrating NerveCenter with a Network Management Platform - Integrating NerveCenter with IBM NetView for AIX - The Reliability of NerveCenter Informs Sent to IBM NetView for AIX -
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The Reliability of NerveCenter Informs Sent to IBM NetView for AIX

Since NerveCenter informs are sent via the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) they tend to be more reliable than SNMP traps. TCP allows for the following:

• NerveCenter informs take priority over SNMP traps.
• A direct connection is made between the NerveCenter Server and the NerveCenter OpenView Platform Adapter.
• The NerveCenter OpenView Platform Adapter can acknowledge the receipt of a NerveCenter inform.

The following diagram illustrates how the NerveCenter OpenView Platform Adapter acknowledges informs.

How NerveCenter handles inform acknowledgement

When a NerveCenter behavior model performs the Inform alarm action:

• The NerveCenter Server sends an Inform message to the NerveCenter OpenView Platform Adapter. The NerveCenter Server places the inform in a queue.
• The NerveCenter OpenView Platform Adapter sends the inform message to NetView. At the same time, the NerveCenter OpenView Platform Adapter sends a packet back to the NerveCenter Server acknowledging it has received the inform packet.
• Once the NerveCenter Server receives the inform acknowledgement, it deletes the inform from its queue.

If for any reason the NerveCenter Server loses its connection to the NerveCenter OpenView Platform Adapter the informs will be held in its inform queue. Once the server regains its connection, any inform that was not acknowledged as received will be sent again.

By default, the NerveCenter Server is not set to have informs acknowledged. If you want NerveCenter to keep track of informs and their acknowledgement, you must enable the inform acknowledgement feature. The section explains how to enable the inform acknowledgement feature.

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Note    To use the Inform acknowledgement feature, you must use version 3.6 or later of NerveCenter Server and the NerveCenter OpenView Platform Adapter.

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While the connection between the NerveCenter Server and the OpenView Platform Adapter is down, any new informs will be placed in the inform queue. The queue length is limited. If the number of informs waiting to be sent exceeds the queue limit, NerveCenter will delete the oldest inform so the newest inform can be added to the queue. If NerveCenter drops informs it will also fire the predefined trigger NC_INFORMS_LOST. (See the book Designing and Managing Behavior Models for complete details on using this and other predefined triggers in behavior models.) By default, the queue depth is set to 10000 informs. You can however set the queue to whatever depth you prefer. The section explains how to set the inform queue depth.