What are SS7 SGC alarms?

Alarms in the SS7 SGC stack alert the administrator to exceptional conditions. Subsystems in the SS7 SGC stack raise them upon detecting an error condition or an event of high importance. The SS7 SGC stack clears alarms automatically when the error conditions are resolved; an administrator can clear any alarm at any time. When an alarm is raised or cleared, the SS7 SGC stack generates a notification that is sent as a JMX Notification and an SNMP trap/notification.

The SS7 SGC stack defines multiple alarm types. Each alarm type corresponds to a type of error condition or important event (such as "SCTP association down"). The SGC stack can raise multiple alarms of any type (for example, multiple "SCTP association down" alarms, one for each disconnected association).

Alarms are inspected and managed through a set of commands exposed by the Command-Line Management Console, which is distributed with SGC SS7 Stack.

Tip
See also

Below are details of Active Alarms and Event History, Generic Alarm Attributes, and Alarm Types.

Active alarms and event history

The SS7 SGC Stack stores and exposes two types of alarm-related information:

  • active alarms — a list of alarms currently active

  • event history — a list of alarms and notifications that where raised or emitted in the last 24 hours (this is default value — see Configuring the SS7 SGC Stack).

At any time, an administrator can clear all or selected alarms.

Tip
See also

Supported CLI Operations for Alarms and Event history

Generic alarm attributes

Alarm attributes represent information about events that result in an alarm being raised. Each alarm type has the following generic attributes, plus a group of attributes specific to that alarm type (described in the following sections).

Attribute Description

id

unique alarm identifier

name

name of alarm type

severity

alarm severity:

  • CRITICAL — application encountered an error which prevents it from continuing (it can no longer provide services)

  • MAJOR — application encountered an event which significantly impacts delivered services; some services may no longer be available

  • MINOR — application reports an event which does not have significant impact on delivered services

  • INFO — application reports an information event which does not have any impact on delivered services

  • CLEARED — alarm has been cleared.

timestamp

timestamp when the event occurred

Alarm types

This section describes all alarm types that can be raised in an SGC cluster.

asDown

The asDown (Application Server Down) alarm is raised whenever an application server that was active becomes inactive. It is cleared when an application server becomes active again.

Attribute Description Values of constants

id

unique alarm identifier

name

name of alarm type

asDown

severity

alarm severity

MAJOR

timestamp

timestamp when the event occurred

asId

name of affected AS

associationCongested

The associationCongested (SCTP association congestion) alarm is raised whenever an SCTP association becomes congested. It is cleared when congestion state abates.

Attribute Description Values of constants

id

unique alarm identifier

name

name of alarm type

associationCongested

severity

alarm severity

MINOR

timestamp

timestamp when the event occurred

connectionId

name of affected connection

associationDown

The associationDown (SCTP association down) alarm is raised whenever a SCTP association that was active becomes inactive. It is cleared when an association becomes active again.

Attribute Description Values of constants

id

unique alarm identifier

name

name of alarm type

associationDOWN

severity

alarm severity

MINOR

timestamp

timestamp when the event occurred

connectionId

name of affected connection

dpcRestricted

The dpcRestricted (destination point code restricted) alarm is raised when a DPC becomes restricted through a particular SCTP association. It is cleared when a DPC restricted state abates on a particular SCTP association.

Attribute Description Values of constants

id

unique alarm identifier

name

name of alarm type

dpcRestricted

severity

alarm severity

MINOR

timestamp

timestamp when the event occurred

asId

AS related to this DPC

dpcId

name fo the affected DPC

connectionId

name of affected connection

dpcUnavailable

The dpcUnavailable (destination point code unavailable) alarm is raised when a DPC becomes unreachable through a particular SCTP association. It is cleared when a DPC becomes reachable again through a particular SCTP association.

Attribute Description Values of constants

id

unique alarm identifier

name

name of alarm type

dpcUnavailable

severity

alarm severity

MINOR

timestamp

timestamp when the event occurred

asId

AS related to this DPC

dpcId

name fo the affected DPC

connectionId

name of affected connection

ipspAsDown

The ipspAsDown (IPSP Application Server Down) alarm is raised whenever an application server (working in IPSP mode) that was active becomes inactive on a particular SCTP association. It is cleared when an application server becomes active again on that association.

Attribute Description Values of constants

id

unique alarm identifier

name

name of alarm type

ipspAsDown

severity

alarm severity

MAJOR

timestamp

timestamp when the event occurred

asId

name of the affected AS

connectionId

name of affected connection

nodefailure

The nodefailure (node failed) alarm is raised whenever a node configured in cluster is down. It is cleared when an SGC instance acting as that particular node becomes active.

Attribute Description Values of constants

id

unique alarm identifier

name

name of alarm type

nodefailure

severity

alarm severity

MAJOR

timestamp

timestamp when the event occurred

failureDescription

more information about node failure

nodeId

affected node

poolCongestion

The poolCongestion (Task Pool Congestion) alarm is raised whenever over 80% of pooled objects are in use. It is cleared when less than 50% of pooled objects are in use.

Note
What is a task pool?

A task pool is a pool of objects used during message processing, where each allocated object represents a message that may be processing or waiting to be processed. Each SGC node uses separate task pools for outgoing and incoming messages.
Attribute Description Values of constants

id

unique alarm identifier

name

name of alarm type

poolCongestion

severity

alarm severity

MAJOR

timestamp

timestamp when the event occurred

poolName

name of the affected task pool

nodeId

affected node

poolExhaustion

The poolExhaustion (Task Pool Exhaustion) alarm is raised whenever a task allocation request is made on a pool whose objects are all already allocated. This alarm must be cleared manually.

Attribute Description Values of constants

id

unique alarm identifier

name

name of alarm type

poolExhaustion

severity

alarm severity

MAJOR

timestamp

timestamp when the event occurred

poolName

name of the affected task pool

nodeId

affected node

sccpLocalSsnProhibited

The sccpLocalSsnProhibited (SCCP local SSN is prohibited) alarm is raised whenever all previously connected TCAP stacks (with the CGIN RA) using a particular SSN become disconnected. It is cleared whenever at least one TCAP stack using a given SSN connects.

Attribute Description Values of constants

id

unique alarm identifier

name

name of alarm type

sccpLocalSsnProhibited

severity

alarm severity

MAJOR

timestamp

timestamp when the event occurred

ssn

SSN that is prohibited

sccpRemoteNodeCongestion

The sccpRemoteNodeCongestion (SCCP remote node is congested) alarm is raised whenever a remote SCCP node reports congestion. It is cleared when the congestion state abates.

Attribute Description Values of constants

id

unique alarm identifier

name

name of alarm type

sccpRemoteNodeCongestion

severity

alarm severity

MINOR

timestamp

timestamp when the event occurred

dpc

affected DPC

sccpRemoteNodeNotAvailable

The sccpRemoteNodeNotAvailable (SCCP remote node is not available) alarm is raised whenever a remote SCCP node becomes unavailable. It is cleared when the remote node becomes available.

Attribute Description Values of constants

id

unique alarm identifier

name

name of alarm type

sccpRemoteNodeNotAvailable

severity

alarm severity

MINOR

timestamp

timestamp when the event occurred

dpc

affected DPC

sccpRemoteSsnProhibited

The sccpRemoteSsnProhibited (SCCP remote SSN is prohibited) alarm is raised whenever a remote SCCP node reports that a particular SSN is prohibited. It is cleared whenever the remote SCCP node reports that a particular SSN is available.

Attribute Description Values of constants

id

unique alarm identifier

name

name of alarm type

sccpRemoteSsnProhibited

severity

alarm severity

MINOR

timestamp

timestamp when the event occurred

ssn

affected SSN

dpc

affected DPC

workgroupCongestion

The workgroupCongestion (Work Group Congestion) alarm is raised when the worker work queue is over 80% occupied. It is cleared when worker work queue is less than 50% occupied.

Note
What is a worker group?

A worker group is a group of workers (threads) that are responsible for processing tasks (incoming/outgoing messages). Each worker has a separate work queue.
Attribute Description Values of constants

id

unique alarm identifier

name

name of alarm type

workgroupCongestion

severity

alarm severity

MAJOR

timestamp

timestamp when the event occurred

nodeID

affected node

threadIndex

affected worker index
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