David, > -----Original Message----- > From: Harrington, David [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2004 9:53 PM > To: Rainer Gerhards; Glenn Mansfield Keeni; [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: RE: SyslogMIB Issue-#4 // Issue-#2 > > Hi, > > SNMP is good at monitoring systems, but not as good at configuring > systems. The reason is fairly straightforward - Configuration > requires a > much more in-depth knowledge of the thing being managed than does > monitoring. > > I can tell if my car is working properly by asking some stock > questions > - does the motor start? Does it run without excessive and unexpected > noise? Do the tires inflate? Can you shift in various gears, > etc. But if > I had to actually build or repair a car, I would need to know > much more > about it. > > SNMP is designed to allow the development of standard mib modules, and > to let those be supplemented by vendor-specific mib modules. We should > work to find a common set of attributes that can be monitored. If we > also want to be able to do common configuration tasks, then we should > also try to identify a common set of configuration parameters.
Let me phrase my question rather bluntly: does it pay to provide a very minimal set of config settings given the fact that almost every vendor has very different ways to do this. Also, in my experience customers tend to use those vendor-specifc ways, simply because they need it. To be honest, I think we will be hesitant to implement standard configuration simply because I do not see any customer demand for such. I think we can put our ressources to efforts that receive a higher demand. It may just be my personal feeling ... what do the other implementors think? Rainer
