Once new software or code has been rigorously tested in pre-production and labs, it’s imperative to continuously and actively monitor its impact across service chains once it has gone live and is active in the real world. Emblasoft Evolver with active monitoring offers a comprehensive solution to ensure consistent assurance and dynamic service performance management.

In this final blog in our five-part series on assuring and monitoring mobile services throughout their entire lifecycle we consider how operators and CSPs can assure QoS and QoE throughout the lifecycle of newly deployed software or code – in your Production Network.

Following our introduction to assuring and monitoring mobile services over their lifecycle, we discussed the four steps to achieve lifecycle assurance within a DevOps environment of continual innovation and improvement. These are:

• Production (detecting issues)
• the Lab Network (replicating issues and validating solutions)
• Pre-production environments (performance ready for deployment)

In this edition, we turn our attention back to the live network.

We have also provided two papers that summarise the requirements for full lifecycle assurance and monitoring: Evolver – Value Proposition for Lab and Pre-production Teams, and Evolver – Business Value Proposition for Network Operations.

Continuously assure and validate new software deployments in the production network

Operators are increasingly adopting DevOps practices to support CI/CD/CT operations to ensure innovation and constant improvement. This requires automated testing and validation of new software code at every stage of the software development lifecycle. So, once newly developed software or code has been rigorously tested before deployment, it then needs to be continuously monitored for the duration that it’s live – active monitoring provides an efficient means of doing so.

Operators and CSPs need to know that software maintains optimum performance if, for example, a new component is added to the network, configurations are changed, further new code is deployed, or standards evolve. Even small faults can have ramifications throughout the network or service chain.

This requires active monitoring to ensure constant validation and service assurance across all service chains. Emblasoft’s mantra is simple: “Test early. Test often. Test Everywhere. Automate.”

Evolver is a software-based traffic simulator and test automation platform designed for operations teams. It also supports active monitoring, using simulated UE agents to model scenarios and track service experiences in the live network.

This means that both general and specific services can be tracked – while they are being accessed by real users, synthetic or emulated sessions generated by Evolved provide real-time performance information that shows how they are being experienced.

Evolver simulates realistic subscriber behaviour and call flows, across voice, messaging, and data services – throughout the Production Core (4G/5G Packet Core, Messaging, Voice/IMS, and IPX/GRX).

Unlike other solutions, Evolver can perform and automate tests over multiple protocols, including MSRP, SIP, HTTP, and RTP, simultaneously to support the modelling and testing of any traffic, user behaviour or scenarios during live operations.

It integrates seamlessly with CI/CD tools, orchestration engines, and visualisation platforms, and supports real-time alerts and alarms, automated test execution and closed-loop assurance workflows.

Emblasoft Evolver Active Monitoring – protecting SLAs

In practice, this means that operators can capture real-time insights from Evolver active monitoring agents that reflect the ways in which subscribers consume services. Because the results can be fed into automation solutions, adjustments can also be made dynamically to manage service performance, with alerts sent from Evolver to platforms that can make these changes.

Evolver Active Probe consists of lightweight software agents and centralised control, which can be scaled to emulate from one to millions of users, different scenarios, user behaviours, and more. It provides real-time visibility into the network – so agents can be configured for different services (or in different slices) in the live environment, providing continuous optimisation opportunities before performance degradations impact customers.

This matters, because instant feedback on service performance has become increasingly important. If an SLA-backed service suffers even a slight impairment, the conditions behind the agreement may be breached – in turn, leading to penalties. So, it’s important to ensure consistent service delivery and that parameters do not drift from the appropriate tolerance boundaries.

If the service is in a dedicated slice with critical performance levels, dynamic orchestration is not just important, it’s essential. That’s why active monitoring with Evolver is integral to the lifecycle of a service in the production network. Evolver integrates with the automation framework responsible for service activation and orchestration, so there’s a continuous loop of feedback that can be obtained to ensure agile management of any given service.

Active monitoring from Evolver can be installed – dynamically, on-demand – in any network domain to generate real traffic sessions and measure QoS for differentiated services and applications once they are live, and whenever new software or code is introduced. It simulates realistic subscriber behaviour helping teams detect issues, or explore potential issues, before they impact customers.

Our active monitoring solution enables operators, service providers and network equipment vendors to continuously validate and verify QoS-enabled services and applications through the deployment of remote test agents.

These distributed, automated, active monitoring agents generate real traffic to capture multiple KPIs across differentiated services and can be installed – dynamically, on-demand – in any network domain to generate real traffic sessions and measure QoS for differentiated services. It means that operators can test and validate newly deployed software and code.

Test any scenario or service feature

Agents can be controlled to test different service features and specific scenarios, in parallel, dynamically and for encrypted data sessions. Emblasoft Active Probe enables multiple capabilities:

• Precise KPI measurement – per service, per user and for 5G, 4G and 3G applications
• Dynamic agent activation, scalable to thousands
• Flexible scenario creation and libraries
• Reduced cost and footprint vs passive probes
• For encrypted traffic sessions
• Centralised management and control
• Integration with automation, workflows and third-party systems.

The execution platform can be deployed in virtual architectures and integrates with your orchestration platform, so that it can trigger workflows, ensuring effective automation at scale. It also supports third-party passive monitoring probes and platforms.

Our customers tell us that, in live deployments, they have achieved up to a 40% reduction in Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and Repair (MTTR.

Key benefits:

• Minimise service disruption from undetected issues
• Speed up validation of new releases and changes
• Reduce operational workload with automation and ease of use
• Protect SLAs through continuous assurance in live environments

Evolver – Customisable test scenarios and a comprehensive Emblasoft test library

Testers can create, modify and store specific tests, benefitting from a customisable library that grows with their service portfolio, while Evolver comes with a large and growing library of pre-existing test scenarios.

Agents can be run continuously or set to run over any time interval, from seconds to minutes. Emblasoft’s approach to automated, continuous testing in live networks is fully aligned with your DevOps and CD/CI approaches.

If you'd like to read this complete series, download our briefing paper or contact us today!