Video On-Demand Provisioning Failures

A cable operator’s provisioning system for Video On-Demand (VOD) consisted of three main components: a Tuxedo transaction processing system, an application server, and a provisioning server. The complexity of this system coupled with the scale of usage it received (especially during evening hours) caused it to be very unstable. This instability often resulted in more than 1,000 service tickets from the call center during any given evening. 

The production support staff responsible for the VOD provisioning system went through a sequence of manual actions that ran a series of Tuxedo diagnostic scripts followed by diagnostic scripts on the application server and ultimately, if necessary, on the provisioning server until the problem area was identified. Once the problem was isolated to one of the three major elements, the staff executed a complex series of actions to perform a controlled restart of the faulty element, which varied depending on the element in question.

The customer decided to utilize Optinuity’s technology to implement an Autonomic Policy that performed continuous diagnostics and monitoring on each of the three elements of the VOD provisioning system, followed by automatic execution of the prescribed corrective actions as required.

Results:

• Eliminated the impact of the system’s inherent instability
• Identified anomalies early and corrected them at machine-speed
• Eliminated issues before users were affected