First of all, a brief description of what a NOC is: it's basically where your administrators will centrally manage the geographically separate portions of a network. The exact hardware and software is going to depend on a lot of things, but there are some things all NOCs will need.
1. Network Management Station (NMS). There are open source and commercial solutions that can scale from just a few routers and servers to tens of thousands. A NMS will allow you to do performance monitoring, trend analysis, device uptime, system errors, among many other categories.
2. Syslog - this kind of ties into your NMS, basically collects messages from your servers and network devices that helps you spot problems.
3. Device authentication - you'll probably have your authentication servers at your NOC, which type depends on your needs, i.e. Active Directory, RADIUS, TACACS, etc.
4. Firewall/IDS logs - yet another set of logs to monitor for security concerns.
5. Data back-up - from your NOC you'll want to be able to back-up all important data, there's many ways of doing it like through tapes, a NAS, etc.
6. Patch management - you'll want to be able to patch any device from the NOC so you won't have to send someone out to each site.
7. System scanning - you'll want the ability to scan devices for vulnerabilities and patch compliance. Think about software like Nessus or ISS.
There's a lot needed to make an effective NOC, and if you have the money, spring for some of those hi-def LCD TV's, lol.
-Jeremy-
