Laurent Andrey

Survey of SNMP performance analysis studies

This paper provides a survey of Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)-related performance studies. Over the last 10 years, a variety of such studies have been published. Performance benchmarking of SNMP, like all benchmarking studies, is a non-trivial task that requires substantial effort to be performed well and achieve its purpose. In many cases, existing studies have employed different techniques, metrics, scenarios and parameters. The reason for this diversity is the absence of a common framework for SNMP performance analysis. Without such a framework, results of SNMP-related performance studies cannot easily be compared, extended or reused. It is therefore important to start a research activity to define such a framework. Such research activity should start from analysing previous studies on this topic to reveal their employed methods. In this survey we examine these studies by classifying and discussing them. We present techniques, approaches and metrics employed by these studies to quantify the performance of SNMP-based applications.

On the impact of management on the performance of a managed system: a JMX-Based management case study

Studying the performance of a distributed system without taking care on the impact of its management system will falsify the understanding of its overall performance, especially its productivity. We propose a metric called MIM (Management Impact Metric) to evaluate this impact by varying one or several impact factors related to the management system within a management strategy of the managed system. We show the accuracy and interest of our metric on a managed J2EE application server that uses a management architecture based on the JMX standard.

Integration of WBEM-based management agents in the OSI framework

In this paper, we propose a set of mappings and an implementation of an integration agent allowing WBEM-based agents implementing a CIM information model to be managed by OSI-based management platforms and applications. Extending existing integration approaches, this paper provides three original items that are the support of the CIM meta-model in an OSI agent, the mapping of relationships onto GRM specifications as well as a full Java-based implementation of the Q.adapter.

Performance of network and service monitoring frameworks

The efficiency and the performance of management systems is becoming a hot research topic within the networks and services management community. This concern is due to the new challenges of large scale managed systems, where the management plane is integrated within the functional plane and where management activities have to carry accurate and up-to-date information.

On delays in management frameworks: metrics, models and analysis

Management performance evaluation means assessment of scalability, complexity, accuracy, throughput, delays and resources consumptions. In this paper, we focus on the evaluation of management frameworks delays through a set of specific metrics. We investigate the statistical properties of these metrics when the number of management nodes increases. We show that management delays measured at the application level are statistically modeled by distributions with heavy tails, especially the Weibull distribution. Given that delays can substantially degrade the capacity of management algorithms to react and resolve problems it is useful to get a finer model to describe them. We suggest the Weibull distribution as a model of delays for the analysis and simulations of such algorithms.

RelMan: a GRM-based relationship manager

The modeling of physical and logical network resources provides the main interface to network management software applications. The object-oriented information model defined in the OSI managment framework provides notations to specify such interfaces. This framework has been recently extended with a relationship model. Relationship modeling adds informations upon isolated object specifications and offers new services for the management of these relationships. In this paper, we address some practical issues on network management architectures. To implement this new model, we start from relationship specifications up to the provision of a relationship service within the manager role of a managment system. Our study outlines some lacks in the standardized relationship model and extends the notations with new statements to allow the development of a generic relationship provider. We also present a simple prototype that works on our Managed Object Development Environment. This prototype is a first implementation towards a complete tool for relationship management.

J/sup TMN/: a Java-based TMN development and experimentation environment

Java technology has largely entered the world of element, network, and service management and has undoubtedly proven useful in combination with the SNMP framework for both manager and agent side developments. However, very few experiments have been made so far trying to provide an in-depth integration of this technology within the TMN framework. In this paper we present a free software which offers a generic environment which provides a basis for reaching this integration. This environment, called J/sup TMN/, is composed of a set of Java software packages which enable both development and deployment of TMN compliant components. Not bound to any specific management platform and easily portable to any TMN system, its goal is to allow experimentation and deployment of more advanced features such as mobile agents, active network management, and advanced delegation in harmony with existing TMN approaches.

On the Impact of Management Instrumentation Models on Web Server Performance: A JMX Case Study

JMX (Java Management eXtension) is a Java framework that allows any Java technology-based application or accessible resource to become easily manageable. This standard begins to be widely used within different managed systems which vary from large mainframes to small mobile devices, limited in both resource and computing capacity. Today, little is known about the costs associated with the manageability of a system. In this paper, we analyse the impact of various instrumentation models on the behavior of both the functional and the management plane. We show on a JMX instrumented web server that the service is highly affected by the management activity in driver and component models while a daemon approach limits the management impact on the functional service.

A practical experience on validating GDMO-based information models with SDL'88 and '92

Publisher Summary This chapter presents the results obtained in several activities within which Specification and Description Language (SDL) for the validation and interactive simulation of Open Systems Interconnection-based Management Information Models is used. The chapter presents the result from a field trial in the area of Information Model validation using SDL’88 and also presents a consequent work—an experience in developing the tool MODERES for the automated generation of SDL’92 specifications from Guidelines for the Definition of Managed Objects (GDMO)-based specification for the purpose of Management Agent simulation. The chapter identifies the need to provide translation facilities from GDMO to SDL’92 to speed up the process of Information Model formalization.

COJ: a free CMIS compliant Java API and its various implementations

Despite the potential advantages of the Java technology, very few experiments have been made so far on trying to provide an in depth integration of this technology with the TMN framework. To foster the experimentation of these advantages, we present a generic and free Java API developed for both OSI CMIS Manager and Agent sides. The main objective of this API is provide a solid basis for researchers and developers in order to allow large OSI as well as integration environment developments to take advantage of the Java technology combined with the OSI framework.