Support Plan Checklist

Performance Monitoring

A: Monitoring Methods: Describe the ongoing monitoring for availability and performance that this new technology or service will offer, and will require. (i.e., what can be monitored, and how?)

B: Monitoring SLAs: What kind of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) related to availability or performance are associated with this product or service (e.g. from the vendor, from the manufacturer, from Cisco, or from Cisco IS), and how can we monitor the new solution's compliance with these Service Levels?

C: SLA Problem Response: What steps do we take (e.g. with the vendor) when the SLA is not met?

Problem Management

A: Help Desk:

(1) Trouble Category: Do we have to establish a new category of trouble tickets that will be reported to the help desk? If yes, what will this category be called?

(2) Attach any aids (e.g. new question protocols) required by help desk personnel to help them isolate the problem and pass it on to the appropriate groups.

B: Troubleshooting:

(1) Monitoring Systems: Describe any new systems that will be available to monitor system health and performance.

(2) Access to Monitoring Systems: List who should have access to these systems, and under what circumstances. Can secure dial-in access be made available?

(3) Proactive Problem Prevention: What exception states can be monitored? Which of these should be monitored and a history log kept? Who will review exception condition logs? What steps should they take if problems are encountered?

(4) New Repair group: Does the new network improvement require new people or groups to aid in problem solving, and if so, who?

(5) Projblem escalation procedures: Describe any changes to the current priority and escalation procedures. (Current procedures are given in http://xxxx/Operations/Problem_Management/Escalation.doc.)

(6) Trouble tracking and repair procedures: Will the current problem tracking systems and procedures support this new solution? If not, how must the system(s) and procedures be adapted? If new procedures must be established, create a flowchart (e.g. a Visio flowchart) of the new decisions that must be made and actions taken and attach it here. (You can use the current trouble-response flowchart from http://xxxx/Operations/Problem_Management/Trouble_response.vsd.)

(7) Trouble statistics: Is there a new set of problem statistics that require reporting and tracking, and if so how, and by whom?

(8) Remote site or vendor Problem Repair procedures: What hardware spares should be kept on hand, and where? Who should be trained in hardware replacement? What vendor or other remote assistance is available? How are vendors or carriers notified of problems? How are these problems tracked during repair?

 Performance and Capacity Management

A: Monitoring growth and capacity: What statistics can we monitor that will guide our future right-sizing of the network? How do we feed this information into the provisioning group?

B: Decision Support: What sort of performance analysis tools are available to help schedule network upgrades? If none are available (and are needed), who has the expertise to put one together for provisioning planning

Configuration and Change Management

A: List any implications these new network changes will have to the way that Operations must monitor, change, and track changes (and moves and adds) of:

(1) Local and remote devices and device configurations;

(2) Physical card and line and cable configurations,

(3) Naming conventions and identifiers;

(4) Software versions;

(5) DNS and routing tables

(6) IP Addressing plans

B: List who will be responsible for tracking and maintaining these configuration and name changes.

 Security and Audit Management

A: Does this new solution impact user access to the network or other corporate resources? Does it impact connections to the internet, or to partner networks? If yes, describe:

(1) How to manage user access to corporate resources.

(2) How to establish, delete, block or expire user ID's and passwords

(3) How to collect and present user access audit trails.

(4) How this new solution impacts current password management and TACACS configuration or management.

Training

A: Performance and Capacity Monitoring: I verify that at least one person representing the appropriate Operations group has had the chance to perform a performance monitoring and capacity dry run session in a lab environment. (Give name and group). Yes / No. (If no, then with explanation).

Responsibility

This Support Plan document will be displayed on the Web site of, and updated as necessary by the relevant Operations team(s). This document will have a version date at the foot of each page, which will contain the last review/upgrade date.