Skip to main content

Checklist of the information a manager of a NOC needs to have close at hand


This is a checklist devised by DS of the information a manager of a Network Operations Centre (NOC) needs to have close at hand:

Command and control

  • Date and time of current shift including start, finish and handover.
  • NOC manager on duty
  • Shift leaders
  • Service Delivery Manager on duty/standby
  • Major Incident Manager on duty/standby

Tiger Team status (refer here for process)

  •  echo
  • whisky
  • delta
  • romeo
  • bravo
  • alpha

Red-Amber-Green (RAG) of the trenches

  • Security
  • Data centre
  • Apps
  • Support
  • Infrastructure

Notifications

  • Ongoing Service Level Agreement (SLA) or contract violations
  • All Major Incidents
  • All failures and outages
  • Last 10 maintenance tasks completed
  • Next 10 maintenance tasks scheduled
  • Planned continuity tests scheduled (inverter/generator tests, network path protection tests, business continuity or application high availability tests)
  • Resources available to the NOC
  • Resources unavailable to the NOC
  • Changes completed during the past week (includes the status on whether they were successful or failed)
  • Changes scheduled for the next week
  • Emergency changes completed or in progress
  • Top 10 most important projects that are ongoing
  • Top 10 congested links
  • Top 10 devices with temperature alerts
  • Top 10 devices with cooling alerts
  • Top 10 devices with storage or capacity alerts (including raid failures)
  • Systems/devices with known problems or symptoms of degradation
  • Top 10 network with path protection faults
Labels:

Comments

Post a comment

Popular posts from this blog

NeDi - a great open source tool for network management

NeDi is an open source software tool which discovers, maps and inventories your network devices and tracks connected end-nodes.
FeaturesNetwork Discovery, management & monitoringNetflow & sFlow based traffic analysisIT Inventory & lifecycle managementNetwork topology visualisationLocate & Track ComputersSecurity audits & moreVM, DC managementPrinter managementBackup ConfigsIT Reports Read more about it here or contact DS to find out more.
Post a comment
Read more

The importance of the major incident process

ITIL mentions the Major Incident process as a special case of the incident management process as well its close relationship to problem management.  However, the Major Incident process requires greater clarity and specification as in many large enterprises the process is crucial for overcoming a crisis. A Major Incident typically defined as an incident with severe negative business consequences and an important duty of any designated Information Technology (IT) resources is to deal with Major Incidents in a structured manner.  We will address this important topic in a series of articles that specifically addresses the process and crisis management in general.

Read the full article here.
Post a comment
Read more

Using OPENDNS on a Mikrotik

At the office we use a Mikrotik which is connected via fibre to Cool Ideas.  We use OpenDNS as a Information Security tool.  It prevents ransomware and bots from becoming major incidents within the office.

The router is scheduled to do a daily update via script of the OpenDNS settings.  Below is the example:

:local opendnsuser "user@domain.co.za";
:local opendnspass "itsprivate";
:local opendnshost "office";

:log info "OpenDNS Update";
:local url "https://updates.opendns.com/nic/update";
/tool fetch url=($url . "\3Fhostname=$opendnshost") user=("$opendnsuser") password=("$opendnspass") mode=https dst-path=opendnsupdate.txt
:local opendnsresult [/file get opendnsupdate.txt contents];
:log info "OpenDNS: Host $opendnshost - $opendnsresult";
Post a comment
Read more