A Management Architecture for Internet Information Services

We present a hierarchical management scheme for Internet Information Services. The proposed architecture is based on the SNMP management protocol and achieves scaleability through the use of multiple levels of manager components and the introduction of a uniform interaction interface between all components (manager-toagent, manager-to-manager). The hierarchy consists of at least three layers: the agent, the domain manager/ remote monitoring agent (DM/RMA) and the management station (MS). At the lowest layer SNMP agents are installed on the systems hosting Information Services entities (http, ftp, wais, gopher servers and their dependent applications). The agent is responsible for monitoring and gathering first-hand management information, being as light-weighted as possible by performing minimal calculation. The DM/RMA is a dual role module that acts as a manager monitoring a group of IS systems by polling the associated agents, implementing alarm procedures, producing higher level management information and calculating QoS parameters & indicators within the scope of its managed domain. Domains are defined by geographical, economical, organisational or other criteria and may include not only agents but also other DM/RMA modules, thus expanding the hierarchy layers beyond three. The DM/RMA is viewed as an agent from the MS perspective; the MS polls multiple DM/RMAs through SNMP (ismMIB) and handles the asynchronous notifications generated by them, providing a top-level filtering mechanism that produces a set of higher level QoS metrics targeted to both the IS manager and the IS end-user. Multiple MS components may be responsible for different functional or geographical areas. Two Management Information Base (MIB) modules are maintained for structuring the management information collected & stored and defining the interaction semantics between components. Note: This research was partly funded by the EU R&D Telematics Project “DESIRE: RE 1004”. A prototype with a version of the isnMIB and a modified architecture with 2 levels of managers (without the ismMIB) will be implemented within DESIRE. A Management Architecture for Internet Information Services