Skylight orchestrator

Overview

The Skylight orchestrator is Accedian’s element and service management system. From this centralized platform, you will be able to view and manage the entire suite of Skylight performance components on your network including:

• Full range of Skylight elements (AT, CE, FS, FSX, GE, GT, GX, LT, LX, NE, TE )
• Skylight Flex (100, 25)
• Skylight sensor: control
• Full range of Skylight sensor: modules (all Skylight sensor: module 1G, 10G and Skylight sensor: SFP compute 1G and 10G models)
• Skylight performance analytics, a cloud-native analysis and visualization application (available as SaaS).

Skylight orchestrator is built around a robust task automation engine and proven opensource components. Skylight orchestrator has a secure web-based user interface (shown below).

From the Skylight orchestrator web interface, you can perform the following tasks:

• View and discover complete inventory of devices
• Automatically commission devices upon discovery
• Perform bulk configuration and backups of large networks
• Create and manage performance measurement sessions (TWAMP, Echo, Ethernet OAM and 2xOneWay)
• Monitor device faults
• Monitor network performance thresholds and issue alarms based on thresholds
• Configure and report on network performance test suites
• Collect and group network performance statistics over a northbound interface
• Connect to the central license server to obtain and release feature licenses seamlessly.

From initial install of Skylight devices, Skylight orchestrator simplifies, secures and accelerates Ethernet service validation and performance monitoring. The benefits of Skylight orchestrator include:

• Centralized view of the entire network
• Performance session management
• Northbound interface (REST API)
• Centralized SAT
• Scalability - Skylight orchestrator can manage hundreds of thousands of endpoints.

Instant Provisioning

By extending the Accedian Plug & Go™ instant provisioning system, Skylight orchestrator reduces operational efforts to an absolute minimum. New units go from the box to being managed in minutes.

1. Device is installed on the network and powered on.
2. Device receives periodic beacon from another beaconing device and configures its
3. management channel from the beacon information.
4. Device advertises itself to the Inventory Tracking device.
5. Skylight orchestrator monitors the Inventory Tracking device and adds the new device to its list of devices.
6. Skylight orchestrator establishes communication.
7. Device is ready to be managed.

Network-Wide Backups and Upgrades

Skylight orchestrator automates network-wide backup of configuration data, as well as archiving and export. Skylight orchestrator's task automation engine can process hundreds of Accedian devices in parallel. Resulting configuration files can either be stored on the Skylight orchestrator server or on an external server, depending on your particular needs. Skylight orchestrator supports firmware upgrades for individual units. Multi-threaded batch processing and status tracking allow full inventory upgrades to be performed and verified within short maintenance windows.

Skylight orchestrator is Accedian’s Element and Service Management System. Skylight orchestrator is server software that can be installed on a virtual machine running on a Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) server.

From Skylight orchestrator, you can manage and collect performance data from your entire Skylight device monitoring solution including:

• Skylight elements (AT, CE, FS, FSX, GE, GT, GX, LT, LX, NE, TE)

• Skylight Flex (100, 25)

• Skylight sensor: control

• Skylight sensor: modules

The performance data can be forwarded to Skylight performance analytics (or other systems) for visualization and analysis.

Core Functionality

The core functionality of Skylight orchestrator includes:

• Configuration of Skylight devices (Skylight sensor: control and Skylight sensor: modules)

• Management of Skylight device firmware

• Device discovery and inventory

• Service Activation Testing (SAT) using Y.1564 and RFC-2544

• Creation and management of performance sessions that measure key metrics of network services

• Collection of performance data and distribution to Skylight performance analytics (and other systems) for visualization and analysis.

Connectivity

Connectivity between Skylight orchestrator appliances, Skylight devices and end-user browsers must be established over a Data Communications Network (DCN).

Skylight orchestrator communicates with Skylight devices over the DCN in order to discover devices, collect performance data, and perform service activation testing.

Similarly, end users must be able to access the Skylight orchestrator web interface from their desktop or laptop computers. This communication also occurs over the DCN.

The DCN must meet the following basic requirements:

• Skylight orchestrator appliances must be assigned an IPv4 address

• For single Machine deployments, IP routes must be in place from the Skylight orchestrator Machine to all Skylight devices

• IP routes must be in place from the Skylight orchestrator Machine to all end-user stations/computers.

The protocols and UDP/TCP ports used by Skylight orchestrator are detailed in Important Considerations.

User Interfaces

Skylight orchestrator has two user interfaces:

• A browser-based web interface

You access it from a web browser. All you need is the Machine IP address and the username and password for a valid Skylight orchestrator user account. The web interface is meant for regular daily operations.

• A console-based interface

A software module called the Machine Monitor provides a set of CLI commands that are used to perform system administration tasks for Skylight orchestrator.

The commands are documented in detail in the Machine Monitor Command Reference.

Detailed procedures for using the commands to perform system administration tasks are explained in Administrative Operations for virtual machine and Docker Administrative Operations for Docker.

The console interface is used to perform the following tasks:

• Provide a hostname, an IP address and a subnet (expressed as a CIDR value)
• Provide a default gateway
• Set the date and time
• Define the DNS servers
• Configure an NTP client.

Some system recovery tasks can also be executed from the console interface, including:

• Reboot the server
• Restore a backup
• Reset the system to factory defaults.