System and Method for Using SNMP in an Application Server Environment

• US 20090182849A1
• Filed: 01/15/2009
• Published: 07/16/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 01/15/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: BEA Systems Incorporated (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Inamdar, Rajendra, Shrivastava, Sandeep, Cico, Michael, Mousseau, Richard P.
• Granted Patent: US 8,001,228 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/220
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0213 Standardised network management protocols, e.g. simple network management protocol [SNMP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/046 comprising network management agents or mobile agents therefor
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/20 for managing network security; network security policies in general filtering policies H04L63/0227

Abstract

A system and method for sharing security information across multiple SNMP Agents running within a domain, including features such as dynamically extending SNMP MIB to expose customer MBeans with SNMP. The system includes a managed server instance of an application that hosts an SNMP agent. An agent or sub-agent is registered to the SNMP Agent on each managed server and there is a management information base which describes different management attributes that the application server exposes. A network-manager hosts a SNMP manager that communicates with the SNMP Agents. A non-application server specific MBean exposes a set of attributes about the application to the sub-agent and hosts the non-application server specific MBean in a dynamic MIB. The set of attributes are communicated through SNMP by the SNMP Agent to SNMP manager, to extend the SNMP MIB dynamically, and allow the non-application server specific MBean to be exposed through SNMP.

Claims

1. A system to dynamically extend a SNMP MIB to expose a customer MBean with SNMP comprising:

a managed server instance of an application that hosts a SNMP Agent;

an agent or sub-agent registered to said SNMP Agent on each managed server;

a management information base which describes different management attributes that the application server exposes; and

a network-manager that hosts a SNMP manager that communicates with said SNMP Agents,

wherein a non-application server specific MBean exposes a set of attributes about the application to the sub-agent and hosts the non-application server specific MBean in a dynamic MIB, and wherein the set of attributes are communicated through SNMP by the SNMP Agent to a SNMP manager, to extend the SNMP MIB dynamically, and allow the non-application server specific MBean to be exposed through SNMP.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein each managed server instance in the domain has its own SNMP Agent.

3. The system of claim 1 wherein the SNMP Agent on the managed server acts as a master agent to which a sub-agent can register.

4. The system of claim 1 wherein the SNMP manager exchanges monitoring and control information about systems and network resources through the SNMP Agent on an administration server.

5. The system of claim 1 wherein the network-manager views the sub-agent and the SNMP Agent as one entity, and wherein the sub-agent provides an extensibility mechanism to dynamically generate the MIB entries for a custom MBean.

6. The system of claim 1 further comprising a non-application specific application that exposes an attribute to an application server'"'"'s master agent, wherein as a result of the non-application specific application exposing the attribute to the application server'"'"'s master agent a dynamic MIB is created that hosts non-application server specific MBeans.

7. A method to dynamically extend a SNMP MIB to expose a customer MBean with SNMP comprising the steps of:

hosting a SNMP Agent on each managed server instance of an application server in a domain;

registering a sub-agent to said SNMP Agent on each managed server;

creating a dynamic MIB that hosts all non-application server specific MBeans managing and exposing a set of attributes about a non-application server specific application by a MBean;

exposing those attributes to the sub-agent registered to the SNMP Agent on the managed server by said MBean;

communicating said attributes through SNMP by the SNMP Agent to a SNMP manager which is communicating with the SNMP Agent running on the same application server;

wherein making said attributes available through SNMP to any SNMP manager extends the SNMP MIB to add said attributes into the SNMP MIB.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein each managed server instance in the domain has its own SNMP Agent.

9. The method of claim 7 wherein said SNMP Agent provides a read-only access to a MBean server.

10. The method of claim 7 wherein said SNMP Agent on said managed server will be configurable.

11. The method of claim 7 wherein each SNMP entity has a unique id within an application server domain.

12. The method of claim 7 further comprising the steps of:

configuring security aspects of SNMP on said SNMP manager, wherein the security aspects are centralized to said SNMP manager;

wherein a SNMP manager which is monitoring SNMP Agents running on different managed servers can directly go to individual SNMP Agents on those server to configure security aspects;

wherein the SNMP Agents can share information with other SNMP Agents in the domain.

13. A computer readable medium including instructions stored thereon which when executed cause the computer to perform the steps of:

hosting a SNMP Agent on each managed server instance of an application server in a domain;

registering a sub-agent to said SNMP Agent on each managed server;

creating a dynamic MIB that hosts all non-application server specific MBeans;

managing and exposing a set of attributes about a non-application server specific application by a MBean;

exposing those attributes to the sub-agent registered to the SNMP Agent on the managed server by said MBean;

communicating said attributes through SNMP by the SNMP Agent to a SNMP manager which is communicating with the SNMP Agent running on the same application server;

wherein making said attributes available through SNMP to any SNMP manager extends the SNMP MIB to add said attributes into the SNMP MIB.

14. The computer readable medium of claim 13 wherein each managed server instance in the domain has its own SNMP Agent.

15. The computer readable medium of claim 13 wherein said SNMP Agent provides a read-only access to a MBean server.

16. The computer readable medium of claim 13 wherein said SNMP Agent on said managed server will be configurable.

17. The computer readable medium of claim 13 wherein each SNMP entity has a unique id within an application server domain.

18. The computer readable medium of claim 13 further comprising instructions stored thereon which when executed cause the computer to perform the steps of:

configuring security aspects of SNMP on said SNMP manager, wherein the security aspects are centralized to said SNMP manager;

wherein a SNMP manager which is monitoring SNMP Agents running on different managed servers can directly go to individual SNMP Agents on those server to configure security aspects;

wherein the SNMP Agents can share information with other SNMP Agents in the domain.