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Goodbye SNMP? Hello, WS-Management
Laoping writes "News.com has a story about a new Web services management specification designed to simplify network administration across a wide range of devices. A bunch of a big tech companies developed it together (Microsoft, Intel, AMD, Dell and Sun). Microsoft will build support for WS-Management into an update to Windows Server, which is due late next year, and in the version of its Microsoft Operations Manager management software due in 2006. The .PDF release, that makes it clear that it is meant to be a Simple Network Management Protocol killer. Now I am all for a replacement for SNMP, but is this the way go?"
hmmm, I wonder if this will catch on as quickly as IPv6 has.....
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
The moron submitting the summary says "goodbye [long established and well entrenched technology]". SNMP has been around for a very, very long time. No matter how much better this is, it will not replace SNMP any time soon.
Read the article about the 32-bit MCUs a few stories down for yet another example.
click
Maybe it will be OK, if it uses persistent HTTP connections, which allow several requests and replies before terminating the transaction. Otherwise the ancient HTTP/1.0 message model is too limited to map all the messaging topology to the spectrum of object management requirements.
--
make install -not war
SNMP is not going anywhere anytime soon, until the major network players adopt WS-Management (that's if they adopt it at all). Looking at the PDF there are some major players missing, Cisco, Juniper, 3Com, HP, to name a few.
"Microsoft will build support for WS-Management into an update to Windows Server"
Clearly this is war! SNMP and M$-Management will battle it out for the top market share...oh wait...
will it be encumbered by patents? looking at the contributors, my guess is yes
... i mean, you'll probably need (by the time it comes out) at least a 3.8Ghz P4 and 2G of RAM
snmp v3 works perfectly fine as it is. let's leave well enough alone
but, this will probably work out well for intel
vodka, straight up, thank you!
If I don't see Cisco and/or Nortel on the list, it's not going to replace SNMP anytime soon. Correction: _ever_.
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-- I care not for your foolish signatures.
I thought that the open replacement for SNMP was WBEM. Microsoft, in fact, has already implimented this, basically, as WMI, or Windows Management Instrumentation.
Anyone know why this is suddenly being pushed, and not WBEM?
Also on the folks churning out billions of tiny little devices. If you've only got 16K of RAM TCP is hard work let along management services while UDP is doable properly on a microcontroller.
The real power of snmp is what you can achieve through scripting it - queries and updates etc.
That becomes nigh-on impossible with this WS-Management craziness.
Typical Microsoft - always thinking there is some pleb click-clicking away.
Imagine you have to change some rmon threshold on 400+ devices, or integrate this with the corporate asset database.
Now you get the picture.
CIM is a fine, object-oriented replacement for SNMP, is mature and has XML-based communications over HTTP.
.PDF doesn't even reference CIM.
http://www.dmtf.org/standards/cim/
Microsoft already has a CIMOM implementation in its WMI service, although it uses DCOM to implement RPCs. Sun also has a CIMOM implementation for Solaris.
I find it very strange that the WS-Management
Using webservices for something like this seems like an enormous bandwidth waste to me. Whatever happened to optimization?
To ensure interoperability of devices and to enable any one console to manage any device, there will now be the standard default login "BILL" and password of "MOMONEY" for all devices. Users are not advised to change any passwords otherwise universal control will not be achieved.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
I don't mean to pooh pooh this idea just because it's somewhat Windows specific but the only real advantage I see to this over snmp is that the delivery modes are more sophisticated and the data can be organized hierarchally. So why not just add builtin event notification to snmp? Otherwise using XML for something that should be a low-cost service seems wrong to me. System monitoring should be as small and SIMPLE as possible to reduce the possibility for exploits as it will likely be running with a high level of anonymous access on almost every workstation, server, and router in the organization. The whole thing smells of XML pixie dust designed to drive up requirements and thus sell servers and new software to go with. If you have a problem with snmp then fix it. Don't reinvent it with techniques that are expensive in clock cyles and exploits.
This new protocol simply cannot be adopted until it's fully acronymic... I mean come on, SNMP and WBEM and even CIM have been fully acronymous for some time now, and this WS-Management thing still has an entire word spelled out in the name? That won't fly in my shop, no sir.
-Lod
I wonder if you could use XMPP (Jabber) to monitor devices. Each device connects to the server like a person IMing. It can easily send a message when something bad/good happens. You can have a roster (buddy list) of the devices you want to monitor.
Nobody else seemed to mention this yet so I thought I'd point out that Sun seems to be contradicting their latest monitoring framework:
JMX
By going along with this new specification. Network Management, monitoring, and other SNMP-like operations in Java are moving to the JMX or java media extension framework. In Java 5, the VM has JMX hooks built in for monitoring and control. Alas, I have to agree that SNMP is tired and old, but it still is in place in a lot of environments (and in routers, firewalls, and other hardware appliances) and is really easy to interface and use. I doubt this will catch on very quickly...
.: 2+2 = PI SQRT(1+N)
snmp v3 works perfectly fine as it is. let's leave well enough alone
:)
considering most vendors are still using v1 or v2, that should be 'lets leave snmp v3 alone'
to be perfectly honest, SNMP is anything but simple. the only thing simple about it is the protocol itself. it then got buried under avalanches of proprietary MIBs, all partially overlapping yet all mutually incompatible. some only partially documented (or not documented at all). not only that, the insistence of vendors using funky proprietary data types (or worse, strings) when existing datatypes would work perfectly fine.
what was needed imo was a MIB guideline and 'retarded implementation' verification. to ensure vendors didn't create obfuscated and spaghettified MIBs.