[CCAMP] Comments regarding draft-ietf-ccamp-alarm-module-00

Hi Stefan and Martin,

We have also been encountering some requirements with regard to certain features that are currently not directly supported in the alarm module. I realize that some of these requirements have been discussed in some form in earlier threads, but nevertheless would like to raise them again.

1. X.733 probable cause / probable cause description

One of the requirements encountered is to provide a textual description of the probable cause of an alarm type. The module 'ietf-alarms-x733' adds support for X.733 probable cause, but as a uint32. It is not clear who defines the integer values for probable cause or even if they are standardized or would even vary between vendors, thus raising interoperability issues. So what would be your opinion on either changing the type of the existing leaf 'probable-cause' to a string or the addition of a leaf 'probable-cause-description' of type string alongside the existing leaf 'probable-cause'?

2. Correlating the temporal order of alarm activations

We have encountered requirements for a relatively simple means for a NMS to be able to identify the temporal order, in which alarms have been raised by a system. Such information could, of course, be derived by a client by inspecting the system's 'alarm-list' and the entries in the 'status-change' list of each entry in the 'alarm-list', but then only if supported by a system. Although there is the leaf 'last-changed' in the lists 'alarm' and 'shelved-alarm' in the current implementation (equivalent to the leaf 'time' in 'alarm-notification'), which provides a timestamp of when the status of an alarm instance last changed, there are no explicit timestamps indicating when the alarm was last raised or last cleared. If these leafs were also supported and also included in 'alarm-notification', they could provide a means for a NMS to correlate alarm activations within the network.

Alternatively, a relatively simple addition to the core alarm module that could streamline this task would be, for example, to maintain a global alarm activation counter within a system and assign the value of the counter to an instance of an alarm each time it is raised, incrementing  the counter after assignment. This activation identifier, which would be stored for an alarm instance within the lists 'alarm-list' and 'shelved-alarm' and included within the 'alarm-notification' could then be used by a client to correlate the alarms of a system and easily construct a timeline. The counter's value itself would have no meaning, except to reconstruct  the order of alarms being raised. If an alarm is re-raised after being raised, it would receive a different value for its activation identifier.

3. Mapping custom information to alarm types

Some operators require to be able to associate their own specific information with alarm types for use within their networks. Such a requirement could be supported within the alarm module through a generic mechanism whereby one or more tag/values could be mapped to an alarm-type-id and/or alarm-type-qualifier-match in a similar way as the list 'x733-mapping' allows a client to override the default X.733 mapping. Any mapped value would also need to be listed within the alarm inventory entry for that alarm-type and included within the 'alarm-notification'.

We believe that it would be advantageous if these additional requirements on alarm management were supported directly within the core alarm module to avoid the situation of each vendor implementing its own solution, which may then lead to interoperability issues between different vendors equipment.

Best regards
Nick
This message has been classified General Business by NICK HANCOCK on 09 January 2018 at 15:52:39.

From: CCAMP [mailto:ccamp-bounces@ietf.org] On Behalf Of internet-drafts@ietf.org
Sent: Thursday, December 14, 2017 11:34 AM
To: i-d-announce@ietf.org
Cc: ccamp@ietf.org
Subject: [CCAMP] I-D Action: draft-ietf-ccamp-alarm-module-00.txt

A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories.
This draft is a work item of the Common Control and Measurement Plane WG of the IETF.

Title : YANG Alarm Module
Authors : Stefan Vallin
Martin Bjorklund
Filename : draft-ietf-ccamp-alarm-module-00.txt
Pages : 58
Date : 2017-12-14

Abstract:
This document defines a YANG module for alarm management. It
includes functions for alarm list management, alarm shelving and
notifications to inform management systems. There are also RPCs to
manage the operator state of an alarm and administrative alarm
procedures. The module carefully maps to relevant alarm standards.

The IETF datatracker status page for this draft is:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-ccamp-alarm-module/<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-ccamp-alarm-module/>

There are also htmlized versions available at:
https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-ccamp-alarm-module-00<https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-ccamp-alarm-module-00>
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-ccamp-alarm-module-00<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-ccamp-alarm-module-00>

Please note that it may take a couple of minutes from the time of submission
until the htmlized version and diff are available at tools.ietf.org<http://tools.ietf.org>.

Internet-Drafts are also available by anonymous FTP at:
ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/<ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/>

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