The alarm information base: a repository for enterprise management

In a typical enterprise operations center, the effective processing of alarms is crucial to the successful management of an information technology environment. Service-affecting alarms can originate from many sources, including customer-premise and carrier networking elements, computing systems (hardware and software) and other managed equipment. Although alarms are often viewed simply as text strings and colored icons on an operations console, the definition and maintenance of alarm-related information within an enterprise has a distinct lifecycle which needs to be managed. One way of managing this lifecycle is through a repository called an alarm information base, which centrally captures information about the alarms raised and processed in an enterprise. In this paper, the motivation for such a repository and the benefits of its use are discussed. An alarm information base can be maintained in an open and extensible format, and should be viewed as a valuable corporate asset for enterprise management.