Network Management Service (NMS) provides a secure architecture for proactive remote network monitoring and management of your storage network around the clock. If there are problems, our experts can the traffic, or perhaps the equipment. We help you maximize your network availability, decrease the likelihood of serious outages, and also provide the information to help you optimize network performance.

More than just a monitoring tool, our Network Management Service (NMS) supplies ongoing, expert analysis of storage network quality and availability, vital statistical reports, and proactive network assistance. As an NMS client, you will decrease the chance of network downtime, reduce recovery time, and optimize network performance.

At the core of NMS is our remote operations center, the Network Management Center, staffed 24x7x365 by experienced remote monitoring engineers. As soon as an event occurs in your network, our Center detects it, opens a Service Request (viewable on the NMS web portal), and begins to diagnose the problem.
This proactive approach prevents an average of 54 minutes of downtime.

• Increase network availability and decrease the chance of network downtime
• Optimize network performance - we continually monitor traffic, bandwidth
• Even your redundant circuits to ensure operating efficiencies
• Reduce recovery time by an average of 54 minutes per event
• Keep storage network planning on track - access daily network performance reports on the NMS web portal

Network Management Service includes password-protected web portal access to daily reports detailing your network performance. These reports are used to help analyze your current status and plan for the future growth of the network.

The web portal also contains information on open, in-process, and closed events (or Service Requests); network inventory; network diagrams; trending information on compression, interface use and errors; and account contact information.

There are two secure ways we can connect to your network. One method is via the Internet using existing or new customer-side ISP service or DSL. The second connection method is via private network using Frame Relay, ISDN, or dial-up. Brocade will work with you to develop other types of network monitoring connections if requested.

Brocade includes security in every layer of NMS, utilizing a multi-layered hardened security design including:

• 3DES encryption with shared key authentication between NMS and client site
• Customized access lists on both ends of the client connection
• Proxy firewalls that work at the application layer above layer 3 or 4
• Hardened operating systems with strong authentication supporting all internal applications
• Continuous access auditing and logging for intrusion detection and notification

We perform the day-to-day activities of managing your network environment and maintaining your network quality and availability.

The NMS staff monitors bandwidth and interface utilization, interface availability, compression ratios, and other factors affecting the quality of your network. As a matter of fact, we monitor up to 20 quality statistics of the Wide Area Network alone, including end-to-end Cyclical Redundancy Check (CRC) errors and network packet loss.

We have been designing and installing networks for nearly 20 years, and puts that experience to work for you. You can look to Brocade for a unique combination of storage networking expertise, innovative products, and services that go beyond network management to include consulting, integration, migration, and a wide range of support services.