From Interop: There was progress on Directory Enabled Networks

By Barb Goldworm
Network World on Network/Systems Management, 09/29/99

Contrary to what Forbes Magazine said last month; the Desktop Management Task Force session on Directory Enabled Networks was not the emptiest room at Interop. On the contrary, the Birds of a Feather session on the DEN-Common Information Model connection was attended by 80-plus people who stayed until 8:30 p.m. and asked lots of educated questions. The discussion was a lively exchange among DMTF members, nonmember vendors, and others. Members included Novell, Cisco, Lucent, Microsoft and EMC. Discussion varied from CIM schema questions to DMTF participation rules to SAN management extensions to vendors' needs for implementation help.

Directory-enabled networking is a design philosophy that enables applications to use directories to store and share information, allowing them to take the best advantage of the network. By using the directory, in conjunction with other data stores, to store appropriate information, distributed applications can easily access needed information efficiently, and can interoperate, sharing that information. The DEN initiative was created to define a specification for that information exchange.
DEN provides an information model based on the DMTF's CIM, as well as a directory mapping. DEN includes representations for the physical structure and connectivity of the network, the logical connectivity and topology of the network, services and protocols, a model for policies of how those entities are controlled and provisioned, and a set of mappings to a directory. DEN provides a standard for using the network and the directory for managing the overall network, rather than managing individual devices. This allows for policy-based management on a networkwide basis, rather than device specific policies. The distributed nature of the directory allows distributed management, with distributed applications sharing management information.

While DEN is still in the making, it adds to the work done by the DMTF in refining the CIM schema and specifications. CIM includes physical and network definitions today, but must be extended to include users and policies. The final DEN draft has been submitted to the DMTF. Now a map from CIM to LDAP needs to be created for physical and network definitions. Once completed in 2000, DEN will allow policy-based management driven from the directory, along with device configuration and network inventory.

Future benefits of DEN are still probably two years down the road. General management benefits of CIM are closer. This is probably why much of the discussion at the Birds of a Feather session revolved around general CIM issues, rather than directory-specific ones. Many questions focused on how vendors could actually begin to implement CIM in their products, particularly if the vendors are not actively involved in the DMTF. This shows an interesting point in the growth of CIM. The questions showed substantial background knowledge compared to a year ago.

Two key issues emerged from the discussion. First, there really are vendors implementing CIM today, and they are asking for help. While the DMTF Web site provides a lot of information, vendors are looking for additional help, guidance and tools, such as indices into the schema and development/compliance testing tools. This indicates step forward for CIM and an opportunity for those who are knowledgeable to offer their services to others.
The second issue is the need for ongoing management of the process, including such things as compliance testing, registering extensions (similar to Management Information Base extensions with SNMP), and interoperability testing. DMTF board members acknowledged these needs and are working to address them.

Overall, the DMTF efforts are making progress. CIM is further along than DEN, and there are still some big bumps in the road. But the DMTF members seem to be working reasonably well together, and other vendors are trying to figure it all out so they can implement real products.