Re: Referential integrity across reboots

["David T. Perkins" <dperkins@dsperkins.com>]

HI,

With experience has come wisdom in MIB design, which is that 
resource instances that persist across reboots MUST have names
(instance identifiers) that also persist across reboots.

IF entries are examples of persistent resource instances.
Processes are examples of non-persistent resource instances.

The original design of the IF table had some problems.
The graduate level question for MIB designers is for persistent
index values, what should the approach taken so that their
values are persistent across reboots? One cannot assume that
all managed devices have "enough" non-volatile storage to save
all persistent values. Also, one cant not assume that StorageType
objects are fully supported. (That is, in most devices StorageType
cannot be supported because saving instances of configuration
values is not supported. Only the complete configuration can
be stored.)

Hope this helps....

At 10:33 AM 8/5/2002 -0400, Mike Daniele wrote:
>Andy Bierman wrote:
> 
>> The solution is to simply mandate that instances preserved
>> across a reboot come back with the same values.  Currently,
>> it's a SHOULD, not a MUST.
>
>Hello,
>
>What exactly is it that's currently defined as SHOULD?
>
>In general, it sounds like a great idea to make index values
>persist across reboots.  But I'll make 2 obvious observations:
>
>1. It's not possible for all index values (for example, a process ID).
>
>2. ifIndex is clearly defined as being permitted to change across
>reboots.  So are you suggesting a new index clause for ifEntry?
>
>Mike 
Regards,
/david t. perkins