Network Working Group S. Kille, WG Chair Request for Comments: 1565 ISODE Consortium Category: Standards Track N. Freed, Editor Innosoft January 1994
Network Services Monitoring MIB
Status of this Memo
This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ................................................. 2 2. The SNMPv2 Network Management Framework ...................... 2 2.1 Object Definitions .......................................... 3 3. Rationale for having a Network Services Monitoring MIB ....... 3 3.1 General Relationship to Other MIBs .......................... 4 3.2 Restriction of Scope ........................................ 4 3.3 Relationship to Directory Services .......................... 4 4. Application Objects .......................................... 5 5. Definitions .................................................. 6 6. Acknowledgements .............................................16 7. References ...................................................16 8. Security Considerations ......................................16 9. Authors' Addresses ...........................................17
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RFC 1565 Network Services Monitoring MIB January 1994
1. Introduction
There are a wide range of networked applications for which it is appropriate to provide SNMP Monitoring. This includes both TCP/IP and OSI applications. This document defines a MIB which contains the elements common to the monitoring of any network service application. This information includes a table of all monitorable network service applications, a count of the associations (connections) to each application, and basic information about the parameters and status of each application-related association.
This MIB may be used on its own for any application, and for most simple applications this will suffice. This MIB is also designed to serve as a building block which can be used in conjunction with application-specific monitoring and management. Two examples of this are MIBs defining additional variables for monitoring a Message Transfer Agent (MTA) service or a Directory Service Agent (DSA) service. It is expected that further MIBs of this nature will be specified.
This MIB does not attempt to provide facilities for management of the host or hosts the network service application runs on, nor does it provide facilities for monitoring applications that provide something other than a network service. Host resource and general application monitoring is handled by the Host Resources MIB.
2. The SNMPv2 Network Management Framework
The SNMPv2 Network Management Framework consists of four major components. They are:
o RFC 1442 [1] which defines the SMI, the mechanisms used for describing and naming objects for the purpose of management.
o STD 17, RFC 1213 [2] defines MIB-II, the core set of managed objects for the Internet suite of protocols.
o RFC 1445 [3] which defines the administrative and other architectural aspects of the framework.
o RFC 1448 [4] which defines the protocol used for network access to managed objects.
The Framework permits new objects to be defined for the purpose of experimentation and evaluation.
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2.1 Object Definitions
Managed objects are accessed via a virtual information store, termed the Management Information Base or MIB. Objects in the MIB are defined using the subset of Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1) defined in the SMI. In particular, each object type is named by an OBJECT IDENTIFIER, an administratively assigned name. The object type together with an object instance serves to uniquely identify a specific instantiation of the object. For human convenience, we often use a textual string, termed the descriptor, to refer to the object type.
3. Rationale for having a Network Services Monitoring MIB
Much effort has been expended in developing tools to manage lower layer network facilities. However, relatively little work has been done on managing application layer entities. It is neither efficient nor reasonable to manage all aspects of application layer entities using only lower layer information. Moreover, the difficulty of managing application entities in this way increases dramatically as application entities become more complex.
This leads to a substantial need to monitor applications which provide network services, particularly distributed components such as MTAs and DSAs, by monitoring specific aspects of the application itself. Reasons to monitor such components include but are not limited to measuring load, detecting broken connectivity, isolating system failures, and locating congestion.
In order to manage network service applications effectively two requirements must be met:
(1) It must be possible to monitor a large number of components (typical for a large organization).
(2) Application monitoring must be integrated into general network management.
This specification defines simple read-only access; this is sufficient to determine up/down status and provide an indication of a broad class of operational problems.
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3.1 General Relationship to Other MIBs
This MIB is intended to only provide facilities common to the monitoring of any network service application. It does not provide all the facilities necessary to monitor any specific application. Each specific type of network service application is expected to have a MIB of its own that makes use of these common facilities.
3.2 Restriction of Scope
The framework provided here is very minimal; there is a lot more that could be done. For example:
(1) General network service application configuration monitoring and control.
(2) Detailed examination and modification of individual entries in service-specific request queues.
(3) Probing to determine the status of a specific request (e.g. the location of a mail message with a specific message-id).
(4) Requesting that certain actions be performed (e.g. forcing an immediate connection and transfer of pending messages to some specific system).
All these capabilities are both impressive and useful. However, these capabilities would require provisions for strict security checking. These capabilities would also mandate a much more complex design, with many characteristics likely to be fairly implementation-specific. As a result such facilities are likely to be both contentious and difficult to implement.
This document religiously keeps things simple and focuses on the basic monitoring aspect of managing applications providing network services. The goal here is to provide a framework which is simple, useful, and widely implementable.
3.3 Relationship to Directory Services
Use of and management of directory services already is tied up with network service application management. There are clearly many things which could be dealt with by directory services and protocols. We take the line here that static configuration information is both provided by and dealt with by directory services and protocols. The emphasis here is on transient application status.
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By placing static information in the directory, the richness and linkage of the directory information framework does not need to be repeated in the MIB. Static information is information which has a mean time to change of the order of days or longer.
When information about network service applications is stored in the directory (regardless of whether or not the network service application makes direct use of the directory), it is recommended that a linkage be established, so that:
(1) The managed object contains its own directory name. This allows all directory information to be obtained by reference. This will let a SNMP monitor capable of performing directory queries present this information to the manager in an appropriate format. It is intended that this will be the normal case.
(2) The directory will reference the location of the SNMP agent, so that an SNMP capable directory query agent could probe dynamic characteristics of the object.
(3) This approach could be extended further, so that the SNMP attributes are modelled as directory attributes. This would dramatically simplify the design of directory service agents that use SNMP to obtain the information they need.
4. Application Objects
This MIB defines a set of general purpose attributes which would be appropriate for a range of applications that provide network services. Both OSI and non-OSI services can be accomodated. Additional tables defined in extensions to this MIB provide attributes specific to specific network services.
A table is defined which will have one row for each network service application running on the system. The only static information held on the application is its name. All other static information should be obtained from various directory services. The applDirectoryName is an external key, which allows an SNMP MIB entry to be cleanly related to the X.500 Directory. In SNMP terms, the applications are grouped in a table called applTable, which is indexed by an integer key applIndex.
The type of the application will be determined by one or both of:
(1) Additional MIB variables specific to the applications.
(2) An association to the application of a specific protocol.
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5. Definitions
APPLICATION-MIB DEFINITIONS ::= BEGIN
IMPORTS OBJECT-TYPE, Counter32, Gauge32 FROM SNMPv2-SMI mib-2 FROM RFC1213-MIB DisplayString, TimeStamp FROM SNMPv2-TC;
-- Textual conventions
-- DistinguishedName [5] is used to refer to objects in the -- directory.
DistinguishedName ::= TEXTUAL-CONVENTION STATUS current DESCRIPTION "A Distinguished Name represented in accordance with RFC1485." SYNTAX DisplayString
application MODULE-IDENTITY LAST-UPDATED "9311280000Z" ORGANIZATION "IETF Mail and Directory Management Working Group" CONTACT-INFO " Ned Freed
Postal: Innosoft International, Inc. 250 West First Street, Suite 240 Claremont, CA 91711 US
Tel: +1 909 624 7907 Fax: +1 909 621 5319
E-Mail: ned@innosoft.com" DESCRIPTION "The MIB module describing network service applications" ::= { mib-2 27 }
-- The basic applTable contains a list of the application -- entities.
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applTable OBJECT-TYPE SYNTAX SEQUENCE OF ApplEntry MAX-ACCESS not-accessible STATUS current DESCRIPTION "The table holding objects which apply to all different kinds of applications providing network services." ::= {application 1}
applEntry OBJECT-TYPE SYNTAX ApplEntry MAX-ACCESS not-accessible STATUS current DESCRIPTION "An entry associated with a network service application." INDEX {applIndex} ::= {applTable 1}
RFC 1565 Network Services Monitoring MIB January 1994
Counter32 }
applIndex OBJECT-TYPE SYNTAX INTEGER (1..2147483647) MAX-ACCESS not-accessible STATUS current DESCRIPTION "An index to uniquely identify the network service application." ::= {applEntry 1}
applName OBJECT-TYPE SYNTAX DisplayString MAX-ACCESS read-only STATUS current DESCRIPTION "The name the network service application chooses to be known by." ::= {applEntry 2} applDirectoryName OBJECT-TYPE SYNTAX DistinguishedName MAX-ACCESS read-only STATUS current DESCRIPTION "The Distinguished Name of the directory entry where static information about this application is stored. An empty string indicates that no information about the application is available in the directory." ::= {applEntry 3}
applVersion OBJECT-TYPE SYNTAX DisplayString MAX-ACCESS read-only STATUS current DESCRIPTION "The version of network service application software." ::= {applEntry 4}
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applUptime OBJECT-TYPE SYNTAX TimeStamp MAX-ACCESS read-only STATUS current DESCRIPTION "The value of sysUpTime at the time the network service application was last initialized. If the application was last initialized prior to the last initialization of the network management subsystem, then this object contains a zero value." ::= {applEntry 5}
applOperStatus OBJECT-TYPE SYNTAX INTEGER { up(1), down(2), halted(3), congested(4), restarting(5) } MAX-ACCESS read-only STATUS current DESCRIPTION "Indicates the operational status of the network service application. 'down' indicates that the network service is not available. 'running' indicates that the network service is operational and available. 'halted' indicates that the service is operational but not available. 'congested' indicates that the service is operational but no additional inbound associations can be accomodated. 'restarting' indicates that the service is currently unavailable but is in the process of restarting and will be available soon." ::= {applEntry 6}
applLastChange OBJECT-TYPE SYNTAX TimeStamp MAX-ACCESS read-only STATUS current DESCRIPTION "The value of sysUpTime at the time the network service application entered its current operational state. If the current state was entered prior to the last initialization of the local network management subsystem, then this object contains a zero value." ::= {applEntry 7}
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applInboundAssociations OBJECT-TYPE SYNTAX Gauge32 MAX-ACCESS read-only STATUS current DESCRIPTION "The number of current associations to the network service application, where it is the responder. For dynamic single threaded processes, this will be the number of application instances." ::= {applEntry 8}
applOutboundAssociations OBJECT-TYPE SYNTAX Gauge32 MAX-ACCESS read-only STATUS current DESCRIPTION "The number of current associations to the network service application, where it is the initiator. For dynamic single threaded processes, this will be the number of application instances." ::= {applEntry 9}
applAccumulatedInboundAssociations OBJECT-TYPE SYNTAX Counter32 MAX-ACCESS read-only STATUS current DESCRIPTION "The total number of associations to the application entity since application initialization, where it was the responder. For dynamic single threaded processes, this will be the number of application instances." ::= {applEntry 10}
applAccumulatedOutboundAssociations OBJECT-TYPE SYNTAX Counter32 MAX-ACCESS read-only STATUS current DESCRIPTION "The total number of associations to the application entity since application initialization, where it was the initiator. For dynamic single threaded processes, this will be the number of application instances." ::= {applEntry 11}
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applLastInboundActivity OBJECT-TYPE SYNTAX TimeStamp MAX-ACCESS read-only STATUS current DESCRIPTION "The value of sysUpTime at the time this application last had an inbound association. If the last association occurred prior to the last initialization of the network subsystem, then this object contains a zero value." ::= {applEntry 12}
applLastOutboundActivity OBJECT-TYPE SYNTAX TimeStamp MAX-ACCESS read-only STATUS current DESCRIPTION "The value of sysUpTime at the time this application last had an outbound association. If the last association occurred prior to the last initialization of the network subsystem, then this object contains a zero value." ::= {applEntry 13}
applRejectedInboundAssociations OBJECT-TYPE SYNTAX Counter32 MAX-ACCESS read-only STATUS current DESCRIPTION "The total number of inbound associations the application entity has rejected, since application initialization." ::= {applEntry 14}
applFailedOutboundAssociations OBJECT-TYPE SYNTAX Counter32 MAX-ACCESS read-only STATUS current DESCRIPTION "The total number associations where the application entity is initiator and association establishment has failed, since application initialization." ::= {applEntry 15}
-- The assocTable augments the information in the applTable -- with information about associations. Note that two levels -- of compliance are specified below, depending on whether -- association monitoring is mandated.
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assocTable OBJECT-TYPE SYNTAX SEQUENCE OF AssocEntry MAX-ACCESS not-accessible STATUS current DESCRIPTION "The table holding a set of all active application associations." ::= {application 2}
assocEntry OBJECT-TYPE SYNTAX AssocEntry MAX-ACCESS not-accessible STATUS current DESCRIPTION "An entry associated with an association for a network service application." INDEX {applIndex, assocIndex} ::= {assocTable 1}
assocIndex OBJECT-TYPE SYNTAX INTEGER (1..2147483647) MAX-ACCESS not-accessible STATUS current DESCRIPTION "An index to uniquely identify each association for a network service application." ::= {assocEntry 1}
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assocRemoteApplication OBJECT-TYPE SYNTAX DisplayString MAX-ACCESS read-only STATUS current DESCRIPTION "The name of the system running remote network service application. For an IP-based application this should be either a domain name or IP address. For an OSI application it should be the string encoded distinguished name of the managed object. For X.400(84) MTAs which do not have a Distinguished Name, the RFC1327 [6] syntax 'mta in globalid' should be used." ::= {assocEntry 2}
assocApplicationProtocol OBJECT-TYPE SYNTAX OBJECT IDENTIFIER MAX-ACCESS read-only STATUS current DESCRIPTION "An identification of the protocol being used for the application. For an OSI Application, this will be the Application Context. For Internet applications, the IANA maintains a registry of the OIDs which correspond to well-known applications. If the application protocol is not listed in the registry, an OID value of the form {applTCPProtoID port} or {applUDProtoID port} are used for TCP-based and UDP-based protocols, respectively. In either case 'port' corresponds to the primary port number being used by the protocol." ::= {assocEntry 3}
assocApplicationType OBJECT-TYPE SYNTAX INTEGER { ua-initiator(1), ua-responder(2), peer-initiator(3), peer-responder(4)} MAX-ACCESS read-only STATUS current DESCRIPTION "This indicates whether the remote application is some type of client making use of this network service (e.g. a User Agent) or a server acting as a peer. Also indicated is whether the remote end initiated an incoming connection to the network service or responded to an outgoing connection made by the local application." ::= {assocEntry 4}
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assocDuration OBJECT-TYPE SYNTAX TimeStamp MAX-ACCESS read-only STATUS current DESCRIPTION "The value of sysUpTime at the time this association was started. If this association started prior to the last initialization of the network subsystem, then this object contains a zero value." ::= {assocEntry 5}
applCompliance MODULE-COMPLIANCE STATUS current DESCRIPTION "The compliance statement for SNMPv2 entities which implement the Network Services Monitoring MIB for basic monitoring of network service applications." MODULE -- this module MANDATORY-GROUPS {applGroup} ::= {applCompliances 1}
assocCompliance MODULE-COMPLIANCE STATUS current DESCRIPTION "The compliance statement for SNMPv2 entities which implement the Network Services Monitoring MIB for basic monitoring of network service applications and their associations." MODULE -- this module MANDATORY-GROUPS {applGroup, assocGroup} ::= {applCompliances 2}
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-- Units of conformance
applGroup OBJECT-GROUP OBJECTS { applName, applVersion, applUptime, applOperStatus, applLastChange, applInboundAssociations, applOutboundAssociations, applAccumulatedInboundAssociations, applAccumulatedOutboundAssociations, applLastInboundActivity, applLastOutboundActivity, applRejectedInboundAssociations, applFailedOutboundAssociations} STATUS current DESCRIPTION "A collection of objects providing basic monitoring of network service applications." ::= {applGroups 1}
assocGroup OBJECT-GROUP OBJECTS { assocRemoteApplication, assocApplicationProtocol, assocApplicationType, assocDuration} STATUS current DESCRIPTION "A collection of objects providing basic monitoring of network service applications' associations." ::= {applGroups 2}
-- OIDs of the form {applTCPProtoID port} are intended to be used -- for TCP-based protocols that don't have OIDs assigned by other -- means. {applUDPProtoID port} serves the same purpose for -- UDP-based protocols. In either case 'port' corresponds to -- the primary port number being used by the protocol. For example, -- assuming no other OID is assigned for SMTP, an OID of -- {applTCPProtoID 25} could be used, since SMTP is a TCP-based -- protocol that uses port 25 as its primary port.
RFC 1565 Network Services Monitoring MIB January 1994
6. Acknowledgements
This document is a product of the Mail and Directory Management (MADMAN) Working Group. It is based on an earlier MIB designed by S. Kille, T. Lenggenhager, D. Partain, and W. Yeong.
7. References
[1] Case, J., McCloghrie, K., Rose, M., and S. Waldbusser, "Structure of Management Information for version 2 of the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMPv2)", RFC 1442, SNMP Research, Inc., Hughes LAN Systems, Dover Beach Consulting, Inc., Carnegie Mellon University, April 1993.
[2] McCloghrie, K., and M. Rose, Editors, "Management Information Base for Network Management of TCP/IP-based internets: MIB-II", STD 17, RFC 1213, Hughes LAN Systems, Performance Systems International, March 1991.
[2] Galvin, J., and K. McCloghrie, "Administrative Model for version 2 of the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMPv2)", RFC 1445, Trusted Information Systems, Hughes LAN Systems, April 1993.
[4] Case, J., McCloghrie, K., Rose, M., and S. Waldbusser, "Protocol Operations for version 2 of the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMPv2)", RFC 1448, SNMP Research, Inc., Hughes LAN Systems, Dover Beach Consulting, Inc., Carnegie Mellon University, April 1993.
[5] Kille, S., "A String Representation of Distinguished Names", RFC 1485, ISODE Consortium, July 1993.
[6] Kille, S., "Mapping between X.400(1988) / ISO 10021 and RFC822", RFC 1327, University College London, May 1992.
8. Security Considerations
Security issues are not discussed in this memo.
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Authors' Addresses
Steve Kille, WG Chair ISODE Consortium The Dome, The Square Richmond TW9 1DT UK
Phone: +44 81 332 9091 EMail: S.Kille@isode.com
Ned Freed, Editor Innosoft International, Inc. 250 West First Street, Suite 240 Claremont, CA 91711 USA
