Web Based Monitoring and Management: RE: WBMM> Couple Questi

RE: WBMM> Couple Questions about Schedules

From: McDonald, Ira (imcdonald@sharplabs.com)
Date: Wed May 05 2004 - 10:09:42 EDT

  • Next message: Wagner,William: "RE: WBMM> Couple Questions about Schedules"

    Hi,
     
    I agree again with all of Bill's points and reasoning.
     
    I am strongly opposed to introducing the concept of
    'negotiation' into Schedule transfers. It doesn't exist
    in any other NMS architecture I've seen.
     
    In WBMM/WIMS, the Manager says "do this" (via an
    embedded Action in a Schedule). And the Agent either
    replies "fine by me" (with SendReport) or "Manager not
    authorized" (with SendAlert).
     
    I think it's important that SendReport _never_ be used
    to report an Action failure. Only use SendAlert.
     
    Cheers,
    - Ira
     

    Ira McDonald (Musician / Software Architect)
    Blue Roof Music / High North Inc
    PO Box 221 Grand Marais, MI 49839
    phone: +1-906-494-2434
    email: imcdonald@sharplabs.com

    -----Original Message-----
    From: Wagner,William [mailto:WWagner@NetSilicon.com]
    Sent: Tuesday, May 04, 2004 10:43 AM
    To: Harry Lewis; wbmm@pwg.org
    Subject: RE: WBMM> Couple Questions about Schedules

    Harry,
     
    This brings up the question of addressing policy, one of the issues that
    remains outstanding in the current spec and one of the aspects in the
    responses to operations. We have touched on it in the emails.
     
    Certainly, the agent or the managed entity operating though the agent
    must be able to reject certain actions. (I had not considered rejecting
    certain values, such as two frequent or too large... I think that is a
    bit more complicated). There was never any intent to negotiate a
    schedule. I think the last suggestion from Ira was that, in the case of
    an action that is prohibited with respect to a particular managed
    entity by site policy, the report dealing with that action would indicate
    that the action was disallowed. That is, the response to the schedule
    does not indicate that an action is disallowed. Rather, the report on
    the action would indicated that is is disallowed, just as it may indicate
    that the managed entity was down, or was unable to perform the action
    for some other reason..
     
     If this were a recurring action, the recurring report would indicate
    it was disallowed. The management station, operating through the manager
    could then modify the schedule, but it does not need to. That is,
    there may be a generic schedule rather than a custom schedule developed
    for each managed entity.
     
    We would need to consider whether we need to address agent rather than
    managed entity policies. That would address operations rather than
    actions. My first reaction is that this is not necessary since the
    Management Station is a trusted and authenticated manager. However, it is
    something worth discussing. The simple solution is that the agent sends
    reports according to it own limiting policy if the manager demands
    anything exceeding that limit. What would happen then is that the manger
    would report the agent for being non-responsive, and it would need to
    be dealt with outside the protocol. With respect to too many elements, I
    think any action must have a response. If the action is not performed, or
    all elements identified in the action are not acted on, then this should
    be in the report with a reason.
     
    Bill Wagner
     
     

    -----Original Message-----
    From: Harry Lewis [mailto:harryl@us.ibm.com]
    Sent: Tuesday, May 04, 2004 12:55 AM
    To: wbmm@pwg.org
    Subject: WBMM> Couple Questions about Schedules

    Couple questions / observations from internal review

    1. Is there a way to negotiate a schedule? What if the agent thinks
    the schedule is too frequent or the list of elements too large?
    2. Can the agent refuse a schedule or a specific action in a schedule
    (ex. PurgeJobs)? Is there a way to indicate this?
    ----------------------------------------------
    Harry Lewis
    Chairman - IEEE-ISTO Printer Working Group
    http://www.pwg.org
    IBM Printing Systems
    http://www.ibm.com/printers
    303-924-5337
    ----------------------------------------------



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