[nv-l] Switch management and port status monitoring

[James Markham <markhaja@us.ibm.com>]

I'm back with another short survey regarding
switch management/layer 2 support to better understand how customers might
use port status monitoring. Participation is voluntary. Your responses
will be very helpful in determining future design direction.

1.  How many switches do you have
in your network environment?

2.  If you could, how many switches
would you like to monitor?

3.  If you could do port status
monitoring on your switches, How would you like to specify the switches
to monitor? For example, by hostname, IP address, OID, wildcards, others?

a. If you could prioritize a particular
mechanism for specifying switches, 

1.  What method would be the most
important to you? 
2.  What method would be the least
important? 
3.  Are there particular combinations
that are most important in your environment?

b.  Briefly describe the approach
you would like to use to configure the switches you would like to monitor.

For example, "I would select  to
monitor all switches in a given IP address range, and then I'd exclude
certain switches in that address range based on their OID. I'd repeat this
for other address ranges." or "I'd monitor the switches in my
environment if there hostname contained the string, "*core*"."

4.  What types of ports would you
want to monitor on a switch? For example:
 All ports, Trunk ports, Ports
connected to another switch or router, Ports assigned to specific VLANs...

What combinations are most important
to you? 

5.  Would you monitor for different
information if it was a core vs. access switch, or core vs. cascaded? If
so, what would be the different things you would want to monitor?

6.  What other type of information
is important to monitor about a switch?

7.  How do you work with VLANs
today?
a.  What type of information would
you like to see regarding VLANs?

8.  Would you want to monitor different
information for a switch if you were monitoring it for one of your customers,
rather than a switch within your own company's infrastructure? If so, what
would you do differently?

9.  What tools do you currently
use to monitor your switches? What valuable information do they provide?

10.  How do you currently diagnose
problems with your switches? What tool helps the most, and how does it
help?

Thank you!

Jim Markham
Interaction Design
Tivoli Systems
IBM Software Group
Email: markhaja@us.ibm.com
T/L 687-1405, (919)224-1405