[AGENT++] Multiple MIB instances

[Marek Malowidzki]

----- Original Message -----
From: "alexander link " <link.alexander at firemail.de>
To: <agentpp at agentpp.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2004 10:47 AM
Subject: [AGENT++] Multiple MIB instances


> Hi.
> For our enterprise it is needed to manage our own software servers with
snmp. Due to security reasons we'd
> like to use version 3 of this protocol. We also want to utilize agent++
API because it seems to work very good
> and stable also.
> It may happen that more than one software servers are running on a single
machine with ONE IP address.
> Thus an implementation is needed to handle this issue.
> So is it possible to manage all of these same servers with agent++?
> It is not known how many and when these servers come to life. This depends
on customers need.
> So is this problem in general solvable with your agent++ API?
> In this context, can someone give a short instruction guide on things to
pay attention to?

If I understand correctly, you need to design a MIB for your servers and
build an SNMP agent to collect info about the servers (and perhaps even
allow to perform some operations on the servers, although SNMP is not a best
solution here). Agent++ (and any other SNMP agent implementation) does not
provide any particular solution for the problem - as I can guess - you need
to do it yourself. For example, a server could notify the agent about its
presence using some custom protocol (e.g., sockets, shared memory,
anything), perhaps periodially refresh its state (or allow agent to poll for
it). If fact, the custom protcol could be SNMP as well (e.g. servers are
allowed to update data while other clients are only able to read state),
especially with SNMPv3.

Servers could be kept in some table (one row per server), that would group
all the common data. Additionally, to keep specific data (specific for a
given server type), augmented tables could be used. Looks complex but is
indeed simple. This is first that comes to my mind.

Only one IP address or more addresses does not matter at all.

Marek