When CA talks change awareness, it means that it is adding a form of configuration management to network node monitoring. That is, the new version adds more context to Spectrum’s traditional job of fault management.
In other words, when a yellow or red alarm lights up for a particular network device, CA will now provide configuration change history to help the network admin understand if the problem was due to a recent change, or some other factor.
Traditionally, CA’s Spectrum has collected configuration info and stored it for historical purposes. The new release makes the information accessible to the console operator, so they don’t have to look elsewhere to answer the question as to whether a change caused the fault.
Network node monitoring has long been considered a rather passive activity, where you poll network devices and react to the results displayed on a console. By adding configuration management, CA wants Spectrum to turn this into more of a proactive process.
Additionally, the new release adds some policy management capabilities, such as ensuring that when you reboot a router that has just gone down, that it does so in a manner that is consistent with the most recent rounds of updates rather than in its default mode.
