[AGENT++] AgentX design question

[Bob Natale]

Hi,

While I believe that a reasonable case can be made for Frank's advice 
here, I would have suggested otherwise.

In the general case, in my view, the modularity benefits of the 
subagent approach outweigh the hypothesized performance benefits of the 
monolithic approach.

Indeed, depending on the specific nature of the MIBs and of the 
requests from management applications, it could well be that the 
subagent approach could allow for a less complex method of multi-
processing the instrumentation interfaces to satisfy the requests than 
would a monolithic agent application.

However, in the absence of concrete scenarios to analyze it is truly 
difficult to say for sure.  And it is also true of course that specific 
implementations of master agents and subagents could determine actual 
performance irrespective of the theoretical behaviors.

Cheers,
BobN

---- Original message ----
>Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 00:22:21 +0200
>From: Frank Fock <fock at agentpp.com>  
>
>Hi Dave,
>
>Dave Mason wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>> I have a monolithic agent with some proprietary MIBs that I'm 
>> converting to use with AgentX.  The reason is that I may have other 
>> subagents that need to attach to a master agent.  One approach is to 
>> leave my proprietary MIBs in the master agent, and not use subagents 
>> unless I need to connect another one for some reason.  The other 
would 
>> be to keep the master agent small, and put my proprietary MIBs in a 
>> new subagent which would run all the time.  Which do you like?
>
>I would leave the code in the master agent, except if one of your 
tables
>should be extended by a subagent using the AgentX shared table
>mechanism. The advantage of leaving the instrumentation in the
>master is performance. The disadvantage is less flexibility and 
probably
>less availability (a subagent might be easier rebooted).
>
>>
>> While I'm here, I took a look at the mailing list archive for the 
>> first time in a while, and I dont see how to search it like you used 
>> to.  Is that still possible?
>
>There is direct search function, but Google or another search engine 
should
>work too.
>
>Best regards,
>Frank
>
>
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