Conference azur::mcc

    As of now, the plan is to support DEC servers only.
    
    Once we move to SNMP-managed terminal servers, that could change. 
    Until then, TSAM is HEAVILY dependant on the user interface.  As
    close to DEC TS interfaces as most competitors are, it would still be
    unreasonable to try to support them all for now.
    
     - Linda Cardani

    Even when DEC terminal servers move to SNMP - other vendor's servers
    will need to be managed differently.  There is an IETF TERMINAL SERVER
    MIB (experimental at this point), which many terminal servers will no
    doubt migrate to.  The DEC terminal server will use the IETF ASCII MIB
    (experimental also), to move data back and forth between the SNMP
    manager and the TS-SNMP Agent.  Since any ASCII management depends on a
    lot of good parsing - support of other vendors who try to clone the DEC
    terminal server will be as good as the vendor is at cloning.  I would
    not expect Digital to support other vendor's poor cloning.
    
    bill

    DECmcc is an open system. If Emulex wishes to provide an Access
    Module to support their terminal servers using an Emulex specific
    management protocol or they wish to provide proprietary MIB extensions
    beyond those in the standard IETF Terminal Server MIB they can do
    so. If they want most favored vendor status (similar to the usa's
    most favored nation trading status) they can negotiate that with
    the Strategic Vendor Program. In addition, if some other organization
    thinks they can make money by providing an Emulex specific AM they
    are free to do so (this includes integration services within DEC).
    If a DEC customer desires this enough to do it themselves or hire
    DEC to do it for them, I am sure we could do it.
    
    The DEC terminal server development group is not planning to support
    Emulex. Network Management Engineering will provide generic support
    via SNMP and OSI CMIP only and someone else is responsible to integrate
    the Emulex specific objects into the AM of choice. 
    
    Network Management Engineering has no intention of being exclusionary
    or blocking anyone from management of an object via DECmcc. We gladly
    encourage everyone to use it, that is why we are actively helping
    multiple third parties (ie. VitaLink, Stratacom for example). However,
    we and the terminal server development people, have a finite set of
    resources to work with. We have to use those resources where they can
    achieve the most good. I would believe that Emulex has the most to
    gain in this case and should be responsible to see that their products
    can be managed by DECmcc. 
    
    wally matthews
    

We are in the midde of a bid, evaluating what DECmcc can do with the standard 
AM's that exists today. The customer have mostly EMULEX servers.

Does anybody know if Emulex TS's have SNMP agent, or if they support the 
Console carrier protocol? If true, would it be possible to use the DECmcc TS AM?
If reduced functionality, it's o.k. I only wonder if anyone have tried this, or
know something about it.

Bj�rn Olav Haugom
Oslo

TSAM does not use SNMP, so the presence of an SNMP agent on a foreign terminal
server does not mean any TSAM support.  I fact, TSAM will not work on any
non-DEC terminal server due to TSAM's dependence on the terminal server user 
interface.  TSAM is actually "reading" ASCII output from the servers and 
translating it into MCC information.  This means that TSAM has to know exactly
what to expect in the user interface.  Foreign terminal server user interfaces 
are beyond our control and so TSAM really can't support them.

An SNMP agent in the terminal server does mean that it may be manageable via
the DECmcc SNMP AM though.  You would register the terminal servers as SNMP 
entities instead of as terminal_server entities.

 - Linda

Thank you.
Now I know better how it is implemented. So, even if they had the Console 
Carrier protocol implemented, it would give back information which the TSAM
wouldn't be able to understand, IF the infomation is different from our own 
terminal servers. But, is the information different? I've never seen output
from the EMULEX, so I better take a look at my customers servers first, perhaps.

Bj�rn Olav

Even if the foreign terminal server returned output which was 100%
identical, TSAM would not support it.  During registration, TSAM
requires you identify the server type, and the MOP ID for the server
must match, so there is no faking it out.

(By the way there is no such thing as 100%, even with our own terminal
servers... TSAM has special-case code inside for every server we do support.)

Yes, SNMP is the way to go...

-Dave

I don't want anyone to get the impression we deliberately decided not to support 
foreign terminal servers just to be difficult - the reason TSAM does the check
Dave mentions is because we can't guarantee what a foreign server user interface
will look like, as I and Dave said before.  

I think that Emulex does try to copy our user interface.  I know that Xyplex 
does.  But they don't copy it closely enough - there are all kinds of slight 
differences in keywords, punctuation, etc.  These differences seem trivial, but
they are enough to cause TSAM to return with bogus information from interpretting 
the screens wrong.

So the decision was made to only support the terminal servers we really "know" -
Digital's.  And like Dave said, that's hard enough because there are different 
groups that develop Digital terminal servers and they naturally come up with 
slightly different interfaces.

I know that reading and translating terminal server output seems like a crazy 
approach since it does bind TSAM to the servers so closely, but until SNMP is
fully implemnted on the servers, that's the way it is.

 - Linda

    Also, be carefull in bidding unannounced products!! If it isn't
    announced, you can't sell it.
    
    s/rob

Thanks for many informative answers. ABout the selling-aspect, I can only 
answer that DECmcc is not a fast-selling product, and sometimes you need to
find out what functions will be available some months from now on. We DO try to
sell DECmcc as an Enterprise Management system, and then we have to prove that
it is so, or give our customers some ideas of what could be managed. With that,
we are not telling them how things works, but we have to be aware of it 
ourselves (at least how they are supposed to work).

Bj�rn Olav