Subject: snmpconf Schedule Groups and duration overlap

From: Jon Saperia <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2001 09:35:05 -0500

This set of Calendar comments was prompted by an engineer I have been
working with implementing the schedule section of the policy MIB
Module. The good news is that the features for the most part address
needs the product has. There were a couple of questions I was asked to
put to this list that are below. In formulating these questions other
issues and questions came up and I have integrated everything into one
list. Naren has since joined this list so you can make any comments
directly to this list. Many of the comments are explanations of mostly
obvious things. They may not be obvious to first time readers.

1. pmPolicyGroup - The relationship between this and the
pmSchedGroupIndex should be clarified by adding the following text to
the end of the pmPolicyGroup description." Members of the same policy
group may share the same or different pmSchedGroupIndex values".

2. It is not clear to me that we want the 'setting all bits will cause
the schedule to ignore the day, and month. Values. I might want a
schedule to run every day of certain months only or twice a day every
day at specific times.  I would put a reference in the schedule table
description that indicates continuous schedules for policy are achieved
by setting to 0, the value of pmPolicySchedule.

3. We should give some examples of the usage of schedule groups since it
was not clear how they would be used. One example would be when one
wanted to combine a calendar and periodic schedule types, but this is
probably an unlikely event (I think).

4. pmSchedDuration is silent about both calendar and periodic
schedules. In both cases, they may run until completion as would be the
case for a backup policy. The description should say they can be used
for all types of schedules or duration can be omitted. In this case the
policy will execute for one iteration.

5. It is possible in the system to create a set of schedules that will
overlap for a specific policy. I think the right behavior differs
depending on the type of schedule. For a periodic schedule, it runs
until the end of the latter duration. In the case of a periodic schedule
without a duration, the first policy completes, then the next
executes. One could inadvertently create a continuous policy this way.
Calendar schedules could have the same overlap properties.

Thanks,
/jon

--
Jon Saperia		     [email-masked]
			     Phone: 617-744-1079
			     Fax:   617-249-0874
			     http://www.jdscons.com/