BridgeTech vbc VBC User manual

VBC Controller User’s Manual
Applies to software release v5.4
April 2018
Current documents are always found in the log-in area of the www.bridgetech.tv site.
Refer to section 1.3 of this document for more information.

VBC Controller User’s Manual
Revision 4a45156 (2018-04-26)
Copyright c Bridge Technologies Co AS. Bentsebrugata 20, NO-0476, Oslo, Norway.
All rights reserved.
This publication can contain confidential, proprietary, and confidential trade secret information. No part of this document
may be copied, photocopied, reproduced, translated, or reduced to any machine-readable or electronic format without prior
written permission from Bridge Technologies Co AS. CE-marked in accordance to low voltage directive (LVC) 73/23/EEC
and EMC directive 89/336/EEC. Compliant to requirements for US and Canada. Designed for CSA approval. Bridge
Technologies Co AS continuously improves on products and reserves the right to modify the specifications without prior
notice. Information in this document is subject to change without notice and Bridge Technologies assumes no responsibility
or liability for any errors or inaccuracies.
The BRIDGE, BRIDGE TECHNOLOGIES and BRIDGETECH name, logo and all other related logos are registered
trademarks of BRIDGE TECHNOLOGIES Co AS.
All other products or services mentioned in this document are identified by the trademarks, service marks, or product
names as designated by the companies who market those products. Inquiries should be made directly to those companies.
This document may also have links to third-party web pages that are beyond the control of Bridge Technologies. The
presence of such links does not imply that Bridge Technologies Co AS endorses or recommends the content on those
pages. Bridge Technologies acknowledges the use of third-party open source software and licenses in some products.
All trademarks and registered trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.

Contents
Contents 3
1 INTRODUCTION 6
1.1 Sites and Blades . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.2 Users and Access . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3 How to Use This Manual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2 INSTALLATION AND INITIAL SETUP 9
2.1 System Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2 First-time Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.3 Deploying in a Virtualized Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.4 Verifying Correct Initial Setup and Software Activation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.5 Initial Setup Troubleshooting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.6 Upgrading From a Previous Version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.6.1 Using an Installation Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.6.2 Using Software Activation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.6.3 Using a full reinstall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.7 Accessing the User Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.8 Firewall Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.9 License Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3 REMOTE DATA WALL 19
3.1 Introduction to the Remote Data Wall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3.2 Accessing the Remote Data Wall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4 THE VBC GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE 21
4.1 Login ........................................... 22
4.2 Live ............................................ 24
4.3 Monitoring......................................... 25
4.3.1 Monitoring — Top Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
4.3.2 XML Alarms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
4.3.3 Monitoring — Site . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
4.3.4 Monitoring — Blade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
4.4 Blade alarms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
4.5 Graphics view (Graphics option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
4.6 Streamview........................................ 39
4.6.1 Stream names, class and interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
4.6.2 Stream view — Selected . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
4.6.3 Selected Stream Compare MediaWindow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
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4.6.4 Selected Stream Compare ETR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
4.6.5 Selected Stream Compare Streamdata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
4.7 Thumbs view . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
4.8 Service view (Transport Stream Service View option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
4.8.1 Service view — Thumbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
4.8.2 Service view — Selected . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
4.8.3 Selected TS Service Compare ETR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.9 Map ............................................ 54
4.10RDP............................................ 55
4.11RDW............................................ 57
4.11.1 RDW — Canvases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
4.11.2 RDW — Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
4.11.3 Canvas Configurator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
4.11.4 Web Widget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
4.11.5 Textbox Widget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
4.11.6 Thumbnail Widget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
4.11.7 Loudness Widget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
4.11.8 Media Window Widget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
4.11.9 Alarms Widget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
4.11.10RF Graph Widget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
4.11.11Clock Widget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
4.12 Equipment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
4.12.1 Equipment — Device configuration management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
4.12.2 Equipment — Manual configuration files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
4.12.3 Equipment — Device software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
4.12.4 Equipment — Manage files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
4.13 Alarm setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
4.13.1 Alarm setup — Message Fwd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
4.13.2 Alarm setup — Scheduling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
4.14 Timeline (requires Archive Server) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
4.14.1 Choosing what to inspect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
4.14.2 Navigating in time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
4.15Reports .......................................... 84
4.15.1 Reports — Manual Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
4.15.2 Reports — Report list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
4.15.3 Reports — Auto reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
4.15.4 Reports — Import logo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
4.15.5 Reports — The PDF Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
4.16 Ext. Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
4.16.1 Ext. Reports — Manual extended report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
4.16.2 Ext. Reports — Extended report list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
4.16.3 Ext. Reports — Auto extended reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
4.16.4 Ext. Reports — PDF Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
4.16.5 Ext. Reports — Alarm poll and report status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
4.16.6 Ext. Reports — Setup storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
4.17 Main — Sites and Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
4.17.1 Sites and Users — Sites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
4.17.2 Sites and Users — Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
4.17.3 Sites and Users — User groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
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4.18 Main — Logs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
4.18.1 Logs — Logs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
4.18.2 Logs — Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
4.19 Main — Snapshots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
4.20 Main — Alarm statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
4.21 Main — Stream groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
4.22 Main — Service groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
4.23 Main — Archive Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
4.23.1 Archive server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
4.23.2 Enabling the Archive server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
4.23.3 Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
4.23.4 System requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
4.23.5 Alarms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
4.24 Main — Gfx. View Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
4.24.1 Configure diagrams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
4.24.2 Setup and data mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
4.25 Main — General . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
4.26 Main — About . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
4.26.1 About — Release info . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
4.26.2 About — License . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
4.26.3 About — Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
4.26.4 About — Credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
4.26.5 About — System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
4.26.6 About — Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
A Appendix: Separate Probe and Network Interfaces 125
B Appendix: The VBC Files 126
C Appendix: VBC Linux Processes 128
D Appendix: Example Site Configuration 129
E Appendix: Getting the Thresholds Right 131
F Appendix: Probe Versus VBC Alarms 134
G Appendix: Troubleshooting 136
H Appendix: Backing up the VBC 137
I Appendix: Software Maintenance 139
J Appendix: Network configuration 140
K Appendix: Enable NTP time synchronization 144
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1 INTRODUCTION
The VBC Controller is a server-side software application that offers central management of Bridge
Technologies devices. Operating devices through the VBC is considerably more convenient and
powerful than operating each device independently.
When managing a large digital television system there is a need to easily monitor the overall system
status. Deploying a number of probes and a VBC enables the user to view the system status
at-a-glance, and if a problem arises the VBC’s drill-down functionality makes it easy to locate the
problem source.
Through the VBC the user can perform tasks such as building a hierarchical equipment view,
view aggregate alarm and status messages, get aggregate status per TV stream and compare
measurements across devices.
The VBC supports alarm export for integration into an NMS system.
The VBC server runs in a Linux environment. The VBC client is simply a web browser pointed towards
the VBC server.
1.1 Sites and Blades
The VBC Controller supports a hierarchical equipment view. At the top of the chain are sites. A site
is a number of devices that logically or physically belong together. These devices are also called a
blades. Each device has an IP address and its own web interface that can be reached directly or via
the VBC.
For systems deploying microVB units a Micro Device Controller (MDC) can be added to the VBC as a
device. MDC will then report monitoring statistics to the VBC on behalf of all the microVBs.
1.2 Users and Access
The VBC Controller supports a role based user interface where a user is given full or limited access
to a selection of the devices. Setup of system wide configurations, such as user setup, is performed
by the pre-configured user admin.
The admin user is hard-coded inside the VBC and is the only user defined when the VBC is installed.
The admin user is the only user that has access to the system-wide setup menus. Put another way,
the admin can do everything a regular user can do and more.
Beware! You can easily do a lot of damage by accident as the admin user, so it is not recommended
to log in as admin to perform regular tasks.
6VBC Controller User’s Manual v5.4 c BRIDGE Technologies Co AS

When logging in, the user name for the admin user is always admin and the password is elvis by
default. Please change the password for this user after installing the system.
There is no limit to the number of active users or to the number of active users of the same account.
Each client will work independently of the others, only affected by changes to global settings usually
done by the admin user.
The VBC uses a standard web mechanism called cookies to identify users. A cookie is a piece
of data that the VBC returns to the browser when the user logs in. The browser will automatically
provide this cookie in all subsequent requests towards VBC. The cookie allows the VBC to remember
the state for all users who are logged in – so that it knows which sites the user has access to etc.
Generally all windows or tabs from the same browser application will appear to the VBC as the same
user – since they will all forward the same cookie.
The admin grants each user access to one or more sites. When logging in, the client’s access will
be limited to the sites associated with the login name. The client will only have access to devices
belonging to these sites.
Each user belongs to one user group. The access rights for the users is controlled in the user groups.
Here the user can be limited to read only access, allowed the TS service view, doing RDP etc.
The user interface provided by the VBC is dynamic in the sense that almost all pages are generated
differently for each user. The Stream view will, for instance, only list streams that are monitored by
probes that are included at the sites that the user has access to.
1.3 How to Use This Manual
This User’s Manual is valid for software version 5.4 of the VBC Controller.
Throughout this manual the term stream is often used rather than unicast or multicast. One stream
may consist of one or more services, and refers to one IP uni- or multicast (for Ethernet input) or one
transport stream (ASI, COFDM, QAM/VSB or QPSK/DVB-S2).
Chapter 2 INSTALLATION AND INITIAL SETUP explains how to install the software on a server.
Chapter 3 REMOTE DATA WALL describes the Remote Data Wall.
Chapter 4 THE VBC GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE describes the graphical user interface (GUI)
as seen when pointing a web browser to the VBC Controller’s IP address.
A Appendix: Separate Probe and Network Interfaces describes how to set up the VBC as a bridge
between the probe and management networks.
B Appendix: The VBC Files summarizes the files that are installed and created by the VBC.
C Appendix: VBC Linux Processes lists the Linux processes used by the VBC.
D Appendix: Example Site Configuration contains an example on how to configure VBC sites.
E Appendix: Getting the Thresholds Right explains how to set up VBC thresholds.
F Appendix: Probe Versus VBC Alarms describes the alarm handling in the probes versus the VBC
Controller.
G Appendix: Troubleshooting lists some hints troubleshooting VBC Controller issues.
VBC Controller User’s Manual v5.4 c BRIDGE Technologies Co AS 7

H Appendix: Backing up the VBC describes how to create a backup of the VBC and how to restore it
later.
I Appendix: Software Maintenance briefly describes software maintenance licenses and how they are
used.
J Appendix: Network configuration gives a brief introduction to the server OS network configuration.
K Appendix: Enable NTP time synchronization provides some basic information about setting up time
synchronization.
Note that current version of the User’s Manual can be found on the http://www.bridgetech.tv/
website. Log in as end user: customer with password: xmas4u . Additional technical documentation
is also found at the same location.
8VBC Controller User’s Manual v5.4 c BRIDGE Technologies Co AS

2 INSTALLATION AND INITIAL SETUP
2.1 System Requirements
For VBC demonstration purposes the minimum hardware requirements are:
•Quad-core or multiple dual-core 1.6 GHz CPU
•4 Gbyte RAM minimum (remember to fill up all memory channels)
•20 Gbyte writable disk space
• 10/100/1000T Ethernet Network Interface card(s) with support for CentOS Linux 7 or Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 7
The recommended VBC server specifications for a medium sized system (20 blades or 8000
streams) are:
•Intel Quad-core 2.4 GHz CPU
•16 Gbyte 1600 MHz DDR RAM (remember to fill up all memory channels)
•250 Gbyte writable disk space
• 10/100/1000T Ethernet Network Interface card(s) with support for CentOS Linux 7 or Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 7
The recommended VBC server specifications for a large system (60 blades or 24000 streams)
are:
•Intel Xeon 1630 v4 (4 cores, 8 threads, 3.7 GHz) CPU
•24 Gbyte 1600 MHz DDR 4 RAM (remember to fill up all memory channels)
•500 Gbyte writable disk space
• 10/100/1000T Ethernet Network Interface card(s) with support for CentOS Linux 7 or Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 7
The recommended VBC server specifications for a very large system (100+ blades) are:
•Intel Xeon 1630 v4 (4 cores, 8 threads, 3.7 GHz)
•24 Gbyte 2400 MHz DDR 4 RAM (remember to fill up all memory channels)
•2×500 Gbyte SAS, 15000 RPM in a Hardware RAID 1 configuration
For even better performance SSD disks can be used instead, in a similar RAID 1 configuration
• 10/100/1000T Ethernet Network Interface card(s) with support for CentOS Linux 7 or Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 7
VBC Controller User’s Manual v5.4 c BRIDGE Technologies Co AS 9

It is important that the number of RAM modules matches the number of memory channels
supported by CPU. For dual socket systems the number of required RAM modules doubles.
Example recommended CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2667 v41:
For this system there are 4 memory channels. So for single socket systems 4 × 16Gbyte RAM
modules could be fitted, and for a dual socket system 8×16Gbyte RAM modules could be used.
The load on the VBC server will increase for increasing number of concurrent users and with more
sites and blades, and the VBC’s responsiveness is dependent on server specifications. It may
therefore be a good investment to use high performance server hardware in order to handle future
system extensions.
Supported platforms:
•CentOS Linux release 7 (7.0–7.4) for x86_64
•Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 7 (7.0–7.4) for x86_64
2.2 First-time Installation
Make sure that the server hardware matches the requirements listed above. Download the appropriate
installation image from the end-user area on http://www.bridgetech.tv/ and then follow the
procedure outlined below.
1. Obtain the latest installation kickstart image.
2. Insert the installation medium into the server:
• For CD/DVD-based installations, burn the downloaded ISO image to a CD/DVD and insert
into the server.
• For USB-based installation, transfer the downloaded image to a USB mass storage device
using a tool such as dd (Mac, Unix, Linux) or USBWriter2(Windows).
• For installation in a virtualized environment, attach the downloaded ISO image to a virtual
DVD-ROM unit.
Note: Please read the advice on how to configure the virtual machine in section 2.3 to
ensure optimal performance.
3. Boot the server and make sure that the primary boot device is set appropriately. If the system
fails to boot from the medium, you may need to configure the boot loader for ‘legacy BIOS
mode’.
4. The installer will run, please follow the on-screen prompts to install the system, taking note of
the following:
•IMPORTANT: Leave ‘Software selection’ at ‘Custom software selected’.
1https://ark.intel.com/products/92979/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-2667-v4-25M-Cache-3_20-GHz
2http://sourceforge.net/projects/usbwriter/
10 VBC Controller User’s Manual v5.4 c BRIDGE Technologies Co AS