The following table list the features introduced in this release.

FeatureFeature IDFeature OverviewAffected Documents
DSC SWe (on MA-RMS) SupportDSC-14388

This feature adds new I/O hardware cards, which provides the following benefits:

  • Provides network-accessible I/O hardware to the DSC SWe system to provide LSL, Annex A HSL, and ATM HSL connectivity.  It does not provide connectivity for other hardware transports. 
  • Extends a DSC SWe system by providing I/O hardware that interfaces with the MTP3 application.  It does not provide generic SS7 level 2 function and does not function without the DSC SWe MTP3 application.
  • Presents I/O hardware to the HA0 subnet of the DSC SWe, which is considered internal to the system.  It is not intended to be exposed to the external network.

The DSC SWe deployments typically consist of a set of network-connected virtual machines. The lack of hardware prevents the ability to interface with any legacy TDM-based SS7 equipment. With the Multi-Application Rack Mount Server (MA-RMS), I/O hardware can connect to the DSC SWe system by creating a pci-net interface on the host system. The host system can then be attached to a softswitch to communicate with virtual machines.

The following is a high-level overview of the MA-RMS configuration for a host system:

  • Two TDM I/O cards (PCE382) are installed on the host system MA-RMS. This is done during manufacturing.
  • A PCI-NET driver is installed as the Virtual Host Environment (VHE) OS to communicate with the PCE382 cards.  Each PCI-NET network interface is associated with a specific PCE382.
  • Each PCI-NET network interface interacts with the DSC SWe HA soft switch on the virtual machine (VM) host.
  • A utility script (dscvm_io_mgmt) is provided to facilitate the configuration of the DSC SWe on the MA-RMS.

The whole MA-RMS host system, which includes the PCI-NET drivers and PCE382 cards, is ordered from Ribbon Communications and installed by a Ribbon technician. Customers are only required to install the DSC SWe VMs as the Guest OS onto the MA-RMS system.

Once the DSC SWe VM is set-up, the TDM PCE382 cards appear as network-attached I/O cards. On the Web UI, a user can click the Hardware tab for the PCE382 card to configure the following channels:

  • LSL Channels
  • LSL and HSL AnnexA Channels
  • HSL AnnexA Channels
  • LSL and HSL ATM Channels
  • HSL AnnexA and HSL ATM Channels
  • HSL ATM Channels
New statistics Libraries for Memory Usage and UptimeDSC-15938

This feature adds and improves the operational and performance measurements for memory usage and uptime.

To improve the measurements for the amount of memory used on a slot and the uptime for that slot, the following libraries were created:  

  • CPU Measurements are read from the /proc/stat file and sent to the statistics manager, which then averages the numbers.
  • DISK Measurements are made from several different sources that are combined together by the statistics manager.  
  • Memory Measurements are read from the /proc/meminfo file and sent to the statistics manager, which then averages the numbers. 

An additional column was also to the System statistics called "Up time", which shows the amount of time the system has been up.

The statistics are reported in the same manner as other statistics in CSV files: 5-minute, 30-minute, and daily collections. 

Stats Library Supports Minimum and Maximum ValuesDSC-16954This feature supports the minimum and maximum values for the CPU and Memory libraries. Previously, DSC only offered cumulative and average statistic values. With this feature, DSC statistics capabilities support additional properties for minimum and maximum values for selected statistics.  These new values are supported in the CPU and MEMORY statistics, and are included in all their statistics collection files (5-minute, 30-minute, and daily collections).
Signaling Platform 2000 (SP2000) 3U and 13U with DSC OSDSC-15936The purpose of this feature is to standardize the OS across all DSC and SP2000 platforms by generating a single, common OS install image, based on CentOS 7.Y. While the OS image itself is identical on all products, a minimal subset of differing functionality exists within the image, and is applied at the system initialization as needed on a product-specific basis. Product identification is accomplished by detecting the specific underlying hardware, which differs across the various DSC and SP2000 Platforms. The 3U/13U Signaling Platform 2000 (SP2000) kernel was refreshed with the DSC base application software 18.0.0. There are no hardware changes to the SP2000 or alterations to the applications.

Ribbon made the following changes to the Signaling Platform 2000 documentation in the 18.0.0 release:

  • merged the 17.0.0 DSC documentation with the 3.7 SP2000 documentation 
  • modified the content structure and layout to improve readability, accessibility, and comprehension.
  • attempted to identify and add a note to every instances where a feature or guide was either DSC only or SP2000 only. 

The following table provides a content mapping between the documents available in the 3.6 and 3.7 release and the PDF document available in the 18.0.0 release.

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