The embeddedMIND product family was developed based on the experience gained over a 20-year period of providing solutions for the worlds leading networking equipment manufacturers.
embeddedMIND has been built from the ground-up to provide a unified approach to network device management. Our unique architecture enables us to support today’s and tomorrow's network management standards while minimizing the impact of changing interfaces on our customers applications. embeddedMIND scales from access to core applications and has been deployed in infrastructure as diverse as wireless base stations, enterprise routers and high-end metro-edge routers.
Convergence of telecom and datacom functionality, the need for interoperability in heterogeneous environments and the support of legacy, proprietary as well as emerging management paradigms all serve to rapidly increase the requirements on devices for robust management of complex and evolving device functionality.
Componentisation within the overall device architecture and the availability of commercial solutions have radically changed the way in which network devices are brought to market. Equipment providers can now focus on their core competencies and added value while external solutions are available for carrier-grade hardware, operating systems, protocol stacks and databases. embeddedMIND meets the requirements for time to market, cost and risk reduction in the management layer while providing a robust future-proof architecture.
Notable aspects of the embeddedMIND technology are
- Generic representation of management data
embeddedMIND represents management requests, responses and events in a proven object-oriented design avoiding the inherent limitations and performance pitfalls of protocol-specific or representation-based approaches such as SNMP or XML.
- Carrier-grade performance
embeddedMIND provides scalability by optimizing data handling at the management layer within hardware constraints and guaranteeing carrier-grade functionality through extensive testing and validation support. embeddedMIND is in use in devices containing thousands of classes of managed objects and millions of actual instances.
- Dynamic Database Discovery
embeddedMIND can be used to dynamically discover managed objects stored in a central database or other uniform storage format.
- Management layer design workflow
By utilising a central framework, the embeddedMIND workflow allows the tasks involved in the instrumentation and selected protocol layer effort to be separated, parallelised and divided among developers. This aids project control by increasing visibility into progress and adding flexibility to the scheduling.
- Device modeling
During the design stage the device entities providing the functionality exposed to the management layer are modelled in an intermediate XML format. These are then used to generate the instrumentation to the underlying system.
- Command space abstraction
Full abstraction of the command space from the underlying code allows IDE-supported customization of the CLI functionality offered by the device. True rapid development is provided by an independent XML-based command definition which, during the development stage, can be reloaded by the management layer process without a process restart.
- Fundamental security
embeddedMIND supports the use of secure transport layers such as SSH and TLS for Web/XML, CLI and NETCONF with specific options for SNMP. In addition to the transport level security all use of underlying device functionality is mediated by a comprehensive access control layer which can be used to enforce user privilege policies at managed object and even attribute granularity.
- Best in class partnering
Based on the Unix mantra of “Do one thing well” embeddedMIND concentrates on providing management layer protocol functionality and works closely with partners to meet other needs such as database functionality, high availability, routing/switching protocol. Pre-integrated solutions are provided under the MINDLink brand.
- Modular Approach
embeddedMIND’s modular architecture facilitates the upgrade of CLI or SNMP functionality in legacy systems or the addition of newer protocols such as NETCONF. Optional use of embedded relational or XML databases is supported.