CN100484031C - Extendable network managing system and method - Google Patents

Abstract

This is one kind of extendable net managing system. In the SNMP management, Manager has the interaction with the Agent who stays in the managed equipment by the MIB. Through the interaction, the Manager controls the managed equipment and sets the configure managing system(CMS)in the local net side or the upper managing center. This system includes the configure managing modular, the equipment managing modular, the connection managing modular and the screen displaying modular, which can address the problem of the introduction of the equipment in the CMS and the maintaining problem.

Description

A scalable network management system and method

technical field

The invention relates to the communication field, in particular to a network management technology.

Background technique

There are generally hardware and software systems distributed in the network system, and each hardware and software system will provide its own local management and maintenance tools, such as CLI-based command line management tools, graphical interface-based management tools, and Web-based configuration management consoles etc. These management tools provide convenient management means for local maintenance of network administrators.

SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) ensures that management information is transmitted between any two points, making it easy for network administrators to retrieve information, modify it, and find faults at any node on the network; complete fault diagnosis, capacity planning, and report generation. It uses a polling mechanism and provides the most basic feature set. Applicable transport layer protocol UDP.

As shown in Figure 1, the existing SNMP network management model includes the following key elements: SNMP management station (Manager), SNMP agent (Agent), management information base (MIB) and managed device (ManagedDevice). The SNMP management station is generally a separate device, which is the interface between the network administrator and the network management system. The managed device is a node in the network, sometimes called a network element. The managed device can be any one of routers, switches, bridges, hubs, and hosts. Each network device that supports SNMP runs an SNMP agent; The SNMP agent is a network management software module residing on the managed device, responsible for collecting and storing management information, and recording various conditions of network devices. The management information base is an information repository maintained by the SNMP agent, and it is a collection of information with hierarchical characteristics, which can be controlled by the network management system. Various data objects are defined in the management information base. As a collection of SNMP management station access points set up in the SNMP agent, the management station can control, configure or monitor network devices by directly controlling these data objects.

The SNMP management station performs management work through the SNMP agent. One of the main functions of the SNMP agent is to assist the SNMP management station to complete the management work of the entire network. The SNMP agent regularly collects the information of the managed devices, and the collected information will be used to determine whether an independent network device, a part of the network or the entire network is running normally. The SNMP management station regularly queries the SNMP agent to collect information about the operating status, configuration, and performance of the managed devices.

SNMP divides MIB variables into scalar and table variables:

a) scalar

For some simple variables, it can only have a unique value in the device, which is called a scalar. The scalar identification method is to add .0 after the OID value of its leaf node.

b) gauge

Some variables, which have multiple different values in the device, are called gauges. A meter is identified by its parent node, which is called an Entry node for the time being. The Entry node is defined as a "sequence" type (SEQUENCE), and defines an index method for its child nodes (tables). The Entry node actually defines an Entry of the table (a row of the table). A row of a table corresponds to an instance of the table.

At present, the alarms and performance data of each system in the network computer room are usually managed by a unified network management system through the SNMP protocol. However, for device configuration management, most devices provide their own local maintenance consoles. There are various forms of local maintenance consoles. Interconnect protocols to managed devices also vary. Therefore, with the diversification and increase in the number of devices in the network system, network managers may face dozens or even hundreds of devices. It brings a very large workload and unnecessary complexity to network management. At the same time, there is also such a problem that the equipment in the network may be constantly updated. If the configuration management system does not have the ability to quickly respond to various changes and flexibly integrate various types of equipment management functions, its own maintenance must require more workload.

Contents of the invention

In view of this, the present invention provides an expandable network management system and method, and the system configuration and maintenance are simple.

In order to achieve the above object, the technical solution of the present invention is specifically realized in the following way:

An extensible network management system. In SNMP network management, the SNMP management station Manager interacts with the SNMP agent Agent residing in the managed device through the management information base MIB to manage the managed device. A configuration management system CMS is set up at the side or the upper-level network management center, which includes a configuration management module, a device management module, a connection management module and an interface display module;

The configuration management module completes the mapping and maintenance of the configuration items from the device to the configuration system according to the configuration data identification;

A device management module, configured to maintain a list of device instances of the CMS and device types supported by the CMS;

The connection management module is used to provide an interface for sending SNMP requests and receiving SNMP responses and alarms to the configuration management module and the device management module;

The interface display module reads the latest device type list from the device management module, reads the function tree corresponding to the device type from the configuration management module, and generates a function configuration interface.

The CMS interacts with the device side through the SNMP protocol.

The CMS classifies the configuration data of the managed devices to form a configuration function tree corresponding to the device type.

The system uses SYSID to identify managed devices, and uses FUNCID to represent leaf nodes on the function tree.

The leaf node contains at least one atomic configuration item or a table containing at least one row of records.

The atomic configuration item is the smallest unit managed by the CMS.

The CMS uniquely identifies the configuration items it manages through SYSID, FID, and OID.

The FID is composed of FUNCID connections on the key path of the leaf nodes of the function tree.

The CMS allocates a deployment area for storing configuration description files and interface files for device deployment.

Each managed device type in the deployment area has an independent directory, and the directory includes at least one device configuration file containing the device type identifier.

The configuration description file defines the device type, the function items on the device side and the information required by the configuration management module.

In the interface display module,

For scalar data and static table type function items, the function configuration interface provides query and modification operations;

For function items of dynamic table type, the function configuration interface provides query, modification, addition and deletion operations.

The interface display module provides a common interface display mode and a custom interface mode.

The method for loading the device configuration description file by the configuration management module is applied to the above-mentioned scalable network management system, and includes the following steps:

A. Detect the deployment area to determine whether there is a device identification, if so, load the device configuration description file and interface file, otherwise, do not load;

B. Create a timing detection task, start the timer, and if the timer times out, execute step A.

The device identifier includes the device identifier at initialization, the new device identifier and the device identifier of content update.

An extensible network management method is applied to the above-mentioned extensible network management system, and new equipment is included in the configuration management system CMS, including the following steps:

A. Obtain the standard network management interface file of the new device, and analyze the OID that needs to be included in the CMS;

B. Construct a function tree according to the interface display form;

C. Determine whether the leaf node of the function tree needs to be customized on the configuration interface. If the leaf node is a scalar data function item, it does not need to be customized; if it is a table data function item, it needs to be customized;

D. Provide the device configuration description file and MIB file of the function item, and deploy the file to the CMS.

In step C, the customized web interface needs to be queried and set in the MIB of the new device,

When the interface is queried, the open query interface of the CMS is called according to the OID, and the interface returns the query result;

When the interface is set, submit the OID set to be set and the collected OID value, write data to the device profile, and return a response.

In step D, the main body of providing the device configuration description file includes a general interface and a customized interface.

Compared with the prior art, based on the description of the characteristics of the above-mentioned system method, the system is convenient for configuration and maintenance.

Description of drawings

Fig. 1 is the schematic diagram of prior art SNMP network management model;

Fig. 2 is a schematic diagram of the device type configuration function tree structure of the present invention;

Fig. 3 is a flowchart of an example of adding equipment to the system of the present invention.

Detailed ways

In order to make the object, technical solution and advantages of the present invention clearer, the present invention will be further described in detail below in conjunction with specific implementation methods and accompanying drawings.

The present invention provides an expandable network management system. In SNMP network management, the SNMP management station Manager interacts with the SNMP agent Agent residing in the managed equipment through the management information base MIB, and the SNMP agent manages the described managed equipment. , and set up a configuration management system CMS on the local network side of the device or the upper-level network management center, the system includes a configuration management module, a device management module, a connection management module and an interface display module.

The configuration management module identifies the configuration data of the device according to certain rules, and provides a set of interfaces for describing the identification data. The equipment to be connected needs to describe its own configuration data according to the interface based on MIB and formulate configuration files, and deploy the description to this In the system, the configuration management module can bring this device into configuration management. The above-mentioned process is based on the premise that the Agent that needs to manage the configuration function has been implemented on the device side.

As shown in Figure 2, the SYSID uniquely identifies a certain type of managed device. The configuration items of the managed device can be divided into multiple functional categories according to their functions, and each functional category can be divided into multiple functional subcategories. Layer division forms the function tree of this type of equipment, and each leaf node on the function tree is identified by FuncID. The leaf node of this function tree is a collection containing multiple atomic configuration items or a table that can contain multiple rows of records. The atomic configuration item is a data unit that has specific meaning and can be represented by a simple data type, which is the smallest unit to be managed by this configuration management system, such as the system's IP address and port. Since the aforementioned atomic configuration items are usually defined as scalars in the MIB, the leaf nodes on the function tree of the device may be a set of scalars, or a table, which is defined as a table in the MIB. Based on the above-mentioned rules for hierarchical division of functional items, with the help of the OID definition of scalar and table quantities in MIB files, the configuration management system can uniquely identify any configuration item managed by the configuration management system through SYSID, FID, and OID, where FID is the function It consists of FuncID connections on the key path of the leaf nodes on the tree. For example, the system identifier SYSID of XX equipment is SYS01, and its configuration items are divided into three categories: Func1, Func2, and Func3. Among them, Func3 contains two SNMP scalar configuration items, which are system IP address (OID: 1.1.1.1), system monitor Port (OID: 1.1.1.2). Then SYS01-Func3-1.1.1.1 can uniquely identify the IP address of this system.

According to the above configuration data identification, the main job of the configuration management module is to complete the correspondence between the OID of the configuration data on the device instance and the configuration items on the configuration system, and maintain the mapping relationship. The configuration management module provides these data to the interface layer to generate the configuration interface; when the user modifies or queries a configuration item through the configuration interface, the configuration management module parses out the corresponding device instance ID and the configuration item OID on the device instance, Call the connection module to send SNMP requests to query or set the specified configuration on the specified device.

The configuration management module allocates a special deployment area for storing configuration description files and interface files for device deployment, loads device configuration description files from this area when the module is initialized, and creates custom detection tasks during module initialization to dynamically detect device configuration descriptions in the deployment area According to the rules given by the configuration system, the configuration description file defines the information required by the configuration management module, such as device type and function items on the device side. The workflow of loading device configuration description files and interface files by the configuration management module is shown in Figure 4.

Each managed device type in the deployment area has an independent directory. There is at least one device configuration file in the directory, which contains the device type identifier. The second directory contains the configuration description file, MIB interface file and other files that need to be customized. . When the configuration management module is initialized, it detects all device directories in the deployment area, discovers device identifiers, and loads configuration information. If the loading is successful, it will be marked in the device configuration file and interface file that the device has been loaded successfully. If the loading fails, the status will be marked as failure. Since there may be new device catalogs generated or content updated in the deployment area in the future, the scheduled detection task will regularly read the device configuration files and interface files in each device catalog, and the devices found to have loading flags will be reloaded as new devices. According to the above process, the configuration management module saves the latest device list, configuration description file and interface file of the system as the basis of the interface display layer and subsequent configuration. Complete the mapping and maintenance of the configuration items from the device to the configuration system according to the configuration data identification;

The device management module is used to maintain the device instance list of the CMS and the device types supported by the CMS. One of the functions of the device management module is to maintain a list of device instances managed by the configuration system. There may be multiple instances of the same device deployed in the managed network. Even if there is only one instance of a certain device type, the address and port of the device need to be known before the configuration management system can connect to it through the protocol. Therefore, the configuration management system needs to be maintained. A list of device instances corresponding to the device type. Another function of the device management module is to maintain the device types supported by the configuration system, read the configuration description file and interface file of the device during the system configuration loading process or timing detection tasks, and define the type identification of the device in these files. The identifier should be the same as the identifier value of the system node in the MIB on the device side. If the value is not the same, the device type is considered to be mismatched, and the device will not be added to the configuration management system CMS.

The connection management module is used to provide an interface for sending SNMP requests and receiving SNMP responses and alarms to the configuration management module and the device management module;

The interface display module reads the latest device type list from the device management module, reads the function tree corresponding to the device type from the configuration management module, and generates a function configuration interface.

In the configuration management module, it is described that the system can maintain the device types currently supported by the system and the configuration description files and interface files of each device through the detection mechanism. The device configuration description files include the function items that the device needs to manage, the organizational form of the function items, The configuration items contained in the function items and the corresponding resources, and the MIB file of the configuration items is also provided on the device side. The interface display module reads the latest device type list from the device management module, reads the function tree corresponding to each device type from the configuration management module, and generates a function configuration interface that is convenient for user navigation; when the user finds the When the function sub-item is selected, the interface display module obtains the list of devices of this type currently managed by the system from the device management module according to the device type where the function sub-item is located, and displays it on the interface; at the same time, according to the configuration list corresponding to this function in the configuration management module and The MIB file of the device generates the configuration interface of this function item.

For function items that contain all scalar data, the configuration interface provides query and modification operations. The modification interface is generated based on the type and range of configuration items contained in this function item in the MIB file, and the logic of input values is performed based on this when the modification is submitted. Validation; for table-type function items, it is divided into static table and dynamic table processing: the processing of static table is the same as that of scalar function items, the difference is that the function items containing scalar have only one row of records, while the table data has multiple rows of records. Static table data only supports query and modification; for function items corresponding to dynamic tables, the interface provides addition and deletion operations in addition to query and modification operations.

Since all configuration items of the device can be uniquely identified by SYSID+FID+OID, the configuration interface generated according to the above rules can meet all requirements. However, in practice, each device has various special requirements when displaying the interface. Therefore, the interface display module not only provides a common interface mode, but also allows the device to customize the interface. These customized interfaces are described in the device description managed by the configuration management module. It is specified in the file and integrated by the interface display module according to the configuration. The unit of this customized interface is the leaf function in the device function tree. When the user navigates to the customized function item on the interface, the configuration interface framework will display the configuration interface provided by the device.

Based on the above configuration management system, as shown in Figure 3, if a device supporting the SNMP protocol needs to access the configuration management system for device configuration management, the required steps are as follows:

Step A: The network management personnel want to incorporate the newly added equipment in the computer room into the configuration management system, first obtain the standard network management interface file of the new equipment, and analyze which OIDs need to be included in the configuration management system management;

Step B: Organize these configuration items into a function tree according to the expected display form on the interface. For the construction rules of the function tree, please refer to the introduction of the configuration management module;

Step C: Analyze whether each leaf function item of the function tree needs to customize the configuration interface. For the case where the configuration items under the function item are all scalar, there is generally no need to customize, and each configuration item can be queried and set independently; for table data, there may be correlations between configuration items or function items, and the general interface cannot satisfy such Requirements require special customization of the interface.

Step D: For functional items with special interface requirements, this step is required. This step requires the customizer to have certain experience in Web interface and software development. Custom developers develop web interfaces according to their own special needs, and the elements that need to be queried and set in the interface can correspond to certain OIDs in the MIB of the new device. When the page submits a query, the customized page organizes the OID of the element to be queried, calls the query interface opened by the configuration system, and the interface returns the query result; when the customized page sets some OIDs, submit the OID set to be set and the collected information on the interface OID value, call the setting API provided by the configuration system, write data to the device, and return a response.

Step E: Regardless of whether it is a general page or a customized page, a description file of the configuration function item needs to be provided. This file contains the information required by the configuration management module and the interface display module

Step F: Deploy the configuration description files, customized pages and components to the deployment directory of the configuration management system through manual addition, file upload, and HTTP upload, and bring them into the management of the configuration management system.

Step G: After successful deployment, network administrators can manage the newly added network devices through the configuration management system.

It can be seen from the above process that for devices supporting the SNMP protocol, if there is only a general interface requirement, the device can be included in the configuration management system for management and maintenance of the device only by providing a configuration file.

However, the above is only a preferred embodiment of the present invention, and is not intended to limit the protection scope of the present invention. Any person familiar with the technical field should recognize that within the scope of the spirit and principles of the present invention, any Modifications, equivalent replacements, improvements, etc., should all be included within the protection scope of the present invention.

Claims (18)

1. extendible network management system, in the SNMP network management, to act on behalf of Agent mutual with residing in SNMP in the managed devices through management information bank MIB for snmp management station Manager, manage described managed devices, it is characterized in that, in equipment local network side or Upper NM Station center a configuration management system CMS is set, this system comprises Configuration Manager, device management module, connection management module and showing interface module;

Configuration Manager is finished mapping and the maintenance of equipment to the configuration item of configuration-system according to the configuration data sign;

Device management module is used to safeguard the device instance tabulation of described CMS and the device type that described CMS supports;

The connection management module is used for providing the interface that sends the SNMP request, receives SNMP response and alarm to Configuration Manager and device management module;

Showing interface module, slave unit administration module read the tabulation of up-to-date device type, read the functional tree of described device type correspondence, systematic function configuration interface from Configuration Manager.

2. system according to claim 1 is characterized in that, described CMS and equipment side are mutual by snmp protocol.

3. system according to claim 1 is characterized in that, described CMS forms the configuration feature tree of device type correspondence therewith with the configuration data classification of managed devices.

4. system according to claim 3 is characterized in that, identifies managed devices with SYSID, with the leaf node on the FUNCID presentation function tree.

5. system according to claim 4 is characterized in that, described leaf node comprises at least one atom configuration item or comprises the form of at least one line item.

6. system according to claim 5 is characterized in that, described atom configuration item is the least unit of this CMS management.

7. system according to claim 4 is characterized in that, described CMS is by SYSID, FID, its configuration item of being managed of OID unique identification.

8. system according to claim 7 is characterized in that, described FID is connected to form by the FUNCID on the functional tree leaf node critical path.

9. system according to claim 1 is characterized in that, described CMS branch is used in the configuration describing document of storage equipment deployment and the deployment district of interface document.

10. system according to claim 9 is characterized in that, each device type of being managed has an independent catalogue in the described deployment district, comprises a device configuration file that comprises the device type sign in this catalogue at least.

11. system according to claim 9 is characterized in that, the information that the function items of described configuration describing document define equipment type, equipment side and described Configuration Manager need.

12. system according to claim 1 is characterized in that, in the described showing interface module, for the function items of scalar data and static table type, the functional configuration interface provides inquiry, retouching operation; For the function items of dynamic table type, the functional configuration interface provides inquiry, modification, increase and deletion action.

13. system according to claim 1 is characterized in that, described showing interface module provides general showing interface pattern and defined interface pattern.

14. the method for Configuration Manager loading equipemtn configuration describing document, it is characterized in that, be applied in a kind of extendible network management system as claimed in claim 9, may further comprise the steps: A. detects and disposes the district, judged whether device identification,, loaded this equipment disposition description document and interface document if having, otherwise, do not load;

B. create regularly detection task, start timer, this timer expiry, then execution in step A.

15. method according to claim 14 is characterized in that, the device identification of the device identification when described device identification comprises initialization, new equipment sign and content update.

16. an extendible network management is characterized in that, is applied in a kind of extendible network management system as claimed in claim 1, and newly-increased equipment is included among the configuration management system CMS, comprises the following steps:

A. obtain the standard network interface tube file of new equipment, analysis need be included the OID of CMS in;

B. according to displaying interface formal construction functional tree;

C. whether the leaf node of arbitration functions tree needs the customization of configuration interface, if leaf node is the scalar data function items, does not then need customization; If it is a table data function item, then need customization;

D., equipment disposition description document, the mib file of function items are provided, and this document is deployed to CMS.

17. method according to claim 16 is characterized in that, in step C, the Web interface of customization need be inquired about in the MIB of new equipment and be provided with,

When the interface is inquired about, call the open query interface of CMS according to OID, interface returns Query Result;

When layout setting, OID set that submission will be provided with and the OID value of collecting to the equipment side write data, and are returned response.

18. method according to claim 16 is characterized in that, in step D, the described equipment disposition description document main body that provides comprises General Purpose Interface and customization interface.

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