RE: REVIEW: draft-ietf-imss-fc-vf-mib-02.txt

["David B Harrington" <dbharrington@comcast.net>]

Hi,

Let me put my comments in a more actionable state for purposes of IESG
resolution:
 
It is appropriate in a MIB module to list RFC2578-80 (SMIv2) as
Normative, since they define the language used in the MIB.

It is appropriate in a MIB module to list RFC3410 as Informative,
because SNMP is not the only protocol that can transport MIB data, in
accordance with the Internet-Standard Management Framework.

This document may require documents in the RFC341x series (SNMPv3
standard) to be listed as Normative because they reference aspects of
SNMPv3 explicitly. But it seems bad practice to do this, and they
could eliminate the Normative reference by eliminating these
unnecessary references in the text.

> Section 5 says 
>    "This MIB module provides the means for monitoring the 
>    operation of, and configuring some parameters of, one or more 
>    instances of Fibre Channel Virtual Fabric functionality. 
>    (Note that there are no definitions in this MIB module of 
>    "managed actions" which can be invoked via SNMP.) "

The second sentence seems totally unnecessary. Implementers need to
know what is in the Mib module, not what is not in the MIB module.

> Section 5.1 saya:
>    "For example, one such grouping accommodates a single SNMP agent
> having 
>    multiple AgentX [RFC2741] sub-agents, with each sub-agent 
>    implementing a different Fibre Channel management instance. "

I recommend this implementation suggestion be removed. It is
unnecessary, and only one viable approach of many. The standard SMIv2
row-instancing should be adequate, as would different SNMP
contextNames or contextEngineIDs, or different SNMPv1 communtities.
Eliminating this unnecessary example would eliminate the only
reference to agentX.

> And
>    "The object, fcmInstanceIndex, is IMPORTed from the FC-MGMT-
>    MIB [RFC4044] as the index value to uniquely identify each 
>    Fibre Channel management instance within the same SNMP 
>    context ([RFC3411] section 3.3.1). "

Unless the use of fcmInstanceIndex somehow uniquely identifies each
instance in a manner that is not consistent with normally SMIv2 rules,
and it is not obvious to me that such is the case, then I think this
could be worded as:

    "The object, fcmInstanceIndex, is IMPORTed from the FC-MGMT-
    MIB [RFC4044] as the index value to uniquely identify each 
    Fibre Channel management instance. "
 
> "t11vfVirtualSwitchEntry" says 
> 	"With the definition and usage of virtual switches,
> fcmSwitchTable now applies to virtual switches which (unlike
physical
> fabrics) are create-able via SNMP."

This could be worded:
 	"With the definition and usage of virtual switches,
 fcmSwitchTable now applies to virtual switches as well as physical
 fabrics, and instances in the table may be created by a remote
management application."

Making these changes would eliminate any reference to RFC3411 and
RFC2741.


David Harrington
dharrington@huawei.com 
dbharrington@comcast.net
ietfdbh@comcast.net