Sentinel 4.0

Monitoring and control of multi-layer operational networks and services

The challenge power utilities face in implementing their operational communication network is how to manage an evolving, multi-technology, multi-vendor telecom infrastructure to deliver services with a guaranteed level of quality for multiple groups of users with different service requirements.

Our Sentinel 4.0 management solution aggregates, correlates, and visualizes telecom data from multiple network layers and technologies into user-oriented views, facilitating operational decisions to restore services, notify users of potential service impacts, and meet KPIs and performance metrics. The result? Better efficiency and productivity; enhanced monitoring of mission-critical communication services and infrastructure; and reduced downtime and maintenance costs.

Core Capabilities
  • Integrated management of complex multi-vendor networks
  • Prompt fault localization
  • End-to-end availability monitoring and measurement
  • Rapid deployment irrespective of legacy technologies
Differentiating Features
  • Improved functions, scale, and cost for grid operational communication networks
  • Fault, performance, and incident management in a single integrated platform
  • User dashboards, impact notifications, and service statistics
Improved Outcomes
  • Enhanced operator awareness and proactive management
  • Documented and formal communication service delivery
  • Structured framework for network information
  • Comprehensive cybersecurity solutions

Sentinel 4.0

Monitoring and control of multi-layer operational networks and services

The challenge power utilities face in implementing their operational communication network is how to manage an evolving, multi-technology, multi-vendor telecom infrastructure to deliver services with a guaranteed level of quality for multiple groups of users with different service requirements.

Our Sentinel 4.0 management solution aggregates, correlates, and visualizes telecom data from multiple network layers and technologies into user-oriented views, facilitating operational decisions to restore services, notify users of potential service impacts, and meet KPIs and performance metrics. The result? Better efficiency and productivity; enhanced monitoring of mission-critical communication services and infrastructure; and reduced downtime and maintenance costs.

Core Capabilities
  • Integrated management of complex multi-vendor networks
  • Prompt fault localization
  • End-to-end availability monitoring and measurement
  • Rapid deployment irrespective of legacy technologies
Differentiating Features
  • Improved functions, scale, and cost for grid operational communication networks
  • Fault, performance, and incident management in a single integrated platform
  • User dashboards, impact notifications, and service statistics
Improved Outcomes
  • Enhanced operator awareness and proactive management
  • Documented and formal communication service delivery
  • Structured framework for network information
  • Comprehensive cybersecurity solutions

Sentinel diagram 1

Sentinel 4.0 is a vendor-agnostic management platform designed to fulfill the requirements of power utilities’ operational communications.

  • Multi-vendor and multi-technology – Allows for flexible construction of the network with best-suited building blocks without committing to any specific single vendor.
  • Easy to deploy, operate, and maintain – Provides a powerful solution for monitoring, supervising, and reporting on devices and services at the grid scale, restraining to features that are relevant for the operational network, hence reducing cost, complexity, and learning effort.
  • Fully under the utility’s control – Resides entirely inside the power utility’s governance and security perimeter.
  • Enhanced operator awareness – For fast fault detection and localization, proactive management (detect anomalies before users), reduced downtime, efficient usage of work force, and reduction of maintenance costs.
  • Enhanced user awareness – For the proper operation of mission-critical applications, prompt information on services impacted by network anomalies, and assurance that service requirements are constantly fulfilled.
  • Single source for network information – Sentinel 4.0 inventory provides a coherent and unique source of information common to functions such as network operation, maintenance, transformation projects, planning, etc., facilitating exchanges between network management actors and stakeholders.

Sentinel diagram 2

Fault & Incident ManagementPerformance Management
Configuration ManagementSecurity Management
  • Technology- and vendor-agnostic end-to-end and multi-layer vision
  • Generic and simple UI (no specific skills required)
  • Enables interaction of O&M actors (including remote clients, field tablets, and smartphones)
  • Assists in network fault root cause analysis rule-based notifications (event, time, statistics)
  • Generates service availability/outage statistics
  • Monitors service level agreements (SLAs)
  • Monitor MIB-stored performance data
  • Service-oriented user dashboards
  • Stores basic network configuration data
  • Maintains asset information down to interface boards and logical ports
  • Manual data population or MS Excel import files
  • Includes site/geographic location coordinates
  • Includes contact coordinates for incidents, interventions, and notifications
  • Unified access to vendor tools and platforms
  • Role-based access control (RBAC)
  • Password protection for server access
  • Security certificates for unambiguous server identification
  • SSH tunnel between client and server
  • Operator log management
  • Authentication through RADIUS server
  • Secure access for third-party systems

Sentinel 4.0 Management Framework Operational Principles

Sentinel 4.0 collects alarms and events as well as service performance data from devices and dedicated managers, associates contextual network and quality constraint information to the real-time collected data, and consequently generates operation and maintenance information for the communication service provider and quality of service information for the service users.

Example application

Operation Principles Diagram

FeatureSENTINEL 4.0 4 MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONS
Fault Management
  • Technology- and vendor-agnostic multi-layer displays
  • Automatic node discovery with manual assignment
  • Alarm monitoring (event list, graphical supervision) and filtering (time, functional layer, sub-network)
  • Fault detection, localization, and root cause analysis
  • Generic and simple web-based UI and template-based operation
  • Rule-based notification (alarm/event, time of day, service statistics)
  • Operator-initiated change of state
Incident Management
  • Incident ticketing, task assignment, escalation, and intervention reporting
  • Interaction of O&M actors via incident handling functions and free-format whiteboard messaging service
  • Incident resolution statistics and dashboard
  • Asset and service tagging and work orders
Service Management
  • Generate service availability and outage statistics
  • Monitor SLAs
  • Service-oriented selective user dashboards
  • MS Excel report generation (performance, alarms, incidents)
  • Monitor-point (MP) settings and scheduling
Performance Management
  • MP setting and scheduling
  • MIB-stored performance value retrieval and monitoring
  • Monitored value storage and statistical processing
  • Gaussian model min./max. values estimation for 95%-99.9% probability
Inventory Management & Configuration
  • Device and network inventory storing basic configuration data
  • Asset and service data available in one click
  • Logical inventory covering peer-to-peer connections, service dependencies, bandwidth usage, device logical ports and VLANs. Additional data fields set according to user-specific requirements
  • Site/geographic coordinates and map display
  • Manual data population or MS Excel/CSV import files
  • Inventory data exports as an MS Excel file
  • Multi-criteria inventory search engine for assets and services
  • Intervention and notification contact coordinates (user, expert, field staff, etc.)
  • Shows underlying infrastructure for any service (path track)
  • Resource bandwidth/capacity usage estimation (bandwidth management)
  • One-click access to proprietary element managers and HMIs
Security Management
  • Role Based Access Control (RBAC)
  • Password protection for server access
  • Security certificates for unambiguous server identification
  • Encrypted web-service and client-to-server links
  • Encrypted device-to server links (devices supporting SNMPv3)
  • Mobile worker terminals
  • Authentication through RADIUS server
  • Sentinel 4.0 operator and system log management
Mobile Worker Terminals
  • Web-based user interface allowing any terminal with a web browser (PC, tablet, smartphone)
  • Dashboards, event list, notifications, incident assignment, and reporting

ADDITIONAL TECHNICAL DATA 
Server Architecture
  • N-Tier application based on a service-oriented architecture model over RedHat Linux Server
  • Optional redundancy through asynchronous data replication
  • PostgreSQL database
Sentinel 4.0 Clients
  • Require only a web browser. No limit on number of simultaneously open clients
Number of Supervised Nodes
  • Determined by license size (from < 100 to 3000)
  • Can be re-adjusted by license upgrade
Supervised Devices
  • Embedded MIB files for GE Vernova’s Grid Solutions communications portfolio
  • Can load other SNMP device MIB files or northbound SNMP interface of device-specific NMS
  • Device alarm contacts through SNMP converter
Number of Functional Layers and Supervision Zones
  • Unlimited functional layers partitioned into multiple regional sub-networks. Can regroup multiple nodes into a super-node.
Functional Capability Packages

Management functions are grouped into functional capability packages and may be added through license upgrades:

  • Basic by-default functions: fault management, network inventory
  • Situational alert: event notification via Email/SMS, script execution, northbound interface (NBI)
  • Data exploration: root cause analysis, service impact analysis, bandwidth management, path track
  • Incident and work order: incident handling, incident resolution workflow and dashboard, tagging and work orders
  • Performance monitoring: performance monitor setting and scheduling, value retrieval, statistical estimation, performance dashboards, MS Excel value export, MIB/SLA monitoring
  • Network fault simulator: contingency analysis (“what if” scenarios)
Security and Authentication
  • Password-protected, RBAC, and encrypted web-service
  • Client authorization using RADIUS server
  • SSH communication tunnel between client and server, security certificates for unambiguous server identification

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