Keiichi,

note that there is outdated text on page 9 that should be updated:

   The MIB module provides a few writable objects that can be used to
   make non-persistent changes, e.g., changing the memory allocation or
   the CPU allocation.  It is not the goal of this MIB module to provide
   a configuration interface for virtual machines since other protocols
   and data modeling languages are more suitable for this task.

In the security considerations, I assume Dan wants:

OLD

   There are two objects defined in this MIB,
   vmPerVMNotificationsEnabled and vmBulkNotificationsEnabled, that have
   a MAX-ACCESS clause of read-write.  Such objects may be considered
   sensitive or vulnerable in some network environments.

NEW

   There are two objects defined in this MIB,
   vmPerVMNotificationsEnabled and vmBulkNotificationsEnabled, that
   have a MAX-ACCESS clause of read-write. Enabling notifications can
   lead to a noticeable number of notifications if many virtual
   machines change their state concurrently. Hence, such objects may
   be considered sensitive or vulnerable in some network environments.

/js

On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 07:23:17AM +0000, Romascanu, Dan (Dan) wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I would still recommend that you add text in the Security Considerations 
> section in which you describe the risk of intentional or unintentional 
> misconfiguration of the two writeable objects in the MIB module. It would 
> also be useful to mention explicitly that the authors considered the risks of 
> multiplication of notification and evaluated it as manageable for all 
> reasonably designed and sized networks. 
> 
> Thanks and Regards,
> 
> Dan
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Juergen Schoenwaelder [mailto:j.schoenwaelder@jacobs-
> > university.de]
> > Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2015 9:47 AM
> > To: Keiichi SHIMA
> > Cc: Romascanu, Dan (Dan); [email protected];
> > [email protected]; [email protected]
> > Subject: Re: [OPSAWG] OPS-DIR review of draft-ietf-opsawg-vmm-mib-02
> > 
> > On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 10:45:48AM +0900, Keiichi SHIMA wrote:
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > >> 17.  I am concerned that the current way of defining the
> > > >> notifications switches is too course. Hypervisors may have many VMs
> > > >> in charge, and if each generates one notification per each state
> > > >> changes the numbers can become big even in normal operation. Maybe
> > > >> some throttling mechanism would be useful. Or maybe a couple of
> > > >> more switches that allow to enable only 'critical' notifications
> > > >> (e.g. vmCrashed).
> > > >
> > > > The only situation I can think of where the number of notifications
> > > > will be significant is during restart of a whole rack with many
> > > > hypervisors inside. But even then, things usually take time. (I
> > > > think our Xen hypervisors actually create virtual machines
> > > > sequentially and hence the notifications get actually spaced over
> > > > time.) It is not unlikely that the operating systems inside the
> > > > hypervisors during startup generate significantly more network
> > > > traffic compared to a few hypervisor notifications. That said,
> > > > during the development of the MIB module we moved from generic
> > state
> > > > change notifications to a set of specific notifications and this
> > > > allows to use SNMPv3 notification filtering to filter out notifications
> > people find not useful.
> > >
> > >
> > > I and Asai talked locally and we agree Juergen that the number of
> > notification events is manageable.
> > >
> > > However we noticed that the 'vmBlocked' notification may be a problem.
> > The 'blocked' state is defined as 'The operational state of the virtual 
> > machine
> > indicating the execution of the virtual machine is currently blocked, e.g.,
> > waiting for some action of the hypervisor to finish.  This is a transient 
> > state
> > from/to other states.'  This state transition event may appear more
> > frequently than other events, since the state is caused by the I/O scheduler
> > of the hyper visor implementation.
> > >
> > > We think we can simply remove the 'vmBlocked' notification.  The 'blocked'
> > state is a transient state and typically return to the previous state
> > immediately (once the pending I/O requests completed).
> > >
> > 
> > Yes, this makes sense to me.
> > 
> > /js
> > 
> > --
> > Juergen Schoenwaelder           Jacobs University Bremen gGmbH
> > Phone: +49 421 200 3587         Campus Ring 1 | 28759 Bremen | Germany
> > Fax:   +49 421 200 3103
> > <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.jacobs-
> > 2Duniversity.de_&d=AwIBAg&c=BFpWQw8bsuKpl1SgiZH64Q&r=I4dzGxR31O
> > cNXCJfQzvlsiLQfucBXRucPvdrphpBsFA&m=MgxJDgRk1TpLrZ2hiPqtqSLH_gUN
> > Xo4hIzz7Czjm6c0&s=0FOhbeoR7FEAGZddNHtPDimJFq1MNfZlAEOjldkr1tA&e
> > = >

-- 
Juergen Schoenwaelder           Jacobs University Bremen gGmbH
Phone: +49 421 200 3587         Campus Ring 1 | 28759 Bremen | Germany
Fax:   +49 421 200 3103         <http://www.jacobs-university.de/>

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