Features Added in System Management Agent

The SMA product includes the Net-SNMP agent, Net-SNMP developer tools, and Net-SNMP API libraries that enable the agent to be extended through modules. You can use the tools and APIs to create a module to support the custom features of a managed device. A management program can then be used for monitoring and managing the device.

The SMA extends the Net-SNMP agent to support the following MIBs:

• MIB II, described in http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1213.txt, defines the structure of management information and the network management protocol for TCP/IP-based networks. The SMA implements all the object groups of MIB II except the EGP group.

• Host Resources MIB, described in http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2790.txt, defines the structure of management information for managing host systems. The SMA implements the same host resources MIB that is included in the base Net-SNMP agent.

• Sun MIB is the MIB II with Sun-specific object groups added. Sun MIB was originally provided in the Solstice Enterprise Agents product beginning with the Solaris 2.6 operating system. The SMA implements the following groups from the Sun MIB:

  • Sun System group

  • Sun Processes group

  • Sun Host Performance group

Support for these MIBs is provided as static modules that run in the SMA agent. The agent was created by recompiling the Net-SNMP agent to include these modules.

The SMA provides an additional MIB for hardware, the Entity MIB, in an external dynamically loaded module. The Entity MIB is described in RFC 2737 at http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2737.txt. The Entity MIB is implemented as a skeleton MIB, so that module developers can populate the various tables of the MIB. The Entity MIB can be used by a single agent for managing multiple logical entities and physical entities. For more information about the Entity MIB, see Chapter 9, Entity MIB.