Difference between EMS and NMS

Posted by Admin in Difference Between, Telecom In telecom industry, these two terms EMS aka Element Management System and NMS aka Network Management System are used interchangeably most often. But, these two terminologies do differ in their true meaning and should be used wisely. Below are the definitions of EMS and NMS which clearly states the differences between these two.

Element Management System (EMS)

An element management system (EMS) manages one or more of a specific type of network elements (NEs). Using an EMS a user can manage all the features of each NE individually, but not the communication between NEs. Communication between NEs is managed by the network management system (NMS). One or more management interfaces are exposed by NEs that the EMS uses to communicate with and to manage them. These management interfaces use a variety of protocols such as SNMP, TL1, CLI, XML, and CORBA.

Network Management System (NMS)

A network management system is a combination of hardware and software used to monitor and administer a network. Network management refers to the maintenance and administration of large scale computer networks at the top level. Network management is the execution of the set of functions required for controlling, planning, allocating, deploying, coordinating and monitoring the resources of a network including performing functions such as fault management, configuration management, accounting management, performance management, security management and bandwidth management. A large number of protocols exist to support network and network device management. Common protocols are SNMP, TL1 and JMX etc.

The network elements in the network each communicate with their respective EMS. The NEspecific EMSs communicate to a higher level NMS that provide integrated multivendor network management. This is depicted in the diagram below:

Only the EMS is exposed to complete management information content of all the NEs in its domain. It is the sole mediator of this information and the control of the NEs to the Network Management Layer Hope you find this information useful. Please leave your footprints in comments section below for any feedback, queries or suggestions!! 2 inShare

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15 Comments on Difference between EMS and NMS

1. Anonymous
May 26th, 2011 at 10:32 AM

Hi, The post is realy good and useful. I need a small clarification, can you explain this. Vendor A EMS will manage NEs from Vendor A, similarly Vendor B and otherVendor EMSs manage NE from their Manaufactuers. The Information given by a NE from Vendor A could be understood only by the Vendor A EMS, similarly this applies for other EMSs. So all these vendor specific EMSs will forward the information which they collected from their NEs to the NMS in a Common Format which the NMs can understand and the NMS will communicate with the Vendor EMSs in a genric way, which the Vendor EMSs translate to the format which the vendor specific NEs can understand? Thanks, Guru
2. Admin
May 26th, 2011 at 11:40 PM

Hi Guru, Thank you for the positive feedback Now coming to your query, you are absolutely correct till here Vendor A EMS will manage NEs from Vendor A, similarly Vendor B and otherVendor EMSs manage NE from their Manaufactuers. The Information given by a NE from Vendor A could be understood only by the Vendor A EMS, similarly this applies for other EMSs. So all these vendor specific EMSs will forward the information which they collected from their NEs to the NMS Having a common format between different vendor EMSs and NMS is the best case scenario. Practically, it is difficult (of course possible) to achieve the same, many a times the reason being that we deal with legacy systems. For instance EMS A exposes Corba interface and EMS B exposes SNMP interface, in this case, NMS should expose both these interfaces to southbound i.e. EMSs. To achieve a common format, we can introduce a mediation layer between NMS and EMSs that can take care of these protocols from southbound and provide data in same format to north bound. Hope this clarifies your doubt. Please let us know for further queries
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7. Suresh Tummala
February 21st, 2012 at 10:27 PM

Its really helpful for me.Thank you

8. Admin
February 21st, 2012 at 10:53 PM

Thank you Suresh for feedback. We really appreciate it. Keep visiting us.
9. canute
March 20th, 2012 at 3:29 PM

helpful thanks
10. Admin
March 20th, 2012 at 3:37 PM

Thanks Canute for dropping by, we are glad that it helped.

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13. Prasad Kumar
June 11th, 2012 at 12:57 PM

What is the Differece between VCAT and LCAS? Why it is required?

14. MPk30
July 25th, 2012 at 11:43 AM

Hi, First off, thanks for your fantastic explanation. I need a small clarification on the point: Using an EMS a user can manage all the features of each NE individually, but not the communication between NEs. Communication between NEs is managed by the network management system (NMS). I did interpret that you are saying the communication between NEs of the *same* vendor also cannot be managed by EMS, but NMS only can do that. If my understanding is correct, can you please explain why it is not possible for the EMS to manage the NEs communication when all belong to same vendor? Many Thanks! MPk30
15. jyoti
August 4th, 2012 at 7:09 AM

This complete post is awesome