On 12 Jan 2011, at 19:43, mick wrote:
Solution
Brokers write information about themselves to files in a
well-known directory ( i.e. /var/run/qpid ). This allows any
running program or script to easily discover what brokers are
running, what ports they are listening to for which
transports,
and any other information that the brokers want to share. This
is strictly broker-based, and works whether or not
management is
enabled. Brokers only write the info, and non-brokers only
read
it. The info is in a simple, easily grepped name-value format,
whose names are tree-structured. For example:
"transports_tcp_port 6666". There is a single name-value pair
per line.
Hi.
One problem I see with this is that any "enterprise" management
system (definitions may vary) that may want to know this information
is not necessarily going to have local file-system access to all the
machines running the brokers, and the system doesn't lend itself to
automated service-discovery. Also, what about issues with, say,
running three brokers as three different users with various rights
trying to access the same files - I suppose a 'qpid' user or group
can own the directory? There is also the issue of other operating
systems and platforms, particularly Windows Server, but that is also
just a matter of convention.
Couldn't a mature technology like SNMP, which has a large ecosystem
of services, tools and SDKs, be used instead?
We could define and publish a MIB for Qpid, that can become an
officially published standard. SNMP lends itself well to describing
arbitrary name/value key-pairs, and is an even better choice for
periodic updating of data with counters and sending of traps for
events, and so on. In fact, it's only the publishing, not the data
collection or generation mechanism that is different. Then we just
have the broker publish to SNMP instead. Also, "grep" as an
information retrieval tool tool is not going to go down well with the
HP OpenView or SolarWinds type of user, although I suppose a
translator agent could be provided to read and re-publish the /var/
run file data.
Cheers,
Andrew.
--
-- andrew d kennedy ? do not fold, bend, spindle, or mutilate ;
-- http://grkvlt.blogspot.com/ ? edinburgh : +44 7582 293 255 ;
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