Subject: [Anima] Document Action: 'Guidelines for Autonomic Service Agents' to Informational RFC (draft-ietf-anima-asa-guidelines-07.txt)

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2022 07:49:58 -0800

The IESG has approved the following document:
- 'Guidelines for Autonomic Service Agents'
  (draft-ietf-anima-asa-guidelines-07.txt) as Informational RFC

This document is the product of the Autonomic Networking Integrated Model and
Approach Working Group.

The IESG contact persons are Warren Kumari and Robert Wilton.

A URL of this Internet Draft is:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-anima-asa-guidelines/

Technical Summary

The ANIMA WG has defined a set of mechanisms through its RFCs most of whom where
released earlier in 2021.

One key benefit of these mechanisms is to make it easier to develop and deploy
network automation software agents on network devices. These agents are called
 "Autonomic Service Agents" (ASA).

This simplification is achieved through the autonomic services offered by ANIMAs
"Autonomic Networking Infrastructure" and its services provided to those ASA.

This document gives an overview of the structure of ASA and guidance for its
interaction mechanisms with those services. These functions are primarily
service (objective) interactions with other ASA via the ANI GRASP protocol,
use of the ANI's ACP for any other secure communication between ASA and ASA
Lifecycles.

Working Group Summary

This document was worked on and improved by several members of the WG for
a long time (Since Sep 2016) without being adopted because work on ASA and
potocols/mechanisms for them was out of charter for a long time. Most issues
where resolved during this time, which is why the document only needed to
receive few revisions after being adopted by the WG when the charter allowed
for it.

Document Quality

This document is of an architectural/design nature. It predates significant
implementation experience. It does not discuss any protocols but primarily
use of abstract service interfaces within a network device.

A simple proof of concept of some of the aspects described in this document
was done by Brian Carpenter (co-author) 

Personnel

Document Shepherd: Toerless Eckert
Responsible AD: Rob Wilton (OPS).