Network Operations Center Design Best Practices

A Network Operations Center (NOC) forms a central location for a data center of any medium or large-scale network monitoring effort. In it, your NOC engineers will monitor for and respond to network problems. Your NOC services forms the vital link between the detection of a network problem and the implementation of a solution (usually in the form of a technician dispatched to the remote site).

While many NOC operation centers (yes, the word "centers" is redundant, but it aids understanding), are open 7x24x365, this isn't always the case. Some companies are in a transitional phase of growth. Their network is large enough to have warranted an investment in NOC center construction, but they can't yet justify the expense of staffing it outside of regular or possibly extended business hours. In this case, companies use after-hours alarm notifications (to email or phones) to alert on-call technicians of alarms in the network.

The core of any NOC room is one (or sometimes more) central master console. This console accepts inputs from the handful, hundreds, or thousands of remote devices in your network.