ITEM: AT9576

MLM - can MLM manage nodes outside of its subnet?

Question:

I have not been able to get a straight answer for thie following question.
Could someone please shed some light?

The MLM documentation states that it is capable of 'managing' nodes within
its own subnet. However, comments I have heard and read imply that an MLM
can manage nodes outside of its subnet. If this is so, is there a
restriction that a node be within a certain 'range'. For example, if I have
a site with an MLM and multiple managed nodes, and another site, i.e.,
another building, with just one node, do I need to have another MLM for the
one-node site, or can the multi-node site MLM handle the singular node?

Answer:

 Remember that the MLM is designed to localize traffic as much
 as possible.  By keeping the MLM's polling inside a local subnet,
 and putting an MLM in each subnet in your network, you can
 substantially reduce the amount of traffic flowing back and forth
 from NetView for AIX.

 There is no inherent limit in the MLM to prevent it from polling
 devices outside its own IP subnet.  You could potentially force
 it to take over a node outside the immediate subnet by adding the
 node to the MLM's Alias and Status Monitor tables and then
 setting the polling interval for that node to an artificially
 high number on NetView for AIX.  However, we don't encourage you
 to do this, because if the MLM later goes down, those nodes
 outside the local subnet are not automatically transferred to the
 backup manager that takes over the nodes being managed by the MLM
 that went down.  They essentially become unmanaged nodes.

*****

So, basically, you can do it, it's just that if the MLM goes down,
the node outside the subnet won't get polled very often.  Also,
remember that the maximum number of nodes that should be managed
with SysMon is about 250.  Also, you can poll nodes outside the
subnet with MLM, but MLM can't discover outside the subnet.



Support Line: MLM - can MLM manage nodes outside of its subnet? ITEM: AT9576

Dated: January 1996 Category: N/A

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