Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) is an open-source Linux distribution designed for telecommunications carriers, providing 99.999% uptime. Effective monitoring, live patching, scalability, quality of service tools, and failure analysis are crucial for maintaining CGL after deployment. These features help detect issues, deploy security patches, incorporate new technologies, and minimize downtime from hardware failures.

1. Carrier Grade Linux
Maintenance
-NAGESH KOLLU

2. Agenda:
 1. Introduction to Carrier Grade Linux (CGL)
 2. why CGL over normal Linux and aspects of CGL ?
 3. Maintenance of CGL after deployment
 Effective monitoring
 Patching (live Linux patching)
 Scalability
 Quality of service
 Failure analysis tools.
 Minimize truck rolling
 Incorporating cutting edge technologies
 4.Conclusion

3. Carrier Grade Linux (CGL)
 Carrier grade is referred to networks or infrastructure where hardware and
software components are extremely reliable and well tested with proven
capabilities.
 Carrier grade is a term for public network telecommunications products that
have requirement of guarantee of 5 or 6 nines reliability that means system is
guaranteed to up 99.999 percent of time, implying a downtime not more than
5 minutes or 30 seconds per year.
 Carrier grade system consist cluster of computing units.
 Carrier grade Linux covers hardware(board support packages), security
,clustering, serviceability and performance requirements of telecommunication
carriers.
 CGL is open source Linux plus features and tools from CGL providers.

4. Why CGL preferred over normal Linux
 Standard Linux distributions is good for everyday personal computers and
non-critical embedded systems like TV’s ,set-top boxes, Phones.
 Brief outage and Downtime doesn’t hurt much.
 Linux kernel missing several features that are needed in telecom
environment such as reliability ,security and scalability.
 Carrier grade Linux is for carrier grade customers where any outage hurts
big time.
 It is mainly used in gateways applications, signaling services applications
and Management applications.
 Using CGL makes faster time to market products.

5. Effective monitoring
 Rapid detection of hardware or software failures requires healthy monitoring.
 Need to check which hardware units are working and which not ?
 Detecting abnormal behavior of processes
 Memory over commit
 Detecting system errors
 Detecting network security threats
 Power monitoring : monitoring power settings based on conditions.
 Watchdog timers
 High fault detection for preventing failed node from corrupting shared resources.
 Black box recorder or event logging : which provides complete log of system activity
from the beginning till the end.

6. Patching:
 Patching is the most important thing in software industry to update
software ,fixing critical errors and new feature enhancements.
 Complexity in CGL is we need to do live Linux patching means patching
while software and system running.
 Security patches : as and when there is a patch or feature that can help
counter dos attacks , ID theft attempts and viruses.
 Performance improvements.

7. Scalability
 Software architectures doesn’t have to design based on resource limits.
 Hot swap insertion and removal of hardware components to increase
capacity.
 Application portability
 Disk mirroring

8. Quality of Service
 The cumulative performance of a network is called Quality of service.
 Need to monitor bitrate ,throughput ,transmission delay and jitter.
 Make use of smart automatic load balancing features to reduce overload
protection.

9. Failure Analysis tools
 Remote debugging : support for dynamic debug of kernel and runtime
applications.
 Kernel panic Handling
 Support for debugging multi-threading applications.
 ECC handling

10. Minimize Truck rolling
 The network consists of cables, switches and servers.
 Detecting location of faulty cables or hardware reduces cost.
 Field service engineers to fix and upgrade live systems while they are
running.

11. Incorporating cutting edge
technologies
 New Features and tools are usually implemented in Linux before they
available on proprietary systems.
 Linux is supported on multiple platforms like ARM,MIPS, Intel
architectures.
 It is fruitful to absorb latest tools and features from open source
community.

12. Conclusion:
 Carrier Grade Linux support is very important after deployment of
products.
 CGL provides great support and tools to monitor health of carrier grade
systems to recover faulty systems and to upgrade existing network.