Architecture of GateNM

Gate is based on a client-server architecture. The clients are realized as Emanate subagents communicating with the Emanate Master Agent via an Emanate proprietary protocol. It is the Master Agent that provides the SNMP interface of Gate to the INMS products CoreNM (INMS Server), ViewNM and HelpNM. The Master Agent has been compiled in the trilingual mode in order to support SNMPv1 as well as SNMPv2 and SNMPv2c. Two clients have been foreseen for GateNM, namely the Monitoring Subagent and the Service Subagent. The Monitoring Subagent implements the mechanisms for retrieving monitoring and configuration data, while the Service Subagent is responsible for retrieving service data.

The version 1.0 of GateNM only implements the Monitoring Subagent. The MIB-II Agent is an option to additionally handle MIB-II SNMP requests for TCP/IP management, and is delivered by Emanate. It is not necessary for the Gate functionality and needs not to be described here.

The Gate functionality relies on the following types of interprocess communication:

• Communication between INMS Database Export and Gate Server. Reconfiguration of all Gate instances (i.e. Gate Server instances) takes place after an INMS database export. Communication takes place via rcp of the respective files and the subsequent request to reconfigure.
• Communication between Gate MAI and Emanate Master Agent. For example: call start/stop scripts, Emanate command utilities (e.g. getone), modify configuration files.
• Communication between Gate MAI and Emanate Subagents (MIB-II, Monitoring, Service), like calling start/stop scripts, modifying trace configuration, and so forth.
• Communication between Gate MAI and Gate Server, like starting/stopping a process, Gate maintenance, etc.

Communication between the Gate MAI and other processes is based on TCP/IP.