2.4.4 Distributed Management (disman)

NOTE: This charter is a snapshot of the 59th IETF Meeting in Seoul, Korea. It may now be out-of-date.

Last Modified: 2004-02-18

Chair(s):
Randy Presuhn <randy_presuhn@mindspring.com>
Operations and Management Area Director(s):
Bert Wijnen <bwijnen@lucent.com>
David Kessens <david.kessens@nokia.com>
Operations and Management Area Advisor:
Bert Wijnen <bwijnen@lucent.com>
Mailing Lists:
General Discussion: disman@ietf.org
To Subscribe: disman-request@ietf.org
In Body: subscribe
Archive: http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/working-groups/disman/current/maillist.html
Description of Working Group:
The Distributed Management Working Group is chartered to define an initial set of managed objects for specific distributed network management applications which can be consistently developed and deployed. A distributed network manager is an applicaton that acts in a manager role to perform management functions and in an agent role so that it can be remotely controlled and observed.

Distributed network management is widely recognized as a requirement for dealing with today's growing internets. A manager application is a good candidate for distribution if it requires minimal user interaction, it would potentially consume a significant amount of network resources due to frequent polling or large data retrieval, or it requires close association with the device(s) being managed.

The working group will limit its work to distributed network management applications where the main communication mechanism for monitoring and control is SNMP. Future work (and other working groups) may be chartered to investigate other distribution techniques such as CORBA or HTTP. The objects defined by the working group will be consistent with the SNMP architecture defined in RFC 2571. The working group will especially keep security considerations in mind when defining the interface to distributed management.

The working group will complete these tasks:

Define a Scheduling MIB

Define a Script MIB

Define a Remote Operations MIB

Define an Expression and Event MIB to support Threshold Monitoring

Define a Notification Log MIB

Define an Alarm MIB

The working group will consider existing definitions, including:

o the RMON working group's work in this area

o the Application MIB (RFC 2564), SysAppl MIB (RFC 2287) and related standards.

The work on the Alarm MIB will take into consideration existing standards and practices, such as ITU-T X.733. Whether any mappings to these other standards appear in the Alarm MIB or in separate documents will be decided by the WG. The WG will actively seek participation from ITU participants to make ensure that the ITU work is correctly understood.

It is recognized that the scope of this working group is narrow relative to the potential in the area of distributed network management. This is intentional in order to increase the likelihood of producing useful, quality specifications in a timely manner. However, we will keep in mind and account for potential related or future work when developing the framework including:

o Event and alarm logging and distribution

o Historical data collection/summarization

o Topology discovery

Goals and Milestones:
Done  Post Internet-Draft for Threshold Monitoring MIB.
Done  Meet at the Montreal IETF meeting to discuss charter and review the Threshold Monitoring MIB Internet-Draft.
Done  Post Internet-Draft for Framework document.
Done  Post Internet-Draft for Script MIB.
Done  Submit final version of Threshold Monitor MIB Internet-Draft for consideration as a Proposed Standard. Submit updated versions of Internet-Drafts for Script MIB.
Done  Meet at the IETF meeting to discuss Internet-Drafts and issues that come up on the mailing list.
Done  Submit final versions of Internet-Drafts for Script MIB and Schedule MIB document for consideration as Proposed Standards.
Done  Agree on charter revisions for future work.
Done  Submit final versions of Internet-Drafts for Expression, Event and Notification MIB documents for consideration as Proposed Standards.
Done  Submit final version of Internet-Draft for Remote Ping, Traceroute, and Lookup Operations Using SMIv2
Done  Meeting in Oslo to discuss implementation and deployment experience with Schedule and Script mibs, identify any updates needed to these documents.
Done  WG agreement on direction regarding mappings to / from other alarm frameworks
Done  Submit updated Script and Schedule MIBs for consideration as Draft Standard (or recycle at Proposed).
Done  Submit updated draft of Alarm MIB for IETF meeting
Done  decision on question of whether recycle the Log MIB.
Done  Submit updated draft of Alarm MIB for IETF meeting.
Done  call for implementation experience and updates to the remote operations MIB.
Done  call for implementation experience and updates to the Event and Expression MIBs.
Done  WG last call on Alarm Management MIB.
Done  Alarm Management MIB delivered to IESG for consideration as a Proposed Standard.
Feb 04  WG last call on updates to Remote Operations MIB
Mar 04  Implementation Report on Remote Operations MIB
Mar 04  Remote Operations MIB submitted to IESG for consideration as Draft Standard
Internet-Drafts:
  • - draft-ietf-disman-alarm-mib-18.txt
  • - draft-ietf-disman-conditionmib-10.txt
  • - draft-ietf-disman-remops-mib-v2-01.txt
  • Request For Comments:
    RFCStatusTitle
    RFC2591 PS Definitions of Managed Objects for Scheduling Management Operations
    RFC2592 PS Definitions of Managed Objects for the Delegation of Management Scripts
    RFC2925 PS Definitions of Managed Objects for Remote Ping, Traceroute, and Lookup Operations
    RFC2982 PS Distributed Management Expression MIB
    RFC2981 PS Event MIB
    RFC3014 PS Notification Log MIB
    RFC3165 PS Definitions of Managed Objects for the Delegation of Management Scripts
    RFC3231 PS Definitions of Managed Objects for Scheduling Management Operations

    Current Meeting Report

    Minutes for the disman WG session in Seoul
    
    
    The Distributed Management (disman) Working group met for one hour at the 
    IETF meeting at the Lotte Hotel in Seoul on Tuesday, March 2, 2003. Randy 
    Presuhn chaired the session.  Shailaja Yadawad and Dan Romascanu kindly 
    provided the notes from which these minutes were assembled.
    
    
    No changes were needed to the posted agenda.
    
    
    The first major item was the review of the status of current work. The 
    Alarm Report Control MIB module was in the RFC editor queue. The Alarm MIB 
    was still in the IESG, and had not yet reached the RFC editor. Sharon 
    Chisholm, one of the document's editors, took the action item to contact the 
    area director, and to inform the WG chair if there were any remaining 
    problems.
    
    
    The Remote Operations MIB update was in working group last call, with only 
    one comment received.  The group needs feedback before forwarding it  to the 
    IESG. A quick poll of the room revealed that many there had not yet read the 
    update to the Remote Operations MIB, RFC 2925.  Consequently an action item 
    for the room was to read the update I-D.  The chair will send a request for 
    interoperability reports.
    
    
    The Script MIB appears to be ready to advance to Draft Standard.  It is 
    deployed and used, but there was the question of finding editorial 
    resources.  Juergen Schoenwaelder, the primary editor, was not at the 
    session.  The WG chair took the action item to determine whether there was WG 
    consensus to advance the RFC "as is" since there were no known 
    technical problems, and to request interoperability reports.
    
    
    The situation with the Schedule MIB was identical to that with the Script 
    MIB, so the WG chair took the action item to determine whether it, too, 
    could be advanced "as is".  The WG chair called for volunteers to 
    provide editorial assistance.  (Subsequently, we heard from the current 
    editor that he'd be able to do this.)
    
    
    
    Mixed feedback was expressed about the expression MIB.  Some find the MIB 
    complicated to implement, and while other members shared how customers are 
    using this MIB. WG members to share implementation reports.  Currently only 
    one implementation is known, and there are questions about whether it is 
    worth investing additional effort in this.
    
    
    Only one implementation of the event MIB was discussed in the session.  
    Since Cisco is using it, Elliot Lear would take it as editor if there is 
    another vendor that does it. (Subsequently we learned from Wes 
    Hardaker, who was not able to attend the meeting, that the Event MIB is 
    fairly heavily used by Net-SNMP users, though only for local agent 
    queries.)  WG members need to share implementation reports on the Event 
    MIB, RFC 2981.
    
    
    The updates to the Notification Log MIB (RFC 3014) appear to be in fairly 
    good shape for advancement to Draft Standard, but due to workload a new 
    editor is needed to handle these mostly administrative details.
    
    
    The next major item was the review of liaison activity, an item from the ITU 
    on the "structured" probable cause work.  Sharon Chisholm agreed to 
    forward the URL of the original liaison to the WG mailing list.  Bert 
    Wijnen, our Area Director, provided some helpful clarification on 
    liaisons; the WG chair should email responses directly, copying to Bert and 
    Scott Bradner.
    
    
    The next major item was Juergen Quittek's presentation on an 
    alternative his colleagues implemented to the expression MIB.  The 
    discussion focused on why their proposal would be easier to configure or 
    lighter weight than the Expression MIB.  In subsequent discussion, 
    Juergen took an action item to determine whether the problem could be 
    solved using objects from RMON groups.
    
    
    The next presentation,  by Shailaja Yadawad, provided another look at how 
    the expression MIB problems might be addressed.  Entitled "Advanced 
    History Collection", it was inspired by RMON work.  The main question was 
    how this MIB could simplify configuration.  There was limited 
    discussion, since the I-D had missed the cutoff date.  It was agreed that 
    additional discussion would be appropriate on the mailing list after the 
    draft became available.  Shailaja took the action item to submit the 
    draft.
    
    
    The group then briefly discussed milestone updates for the charter.  The 
    chair will submit proposals to the list, and then, if agreed, to 

    Slides

    Check MIB
    Advanced History Collection FrameWork