Overview
ISO/IEC 10164-11:1994 - Information technology - Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) - Systems Management: Metric objects and attributes - defines a systems management function for representing, collecting and reporting performance metrics in OSI-based management environments. Published jointly with ITU‑T as Recommendation X.739, this part of ISO/IEC 10164 specifies the requirements, behavioral models and managed-object definitions needed to monitor resources, compute statistics (means, fractiles/percentiles), and apply thresholds for notifications.
Key topics and technical requirements
- Scope and purpose
- Identifies the set of requirements satisfied by the metric objects function and positions the function in the OSI application layer model.
- Behavioral models
- Provides a Metric Object model for general metric behaviour and specific models for metric classes used for monitoring (including workload monitoring).
- Managed objects and attributes
- Defines managed-object classes, attribute semantics and package/name binding rules for metric objects.
- Statistics and smoothing
- Supports standard statistics (mean, variance, fractiles/percentiles) and includes data-enhancement algorithms:
- Annex B: EWMA (exponentially weighted moving average) algorithms
- Annex C: Uniformly Weighted Moving Average (UWMA) algorithms
- Thresholds and severity
- Defines gauge- and counter-threshold models for generating severity indications and notifications.
- Protocol and syntax
- Specifies the abstract syntax of MAPDUs (management application protocol data units) used to reference managed objects/attributes and includes ASN.1 definitions.
- Conformance & relationships
- Defines conformance classes, relationships with other management functions, and dependencies on related OSI management standards (CMIS/CMIP, X.700 series).
Practical applications and users
Who uses ISO/IEC 10164-11:1994:
- Network and systems management architects designing performance-monitoring solutions in OSI/CMIP environments.
- Vendor implementers of management agents and managers that must expose or consume metric objects, thresholds and statistical reports.
- Operations teams and tool vendors building workload monitoring, capacity planning, SLA monitoring and alarm/notification systems.
- Standards professionals integrating metric definitions with other OSI management functions (object, event, alarm, accounting).
Practical uses:
- Defining managed-object interfaces for performance counters and gauges.
- Implementing smoothing and reporting algorithms (EWMA/UWMA) for real-time metrics.
- Generating notifications when configured thresholds are crossed and supporting workload reporting.
Related standards
- ISO/IEC 10164 (Parts 1–15) - Systems Management series (object, state, alarm, event, accounting, summarisation, etc.)
- ISO/IEC 10165 (Structure of Management Information), ISO/IEC 10040 (Systems management overview)
- ASN.1 / BER standards (X.208 / X.209, ISO/IEC 8824 / 8825)
- ITU‑T Recommendation X.739 (identical text) and ISO 3534‑1 (statistics vocabulary)
Keywords: ISO/IEC 10164-11:1994, metric objects, systems management, OSI, MAPDU, managed objects, EWMA, UWMA, workload monitoring, ASN.1, CMIS, CMIP.
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