Subject: Re: manager subscription model for notifications: usage survey

From: Balazs Lengyel <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 02 May 2006 09:09:37 +0200

Andy mentions 100-1000 devices. In Ericsson we have systems supervising up to 30000 
devices. So we should aim somewhat higher with scalability. (Today these use other 
protocols, but they are a candidate for Netconf.)
Balazs

Andy Bierman wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am having a hard time understanding how the
> peer-to-peer manager subscribe model defined
> in the notifications draft fits with syslog and
> SNMP notifications already in use.
> 
> 
> I think it would be wise to understand how the entire
> managed system is going to work when netconf notifications
> are added to the mix.   How will a network of 100 - 10000 devics
> behave in various common failure scenarios?
> 

--
to unsubscribe send a message to [email-masked] with
the word 'unsubscribe' in a single line as the message text body.
archive: <http://ops.ietf.org/lists/netconf/>

---

From: "David B Harrington" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 13:32:22 -0400

Hi,

At Enterasys, which focused on enterprise networks, we had a customer
managing an 88000 node network with our snmp application. The size of
managed networks is growing rapidly, so let's not constrain the
network size too much (but let's not go add lots of features only
useful in huge networks either).

Understand that some of the devices being managed were fairly simple
things like vending machines, not complex things like routers, but it
will be a good thing if devices other than routers can be used with
netconf.

dbh

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] 
> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Balazs Lengyel
> Sent: Tuesday, May 02, 2006 3:10 AM
> To: Netconf (E-mail)
> Subject: Re: manager subscription model for notifications: 
> usage survey
> 
>

---

From: Andy Bierman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 12:09:01 -0700

> useful in huge networks either).

Not sure what this comment means, other than the current
manager-subscribe proposal scales even worse than I claimed.
So let's target 100000 devices, not 10000.  So imagine
one or more managers starting 100000 sessions, and issuing
100000 RPCs, just to get notifications restarted after manager
connectivity is lost.

Seems to me that session-based notifications are really expensive,
and don't scale well, even if the agent initiates the session.
Maybe that's why syslog and SNMP don't use sessions.  Hmmm...
At best, this netconf notification feature is a way to receive copies
of notifications in a session, while connected for operations.
Not sure why that is important, but it is not related to,
and not going to replace, syslog/SNMP notifications.

> will be a good thing if devices other than routers can be used with

agreed.
The KISS Factor (keep it simple stupid) applies here.
Is this thing we are building an embedded agent or a mid-level manager?
It looks like the latter to me.

> dbh

Andy

---

From: Juergen Schoenwaelder <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 21:29:51 +0200

> useful in huge networks either).

Before I am getting impressed, I would love to know what "managing"
means, e.g. what the traffic exchanges between the 88000 nodes and the
single system(?) central manager are.

/js

-- 
Juergen Schoenwaelder		    International University Bremen
<http://www.eecs.iu-bremen.de/>	    P.O. Box 750 561, 28725 Bremen, Germany

---

From: "David B Harrington" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 17:09:21 -0400

Hi,

Not trying to impress, just pointing out the need for scalability to
more than 10k or 30k devices, and the need to keep things simple.

The management was very simple as far as I know. It was an academic
campus. Management included initial configuration for things like "who
should I talk to?" and notifications when items in the vending
machines ran low. This saved a lot of "polling" by humans having to go
to the physical machines. I'm not sure how much other management was
done.

dbh

> From: Juergen Schoenwaelder [mailto:[email-masked]] 
> Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2006 3:30 PM
> To: David B Harrington
> Cc: 'Netconf (E-mail)'

---

From: Andy Bierman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 14:42:24 -0700

> to the physical machines. I'm not sure how much other management was

Not sure if 'scalability' and 'simplicity' are in
the requirements list.

So do you think the current draft meets these requirements?
If not, then any suggested changes would also be helpful.

We need to move from an abstract discussion to a review
of the current draft.

Andy

---

From: Juergen Schoenwaelder <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 May 2006 00:04:01 +0200

> more than 10k or 30k devices, and the need to keep things simple.

The number of devices is simply irrelevant as long as we do not also
state the traffic pattern. And as Andy said, I doubt that NetConf's
primary goal is highly scalable notification delivery.

/js