Chapter 7. Management Communication Patterns: Rules of Conversation

Regardless of the particular management protocol that is used, interactions between managers and agents follow certain basic patterns. This chapter takes a look at those patterns—that is, how managers and agents interact. We discuss tradeoffs and the profound impact that the presence or absence of certain management interface capabilities has on aspects such as the efficiency of management communications, management application scale and performance, and the robustness of management against errors. The discussion of management patterns precedes the discussion of the actual management protocols themselves, which will occur in Chapter 8, “Common Management Protocols: Languages of Management.”

When you have completed this chapter, you should be able to