This new version of Netadmin will be a significant step into the future, providing a range of tools to streamline the management of fiber customers, from automated lead management to simplified Product and Service Catalog Management.
One of the key changes in Netadmin 9.2 is a move towards containerization, which will make it faster to install and maintain the platform, minimize the number of required servers, and remove dependence on Microsoft Windows Server. This will open up for High Availability deployments, including redundancy, reliability, availability, and load-balancing which will help our customers scale up.
One of the key changes in Netadmin 9.2 is a move towards containerization.
Monitoring modernization
We are making changes to monitoring and will start using the Influx time series database. This will make it easier to extract data from the system and enable us to use sophisticated graphing tools. We will also switch our internal graphing tool from rrdtool to Apex charts.
We have worked to eliminate most of the monitoring synchronization to improve reliability and ease of use. There have also been several performance improvements in nearly all parts of monitoring, including synchronization, scheduling, execution, collection, aggregation, and visualization.
SNMP MIBs and Traps management has been improved with a new MIB parser and scalable trap handler.
We will use RabbitMQ as a message bus for monitoring, which will enable integration with third-party tools.
The deployment, installation, and configuration of monitoring have been made substantially simpler, and we aim for a no-touch deployment if possible.
Introducing the New Monitoring Dashboard
Managing complex fiber networks just got easier. Our brand-new Monitoring Dashboard is designed to deliver seamless performance even when handling extensive PON OLT chassis with thousands of ports.
The new metrics-based approach allows you to effortlessly track the number of affected components across various categories: Customers, Addresses, Devices, Monitoring instances, Services, Interfaces, Device expansion slots, and more, including alerts and out-of-service devices.
With this clear and insightful overview, users can quickly understand the impact of issues and pinpoint exactly where problems are occurring. Compare different metrics to gain deeper insight into the nature of network issues and drill down into any metric to analyze the underlying data.
This enhanced visibility provides a powerful tool for maintaining your network's health and ensuring a superior customer experience.
Explore the New Site View
Netadmin 9.2 also introduces a new intuitive view of sites. This feature gives you access to key metrics and enhanced details about connected devices in one convenient place.
Easily accessed from the top menu, the new site view allows quick navigation and direct editing.
Users can add new countries, regions, cities, and areas directly through the drop-down selection list, making managing your network infrastructure more streamlined.
File storage
Until now, file storage has been done in the database. Typical files might include photos, agreements, message attachments, ticket attachments, invoices, and more. To prepare for future use of cloud-native storage, increase performance, and keep the database size down, we will store the files in a shared file storage system.
This will also reduce the overall size of the database, improving performance and cache usage, as well as improving backup processes.
Authentication
Netadmin has had its own OAuth implementation based on OWIN, but this will be replaced with a third-party component, which, among several improvements, will also enable Netadmin to act as an OpenID Connect Identity Provider (IdP) for third-party integration.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM)
Since Netadmin often plays a crucial role in operational and business processes, monitoring it to avoid outages is very important. It's also important to be proactive, ensuring the system performs optimally for smooth operations.
In version 9.2, with all the changes, it will be possible to monitor Netadmin in many new ways. We will use Influx and Prometheus as time series databases to store metrics data from both Netadmin and third-party collection agents. Additionally, Grafana, Grafana Loki, and Grafana Tempo will be used to complete an Application Performance Monitoring-stack for system logging, tracing, operational insight, debugging, and troubleshooting and to consolidate all information about the system from an outside-in perspective.
User Interface Refresh
User Experience is crucial for the efficiency and overall experience of using Netadmin, so we have made some improvements in version 9.2.
In our user-centric approach, we've enlarged some fonts, made the buttons slightly larger, and highlighted the current tab using a different color. These changes aim to improve your experience and make the interface more intuitive. We've also introduced new date and file pickers to enhance usability further.
Import/Export
We are overhauling the Import/Export function. One goal is to replace the "Legacy Import/Export" functionality and consolidate Import/Export into one framework.
A second goal is to enable batch updates, e.g., postal code replacements, in place where the data is managed in the UI.
A third goal is to enable the Import/Export of complex data structures (hierarchical data) and to simplify data migration between different environments, e.g., from production to test environments.
Development and Framework Updates
We have updated our tech stack and introduced .Net 8 and ASP.Net Core as the main development framework.
The User Interface is now precompiled by default, so you can expect an increase in performance and responsiveness, especially after startup/restart.
Discovery
The discovery of network devices is a popular feature in Netadmin. We want it to be even more popular, standardized, and easy to configure. Therefore, we will work on some improvements.
We will rework the User Interface to make it easier to navigate and configure the discovery.
Events like "New Device," "Device Relocation," and "Device Replacement" will have standard functionality.
We have improved the speed of the whole sequence from when a discovery event happens until Netadmin reacts and acts on it, essentially reducing lead times and latency. As part of the performance improvements, we have replaced the old event process with a new plugin system for processing discovery events.
Cloud technology
With containerization comes more freedom. You can run Netadmin on any OCI-compliant Linux distribution, use a private or public cloud, and no longer need Microsoft Server licenses.
Deployment and Configuration
Deployment and configuration of a Netadmin environment have been made easier. Each complete Netadmin environment will first be specified using a new deployment tool, and then the deployment will be carried out easily.
Add-ons do not need to be installed separately; they are bundled with the system according to each license.
We will introduce something called data packs. Data packs will be a set of standardized or optional data that can be loaded into the system, such as address attributes, dashboard views, device definitions, ticket attributes, and more.
Service Catalogue Improvements
Netadmin continues to work on aligning with TM Forum standards. A TM Forum term, characteristics, will be introduced in technical services in Netadmin. We have characteristics on products today but want to have them on services as well for consistency and TM Forum alignment.
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Depending on the use case, several disparate implementations of how to perform product and service availability on an address in Netadmin have existed. We will consolidate all these different implementations into one to improve consistency and capabilities.
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Streamline the availability process by refactoring all current versions into one for maintainability, standardization, and increased unit testing.
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While we consolidate our product and service availability, we are also taking the chance to enrich and improve its behavior for enhanced user experience across all channels. For example:
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Standardization of result codes, messages and availability details, allowing for better user interaction during the order process, for example showing accurate availability, making better suggestions, guidance and recommendations based on offered and selected products and services.
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Key words: improved order journey, user experience, shopping cart suggestions
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Examples scenarios that can be improved:
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Migration (upgrade/downgrade)
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Up-selling through add-ons and recommended offerings
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Standardize and extend availability result messages with status codes and relevant details, enabling enhanced programmatic parsing and processing of availability responses.
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Enable showing accurate availability of products and services based on previous selections and dependencies, e.g. Fixed IP is available after Internet has been selected.
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Enable implementation of custom availability check on entire transitions (i.e., “shopping cart” with multiple contents; additions, removal, and replacements of products, services, and characteristics), enabling more accurate availability responses depending on multiple changes within a single transition.
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Enable multiple instances of the same service in a single order for service availability, configuration, and order processing.
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Simplified dependency management aligned with the new service catalog structure, making it easier to setup and overview dependencies between different types of services, add-ons, etc., while at the same time providing more granular control of policies, for example for relationships between different service providers, consumer and address services.
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Simplified service catalog configuration by breaking the n:1 relationship between service and service provider into an n:n relationship where each technical service can be used in relation to multiple different service providers.
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Simplified batch editing of important data
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Introducing context specific data imports in various places within the service catalog, which simplifies and speeds up maintenance and configuration of services and related data.
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Examples:
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Service characteristics and corresponding value lists configured on service specification and service specification templates.
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Since you've scrolled all the way down here, we'd like to mention
Configuring the Swedish language and date format on the Microsoft Server will no longer be necessary. Date and 12- or 24-hour time formats, are configurable through language and region settings based on the Unicode ICU/CLDR standards.
We will also add the possibility to store unicode UTF-8 data in the database. However, collation/sorting will work as is.
We will continue to work on the new custom fields (configuration instead of code and better visualization) and improvements in the event system. The event system will get a new overview page, improved error handling, and all events will be routed through RabbitMQ. This will make it easier to integrate with external tools using RabbitMQ. It may also open up other solutions for events, such as webhooks.
As we phase out the old event system, our policy is to enhance the new event system by addressing any missing features. If you need an event type not yet available and are upgrading to version 9.2, we will either add the missing event types or provide an alternative solution to meet your needs.
For custom objects, we do a case-by-case analysis according to our processes prior to migration. This will be followed by recommendations on when to use custom fields as new home for your data, and when to take a different approach.
To increase performance and make Netadmin a more modern platform.
Why 9.2?
For many reasons, we want to:
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Containerize Netadmin to make it faster to install, maintain, minimize the number of required servers, and remove dependency on Microsoft Windows Server. This will enable redundancy, reliability, availability, and load-balancing and thus help our customers scale up.
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Continue to expand our Business Support System (BSS) functionality to reduce the need for CRM further. We want to increase the automation of lead and customer management, ordering, product offering pricing, marketing and promotions, and customer communication.
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Simplify the Product and Service Catalog Management to make it easier to launch new offerings without increasing complexity. This applies to wholesale business model as well.
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Taking necessary steps towards TM Forum compatibility, which will improve interoperability and lay out our path to future Open API implementations. We have looked into the areas called appointment, service catalog, product catalog, product ordering and service ordering. We will continue investigating several areas of interest, such as Sales Management, Customer Management, Product Catalogue Management and Product Ordering.
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Improvements in Discovery. New User Interface and documentation for how to setup Discovery. Standard components that can be used to detect and create for example CPEs in the inventory based on network information.
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To increase performance and interoperability we will also expand the new Netadmin Events framework and Custom Fields to allow code-less customization of new fields for common objects that will be published in UI, API and Import/Export.
FAQ
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What is included in 9.2?
The following will be included in the platform release:
- Cloud Journey Milestone #1:
- Containerization of Netadmin.
- Simplified Product & Service Catalog
- Management and alignment with TM Forum.
- Custom Fields: Make it easier to extend objects in Netadmin.
- Improvements in Netadmin Events system.
- Improvements and documentation for Discovery.
- Increased performance and scalability.
The following candidates will be relevant in subsequent feature releases:
- Lead Management
- Product Offering Pricing and Promotion Management
- New Customer 360 Views
- Customer Communications
- Order Tracking
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When will 9.2 be released?
The exact release date for 9.2 is yet to be determined, but our ambition is set for early 2025. By the end of 2024, we will have the possibility for in-depth demos and upgrade discussions with our customers.
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How will 9.2 be released?
First, we will release a platform update that includes breaking changes. After that, we will implement a new release strategy that separates new features and fixes. Feature releases, which will contain new functionality, will be released frequently throughout the 9.2 lifecycles. Fixes will be isolated in separate releases. Fix releases will become rolling updates, requiring minimal system downtime.
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How extensive is an upgrade to 9.2?
It's always difficult to say as customizations always affect upgrades. We will provide migration processes and scripts to lift base functionality to 9.2.
9.2 will not involve major changes in the database or business logic. The big change is infrastructure-wise, i.e. the system runs in containers and not directly on virtual servers. Note that your customizations may need to be moved to containers to some extent.
Netadmin 9.2 require that User Interface components are written in ASP.NET Core 8 using MVC. If you have customizations that depends on Microsoft Windows Server components, then those need to be rewritten.
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How to prepare for 9.2?
We recommend that you contact us. We can do a presentation of 9.2 and talk about the changes and what they will mean for you and your installation. The next step could be a pre-study, where we, together with you, go through your customer-specific parts and possibly take the next step toward an upgrade.
When we have released 9.2 we can start with providing you with a test key for 9.2 and for you to test setting up an environment and familiarizing yourself with the system.
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What about deployment?
We are not finished with the installation process implementation. What we can say is that only Linux servers will be involved. All manual work as part of the installation will be command line-based on Linux machines or maybe web-based configurations. Since we are not going to use Microsoft Windows Server, this means that Netadmin Installer software will also go away.
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What happens to my customizations?
You must recompile them against .Net 8. MVC is a requirement for GUI components. All Microsoft Windows Server dependencies must be removed.
We recommend you to learn more about .Net 8, ASP.Net Core 8 and MVC development.
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How do I deploy customizations in 9.2?
You can have custom applications in containers. When it comes to plugins in Netadmin we will have a specific directory where you can deploy compiled code. Those components will be fetched and automatically deployed in Netadmin. When it comes to drivers and assemblies you can deploy them in the same way as before, via the GUI.
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What frontend frameworks are used by 9.2?
Our frontend frameworks consist of ASP.Net Core 8 MVC (Razor-based views) and Javascript/Typescript, same as in previous versions of Netadmin.
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What Linux distributions can be used to host the Docker environment?
Any OCI compliant Linux distribution.
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What will the containerized 9.2 environment look like?
The containers will be monitored by OpenTelemetry.
We are going to use Traefik as a reverse proxy and ingress controller that will manage communication from outside into the containers.
We will use RabbitMQ as an asynchronous message queue for a limited set of use cases, but the usage will expand over time.
We are going to use Consul for service register and service discovery so that containers can register and discover other containers.
We foresee that there will be containers for (not a complete list):
- Background services (former Windows Services)
- RabbitMQ
- Database (MySQL)
- User Interface
- API
- Connect (OAuth)
- Discovery
- Monitoring
- Fiber Installation Portal
- Traefik
- Event
- Driver Engine
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What will 9.2 enable in terms of Scalability, Reliability and Redundancy?
We are working towards greater levels of scalability, reliability and redundancy in the longer journey but currently we are starting with containerization.
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What will change in 9.2 regarding monitoring?
We will not use PostgreSQL anymore, it will be replaced with Influx. By using Influx we will no longer use rrdtool for graph rendering, instead we will be using Apex charts, with a more modern approach.
Since we are using Influx as a way of storing data it will open for possibilities to use for example Grafana. We can also mention that we will no l0nger use monitoring synchronization via Monitoring Pool Interface (MPI).
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Will there be any performance increases with 9.2?
Generally speaking, new technologies will offer improvements, but we have not yet done any benchmarking.
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Is it possible to run MySQL in cluster mode in 9.2?
Yes.
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What technologies will be deprecated in 9.2?
For example all technologies that rely on Microsoft Windows Server, for example “Windows Services” will be replaced by what we call “Background Services”. A typical background service would be the driver engine or assembly execution engine.
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What infrastructure requirements does 9.2 have?
It is more or less the same infrastructure requirements as today in 9.1 regarding CPU and memory for example. But we have not performed any benchmark tests yet. We will provide you with more information later on.
It is possible to use your Private Cloud infrastructure for Netadmin 9.2. And when it comes to the operating systems we rely on OCI compliant Linux distributions on the x86-64 architecture.
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Netadmin 9.2 + Kubernetes?
You will most likely be able to run Netadmin in Kubernetes but Netadmin will not support it or provide materials (Helm Charts, etc) for the Generally Available release. We hope to provide this in the future.
Scalability in Kubernetes is something for the 2nd milestone of our Cloud Journey. Our 1st milestone is the containerization.
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Should I go to 9.1 before 9.2 is released?
Generally speaking, it could make sense to first go to 9.1 (in test) before 9.2 is released to gain calendar time and prepare yourself. A lot of tasks can be done already in 9.1 to prepare for 9.2. But you do not need to go live with 9.1 if you do not depend on features in 9.1 in the business.
UI components can be ported to ASP.Net MVC already in 9.1 and then be ported to 9.2 by recompiling them towards .Net 8 for 9.2. ASP Classic and ASP.Net Web Forms cannot be used in 9.2.
All dependencies on Microsoft Windows Server can already now be rewritten and tested against 9.1 if you have such customizations.
If you are coming from 8 series there are even more changes that can be addressed already in 9.1. For example:
- NDL/NWL is replaced by Netadmin REST API.
- Ticketing and Inventory are rewritten so all customizations that works towards these functional areas can be rewritten.
- Service Views are replaced by UI Plugins (MVC based).
- The 9 series has a Product Catalog and Order Management along with REST API.
- The user management in 9 has got support for Open ID Connect.
- New billing add-on.
- New framework for events.
- New framework for Import/Export
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What will happen to my events in the old event system?
Since we deprecate the old event system, we would like to introduce a new policy on how to improve and extend the new event system with things that are missing. If you use an event that is not present in the new event system and want to go to 9.2 we promise that we will come up with a solution – either to add the missing event to the new event system or an alternative solution that will solve your need.
Netadmin 9.2 project timeline.
The Netadmin 9.2 project timeline is dynamic and will be updated continuously. As more information becomes available, it will be added to the timeline. Please check back regularly for updates on the project's progress.
* Timeline will be updated when a detailed release and readiness plan becomes available
2022
November
Announced start of development in 2023 on Netadmin Connect
2023
June
Requirement Collection and Scoping complete
October
*Release and Readiness Plan Announced
October
December
Internal Alpha Release, Cloud Journey, Demo
2024
December
Beta Release.
2025
Release
Release
GA Release Available
Johan Hjalmarsson
+46 76 843 43 60
If you have any questions or concerns regarding the upcoming release of Netadmin 9.2, I encourage you to contact me, Johan Hjalmarsson. I'm available to assist you.
I will be able to provide you with more information about Netadmin 9.2 and how it can benefit you and your organization.
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