At 8:19 AM -0700 4/11/05, Paxton wrote:
>on network modeling, have you all come up with your own model or used
>something existing? Or taken something existing and modified it?
>
>I have looked at CIM and after scratching my head for a few days finally
>realized that I think of the network in terms of associations, and CIM is
>laid out by generalizations (inheritance.) The associations are defined,
>but are sort of hard to find because of the generalization perspective. I
>don't want to get into a semantics discussion of what's right, I'm more
>interested in being able to hand a database to a network engineer and say:
>go for it. IMO a db schema laid out with CIM is too confusing because it
>isn't laid out according to associations, which is (IMO) how network
>engineers (vs IT modeling guys) see things.
Can you point us to any references for CIM? I'm not familiar with it.
>Anyway, I have done this before and we sort of took some clues from what
>was available at the time (SNMP and some vendor tools.) It wasn't exactly
>right, but I learned a lot from the experience. We put together the
>database for one specific tool, then realized afterwards how much else it
>could be used for. I believe the core piece missing is the network
>model/database, consider all the other parts (how to update devices,
>monitoring configuration changes, etc) as component services that the
>database enables. Not all the component parts have to be written for the
>database to have value, and not everyone will want to use the same
>component parts.
Bingo! I've been thinking much the same thing...
>Are you all interested in starting an open source project around this?
I don't know about anybody else, but I certainly am. I think that
such a "network database" would then become a platform upon which
much else could and would be built; like you said, though, it's
currently the core missing piece.
-Brent
--
Brent Chapman <brent@greatcircle.com> -- Great Circle Associates, Inc.
Specializing in network infrastructure for Silicon Valley since 1989
For info about us and our services, please see http://www.greatcircle.com/
Network Automation blog: http://www.greatcircle.com/blog/network_automation
Follow-Ups:
References:
|
|
