Data processing: generic control systems or specific application – Generic control system – apparatus or process – Supervisory control
Reexamination Certificate
2000-04-06
2003-07-15
Patel, Ramesh (Department: 2121)
Data processing: generic control systems or specific application
Generic control system, apparatus or process
Supervisory control
C702S181000, C702S056000, C702S184000, C702S185000, C714S006130, C705S002000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06594528
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a supervisory and control support equipment realizing supervision and control by collecting information concerning operations and maintenance and processing the information with respect to a desired facility.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, high-developed information processing technology and transmission technology is applied to many communication equipments.
Among such communication equipments, a transmission equipment which is installed at a geographically remote secluded location, unattended continuous running and preventive maintenance is achieved by pertinently informing connected lines and status of equipped packages to a centralized supervision and control center located at a remote place.
In a transmission equipment connected to a transmission channel of a trunk line system, it is required that the supervision and control can be continued even in the case in which serious disaster such as earthquake or conflagration occurs.
Therefore, in the procedure of maintenance and operations of these transmission equipments, updated or generated important information is downloaded pertinently to the centralized supervision and control center along with office data via a communication link, by achieving duplication, general reliability is highly maintained.
FIG. 7
is a diagram showing a configuration example of a conventional supervision and control system.
In the drawing, transmission equipments
81
-
1
through
81
-n, a master supervisory and control support equipment
82
, and a slave supervisory and control support equipment
83
are connected to a network
84
. Disk array drive
85
is connected to the master supervisory and controls support equipment
82
.
As shown in
FIG. 8
, the master supervisory and control support equipment
82
is integrated with software comprising:
a man-machine interfacing part
82
i
for constituting a man-machine interfacing part with operators engaged with maintenance and operations via terminal apparatus, not illustrated;
an NE-manager
82
N mutually transmitting and receiving predetermined messages to and from transmission equipments
81
-
1
through
81
-n opposed thereto via communication ports and the network
84
; and
management objects
82
M-
1
through
82
M-p for holding and updating information concerning supervision and control and performing a predetermined processing to be carried out with the information as an operand in an unit of all or any of the transmission equipments
81
-
1
through
81
-n or subsystems, frames, shelves, modules constituting these transmission equipments
81
-
1
through
81
-n and achieving to distribute predetermined function and load.
Furthermore, among the above-described subsystems, frames, shelves and modules, those components of processing individually performed by the management objects
82
M-
1
through
82
M-p, are simply referred to as “objects” in the following.
In the procedure of supervision and control of the transmission equipments
81
-
1
through
81
-n, basic procedures and operands of processings performed in cooperation with the man-machine interfacing part
82
-
1
, the NE-manager
82
N and the management objects
82
M-
1
through
82
M-p, have no relation to do with the invention and accordingly, an explanation thereof will be omitted here.
In
FIG. 8
, an arrow mark of a solid line signifies that a task or a management object corresponding to a front edge of the arrow mark is invoked with information or event generated by a management object or a task corresponding to a starting point of the arrow mark as a starting factor.
An operating system installed to the master supervisory and control support equipment
82
performs storage management of a storage area of the disk array drive
85
.
The disk array drive
85
is stored, according to the storage management, with supervision and control information applied to any of line supervisory and control, equipment supervisory and control, centralized supervision and control and preventive maintenance configured by both or either one of;
information previously given as office data or subscriber data; and
generated or updated information in the procedure of maintenance and operations;
with regard to an individual object at a predetermined period.
Furthermore, the disk array drive
85
parallelly holds supervisory control information to be given and written or updated by the master supervisory and control support equipment
82
to duplicated storage media as described below.
In the disk array drive
85
, there is controlled a system configuration of two storage areas redundantly configured at storage media by a unit of either of a truck or a sector formed by partitioning the storage media.
In the disk array drive
85
, a storage area to become an object of reading information is selected by a unit of a medium, a truck or a sector which is actively used under the above-described system configuration.
Therefore, the supervisory control information is redundantly stored to the disk array drive
85
based on the active redundancy system and is pertinently read therefrom.
Meanwhile, the slave supervisory and control support equipment
83
is located at a site remote geographically from a site where the master supervisory and control support equipment
82
is located to a degree by which influence of serious disaster, mentioned above, is avoided by a desired certainty.
Moreover, the master supervisory and control support equipment
82
downloads backup the information to be applied to backup information stored in the disk array drive
85
, as mentioned above, to the slave supervisory and control support equipment
83
via the network.
84
at a predetermined frequency.
The transmission equipments
81
-
1
through
81
-n download the updated information (hereinafter referred to as “quasi-backup information”) in the process (including channel control, call processing and fluctuation in traffic) of maintenance and operations to the slave supervisory and control support equipment
83
via the network
84
by a predetermined procedure or at a predetermined frequency.
The slave supervisory and control support equipment
83
holds backup information and quasi-backup information downloaded in this way to a predetermined external storage.
Furthermore, these information is applied in the case in which supervisory control information redundantly stored to the disk array drive
85
is not applicable to continuation of recovery and operation of the system owing to failure or disaster which actually occurs.
Meanwhile, according to the above-described conventional example, the backup information on the quasibackup information are downloaded to the slave supervisory and control support equipment
83
asynchronously.
Therefore, backup information generated by combining the quasi-backup information to the backup control information in failure or disaster which occurs actually, is not necessarily equal to the latest supervisory control information stored at the disk array drive
85
. (Here, the backup information above is generated, for instance, by the slave supervisory and control support equipment
83
that performs the dedicated tool(s).)
Therefore, application thereof has not been permitted in order to regularly achieve continuation or recovery of operation mentioned above, unless the backup control information is properly edited manually,
However, in generating such a backup control information, generally, many man-hours are needed because much of trials and errors are accompanied, even when the above-described tool is utilized.
Therefore, in recovering the transmission equipments
81
-
1
through
81
-n, there is a high possibility of requiring an extremely long time.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is an object of the invention to provide a supervisory and control support equipment achieving continuation or resume of operations with high certainty and efficiency without changing the configuration of hardware.
It is another object of the invention to save la
Fujitsu Limited
Katten Muchin Zavis & Rosenman
Patel Ramesh
Pham Thomas
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