Subject: [Disman] DISMAN MIB implementation summaries

From: Steve Moulton <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2004 15:40:19 -0400

The following are implementation summaries for the DISMAN MIBs
implemented in SNMP Research products.  We do not implement the 
Notification Log or Expression MIBs.  See the end of this message for 
more deployment information.

The summaries were prepared by Alan Luchuk and Brian Beach of the
SNMP Research Staff.  

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Implementation Survey for RFC 3165
Definition of Managed Objects for the Delegation of Management Scripts
Module:  DISMAN-SCRIPT-MIB

GROUPS:
smLanguageGroup:        Implemented
smScriptGroup2:         Implemented
smLaunchGroup2:         Implemented
smRunGroup2:            Implemented
smNotificationsGroup2:  smScriptAbort      implemented
                        smScriptResult     implemented
                        smScriptException  not implemented
smCodeGroup:            Implemented

OBJECTS:
smScriptSource:     read-only
smCodeText:         read-write
smLaunchArgument:   maximum size 2048
smRunArgument:      maximum size 2048
smRunResult:        maximum size 2048
smRunState suspension permitted:   yes

Deployment/Operational experience:

The DISMAN-SCRIPT-MIB is implementable, does work, and can be used
for network management, although it is, shall we say, "MIB Object rich".

The lengthy description clauses that describe the interlocking states bet-
ween tables makes it difficult to insure the implementation conforms to the 
specification.  

In some cases, the documented behavior is counter-intuitive.  For example,
an intuitive behavior for 'destroying' a row in the smScriptTable would be
to delete the row and all subordinate references to it (from the smCodeTable,
the smLaunchTable, and smRunTable).  But the MIB appears to not allow this.
To 'destroy' a row in the smScriptTable, the following procedure must be 
followed:

-  terminate all subordinate running instances from the smRunTable; 
-  disable (or expire) all subordinate smLaunchEntries; 
-  'destroy' all subordinate smLaunchEntries; 
-  disable the 'smScriptAdminStatus';
-  'destroy' the smScriptEntry;

The MIB allows instrumenting, launching, suspending, and restarting programs
in a multi-process operating system.  This capability adds much more complex-
ity and agent code size than is necessary to support distributed network 
management, which seems more  likely to need to run fairly modest scripts 
that start and run perpetually.  The added complexity and code size is likely
to reduce the the number of implementations and actual field deployment.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Implementation Survey for RFC 3231
Definition of Managed Objects for Scheduling Management Operations
Module:  DISMAN-SCHED-MIB

GROUPS:
schedGroup2:               implemented
schedNotificationsGroup:   implemented
schedCalendarGroup:        implemented, on systems that support time of day

Deployment/Operational experience:

The DISMAN-SCHED-MIB is implementable, does work, and can be used 
for network management.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Implementation Survey for RFC 2981
Event MIB
Module:  DISMAN-EVENT-MIB

Implementation Survey for RFC 2981, Event MIB

Module: DISMAN-EVENT-MIB
Implementation Source: SNMP Research
Management Application / Agent: CIAgent

GROUPs:
dismanEventResourceGroup (y/n): y
dismanEventTriggerGroup (y/n): y
dismanEventObjectsGroup (y/n): y
dismanEventEventGroup (y/n): y
dismanEventNotificationObjectGroup (y/n): y
dismanEventNotificationGroup (y/n): y

OBJECTs:
mteTriggerTargetTag (ro/rw): ro
mteEventSetTargetTag (ro/rw): ro
mteTriggerValueIDWildcard (ro/rw): rw
mteTriggerContextNameWildcard (ro/rw): ro
mteObjectsIDWildcard (ro/rw): ro
mteEventSetContextNameWildcard (ro/rw): ro

Deployment / Operational Experience:

Comments:

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Implementation Survey for RFC 2925
DISMAN Remote Operation MIBs
Module:  DISMAN-NSLOOKUP-MIB, DISMAN-PING-MIB, and DISMAN-TRACEROUTE-MIB

Implemented DISMAN-NSLOOKUP-MIB, DISMAN-PING-MIB,
DISMAN-TRACEROUTE-MIB as part of SNMP Research's 
Service Monitor product to provide remote management of nslookup, ping, 
and traceroute services.

Capabilities - We support all objects of these three MIB Modules with 
the following exceptions:

DISMAN-PING-MIB:

      pingCtlTargetAddressType - Does not support IPv6
      pingCtlDataFill - Not implemented
      pingCtlType - Only value allowed is pingIcmpEcho
      pingCtlSourceAddress - Not implemented
      pingCtlIfIndex - Not implemented
      pingCtlByPassRouteTable - Not implemented
      pingCtlDSField - Not implemented

DISMAN-TRACEROUTE-MIB

      traceRouteCtlTargetAddressType - Does not support IPv6
      traceRouteCtlByPassRouteTable - Not implemented
      traceRouteCtlDSField - Not implemented
      traceRouteCtlSourceAddress - Not implemented
      traceRouteCtlIfIndex - Not implemented
      traceRouteCtlDontFragment - Not implemented
      traceRouteCtlTrapGeneration - pathChange not implemented
      traceRouteCtlType - Default is using UDP Probes. Only implemented
              to use ICMP ECHO

DISMAN-NSLOOKUP-MIB

      lookupCtlTargetAddressType - Does not support IPv6

SNMP Research has no immediate plans to add support to the above MIB 
objects on our roadmap.

We support the Service Monitor product including the REMOPS MIBs on 
Windows (NT, XP, 2000),  Solaris 2.x (32, 64-bit), and Red Hat Linux. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------

General Summary
---------------

The DISMAN-SCHEDULE-MIB, DISMAN-SCRIPT-MIB, and DISMAN-EVENT-MIB have 
been implemented by SNMP Research, Inc. and included as parts of the 
CIAgent product.  CIAgent may be freely downloaded from the SNMP Research
web site for evaluation and interoperability test.  The remops-related 
MIBs are an optional, extra-cost feature of CIAgent, and are not available
for download.

Since the CIAgent product was first introduced several years ago, SNMP
Research, International, Inc., sales reports hundreds of customers have 
licensed and deployed thousands of copies of CIAgent.  Because the remops-
related MIBs are an extra-cost feature of CIAgent, their actual licensing 
and deployment are lower than that of the standard CIAgent components.

SNMP Research has internal deployment experience typical for a software 
development company, that is deployment for internal testing, trade show 
demos, etc.  However, the SNMP Research, Inc., Technical Support group 
does provide support to customers about the DISMAN MIBs implemented in 
CIAgent, and does receive feedback from customer deployments.  

SNMP Research, Inc., Technical Support has received no questions about the 
DISMAN-SCHEDULE-MIB.  SNMP Research, Inc., Technical Support has received 
questions about the DISMAN-EVENT-MIB from a few customers.  SNMP Research, 
Inc., Technical Support has received questions about the DISMAN-SCRIPT-MIB 
from a few customers.  Many of these questions concern the SNMP Research 
proprietary SNMP scripting language.  SNMP Research, Inc., Technical Support 
has received no questions about the remops-related MIBs, but again, their 
deployment numbers are much lower because it is a extra-cost feature.

Feedback from our customers is that they typically find the DISMAN MIBs too 
complex and difficult-to-understand because of the multiple tables and 
relationships defined between the tables.  Maintaining the configurations 
proves difficult because of the complexity of the configurations and the 
learning curve required to understand these MIBs.

---
SNMP Research, Inc            voice: +1 865 573 1434
3001 Kimberlin Heights Rd.    fax: +1 865 573 9197
Knoxville, TN 37920-9716 USA  http://www.snmp.com

---

From: "Randy Presuhn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2004 13:20:44 -0700

Hi -

Thanks!  I especially appreciate the detailed comments
provided, and would like to initiate some (separate) follow-up
threads on them.  This is the kind of useful feedback we need.

Randy

> From: "Steve Moulton" <[email-masked]>
> To: <[email-masked]>
> Sent: Thursday, June 17, 2004 12:40 PM
> Subject: [Disman] DISMAN MIB implementation summaries
>