Go-Live Steps

Switching a Provisioning / OSS System is never an easy task and often brings pain while acting imprudently. Any hasty action could cause massive problems since we are dealing with real customers. Especially while working with large networks, many routers, many CMTS's and many customers. This is why you should take your time to think about every aspect of your provisioning system's effects. So avoid going too fast! At the end of every successful system switch, there are a lot of benefits especially while switching towards a 100% open source solution. But take your time to rethink this decision quite well.

Back to topic: This page reflects the NMS PRIME teams experiences while switching many ISP's with hundredths of CMTS's in the last years towards a free and open-source Provisioning System, towards NMS PRIME:

Our first, second and third principle recommendation to follow is:

"Theory is good, testing is GOLD!"

That's why we recommend a step-by-step migration approach, like

Steps
1	Install Verification detailed verification of your NMS Prime installation
2	Testing, Testing, Testing, .. Test all Modems and all CMTS vendors in a save test lab without customers killing you when something went wrong

3	Start easy.. Start with migrating your smallest network / CMTS / cluster first. A good size to start with is 50 to 150 modems. Less is more!
	wait ~2 weeks identify and solve any uprising problem, and ask how to avoid these issue next time, since scaling next migrations will cause N x times the pain

4	First chunk Depending on how well the first migration works, how save you feel and how big your balls are get the next chunk of modems. We recommend 500 to 1000 modems.
	wait ~2 weeks Focus on learning identify and solve any uprising problem, and ask how to avoid these issues next time. Even if it sounds hard during tough times (migration times are tough!): focus on learning not on becoming a faster/better problem solver, since this will not scale!

5	Redo, Redo, Redo, ... Finish Redo step 4 with 2 to 5 times more modems, until you are the KING of migration. Important: any migration step should give you and your team a learning what can be done better next times. Sometimes these are easy steps, like better informing customers, staff and technicians before a migration begins. This approach allows fast, tested and easy scaling up, like 100 –> 1000 –> 4000 –> 12000 –> 40000 –> 1M –> 4M –> ... (Remember the story of "Sissa ibn Dahir" and the bet of chessboard.) Even doubling with each migration will bring you a fast finish

6	KING of migration Celebrate your success with your team and a lot of beer. We recommend going to a bar You have done quite well! Focus on schooling your staff and having fun with the new system. Focus on the good people/core members first, since this will scale faster than arguing with the naysayers!