Metamodel-based framework in designing fault management in network management system

Abstract

Fault management is the first element that matters in network management to ensure the high availability of the network. The existing fault management models are mostly specific to an organization’s standard. The proposed model can guide and help network managers to perform their routine task. Thus, the purpose of this research is to develop a generic and unified Fault Management Metamodel (FMM) that would create a fault management model, which in turn could be referred to as to better understand the flow of fault management. The FMM is developed by extracting and reconciling the fault management components from various fault management models. Then, the FMM is validated to ensure the correctness and logic of the proposed FMM. The FMM is validated using three validation techniques, which are the Frequency-based Selection, Face Validity and Tracing. The metamodelling framework that was used in this research is the Meta Object Facilities (MOF), and it was chosen because of its wide acceptance and coverage in many domains. The outcome of this research is the final validated FMM v1.2, which would guide network managers and other network users to better understand the fault management concepts flow and issues for their network. As for the future work, besides fault management, there are four other functional areas in network management that should be developed. The other areas are configuration management, accounting management, performance management and security management.