The Common Information Model (CIM) is an

open standard An open standard is a standard that is openly accessible and usable by anyone. It is also a common prerequisite that open standards use an open license that provides for extensibility. Typically, anybody can participate in their development due to ...

that defines how managed elements in an IT environment are represented as a common set of objects and relationships between them. The

Distributed Management Task Force Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) is a 501(c)(6) nonprofit industry standards organization that creates open manageability standards spanning diverse emerging and traditional IT infrastructures including cloud, virtualization, network, s ...

maintains the CIM to allow consistent

management Management (or managing) is the administration of organizations, whether businesses, nonprofit organizations, or a Government agency, government bodies through business administration, Nonprofit studies, nonprofit management, or the political s ...

of these managed elements, independent of their manufacturer or provider.

Overview

One way to describe CIM is to say that it allows multiple parties to exchange management information about these managed elements. However, this falls short of fully capturing CIM's ability not only to describe these managed elements and the management information, but also to actively control and manage them. By using a common model of information, management software can be written once and work with many implementations of the common model without complex and costly conversion operations or loss of information. The CIM standard is defined and published by the

(DMTF). A related standard is Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM, also defined by DMTF) which defines a particular implementation of CIM, including protocols for discovering and accessing such CIM implementations.

Schema and specifications

The CIM standard includes the CIM Infrastructure Specification and the CIM Schema: *CIM Infrastructure Specification :The CIM Infrastructure Specification defines the architecture and concepts of CIM, including a language by which the CIM Schema (including any extension schema) is defined, and a method for mapping CIM to other information models, such as

SNMP Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an Internet Standard protocol for collecting and organizing information about managed devices on IP networks and for modifying that information to change device behavior. Devices that typically su ...

. The CIM architecture is based upon UML, so it is object-oriented: The managed elements are represented as CIM

class Class, Classes, or The Class may refer to: Common uses not otherwise categorized * Class (biology), a taxonomic rank * Class (knowledge representation), a collection of individuals or objects * Class (philosophy), an analytical concept used d ...

es and any relationships between them are represented as CIM associations.

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allows specialization of common base elements into more specific derived elements. *CIM Schema :The CIM Schema is a

conceptual schema A conceptual schema or conceptual data model is a high-level description of informational needs underlying the design of a database. It typically includes only the core concepts and the main relationships among them. This is a high-level model wi ...

which defines the specific set of objects and relationships between them that represent a common base for the managed elements in an IT environment. The CIM Schema covers most of today's elements in an IT environment, for example

computer system A computer is a machine that can be programmed to automatically carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (''computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as ''programs'', wh ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s, networks,

middleware Middleware is a type of computer software program that provides services to software applications beyond those available from the operating system. It can be described as "software glue". Middleware makes it easier for software developers to imple ...

service Service may refer to: Activities * Administrative service, a required part of the workload of university faculty * Civil service, the body of employees of a government * Community service, volunteer service for the benefit of a community or a ...

s and storage. Classes can be, for example: ''CIM_ComputerSystem'', ''CIM_OperatingSystem'', ''CIM_Process'', ''CIM_DataFile''. The CIM Schema defines a common basis for representing these managed elements. Since most managed elements have product and vendor specific behavior, the CIM Schema is extensible in order to allow the producers of these elements to represent their specific features seamlessly together with the common base functionality defined in the CIM Schema. :Updates to the CIM Schema are published regularly. CIM is the basis for most of the other DMTF standards (e.g. WBEM or SMASH). It is also the basis for the SMI-S standard for storage management.

Implementations

Infrastructure Implementations

Many vendors provide implementations of CIM in various forms: * Some operating systems provide a CIM implementation, for example: ** the

Windows Management Instrumentation Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is a set of extensions to the Windows Driver Model that provides an operating system interface through which instrumented components provide information and notification. WMI is Microsoft's implementatio ...

(WMI)

API An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...

available in

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft, targeting the server and business markets. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RT ...

and higher **the Windows Management Infrastructure (MI) API for Microsoft Windows 2012 and higher ** some

Linux distributions A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel (operating system), kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply distribution (marketing), product distribution pe ...

with the SBLIM (Standards Based Linux Instrumentation for Manageability) project *Some implementations are Independent of the systems they support, for example: **Open Group's Pegasus **WSI's J WBEM Server There is also a growing number of tools market around CIM.

Management Standards based on the CIM Schema

Standards organizations have defined management standards based on the CIM Schema: * The

Storage Networking Industry Association The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) is an American trade association, incorporated in December 1997. It is a registered 501(c)(6) non-profit organization. SNIA has more than 185 unique members, 2,000 active contributing members, an ...

(SNIA) has heavily bought into using CIM and WBEM: they have defined their usage of CIM (called

Storage Management Initiative – Specification The Storage Management Initiative Specification, commonly called SMI-S, is a computer data storage management standard developed and maintained by the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA). It has also been ratified as an ISO standard.. ...

or SMI-S) as a standard. * Some server manufacturers collaborate in the DMTF under the SMASH initiative to define CIM-based management of servers. * The

DASH The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen ...

initiative in the DMTF attempts to define CIM-based management of

desktop computer A desktop computer, often abbreviated as desktop, is a personal computer designed for regular use at a stationary location on or near a desk (as opposed to a portable computer) due to its size and power requirements. The most common configuratio ...

Communication protocols used

A number of protocols are defined for messages transmitted between clients and servers. The message protocols are transmitted on top of

HTTP HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, wher ...

. There are two message types: # operational messages, which provoke a response from the receiver (

RPC RPC may refer to: Science and technology * Rational polynomial coefficient * Reactive Plastic Curtain, a carbon-dioxide-absorbing device used in some rebreather breathing sets * Regional Playback Control, a regional lockout technology for DVDs ...

) # export messages, which are indications/events.

CIM Operations over HTTP (CIM-XML)

CIM-XML forms part of the WBEM protocol family, and is standardised by the DMTF. CIM-XML comprises three specifications: # CIM Operations over HTTP # Representation of CIM using XML # CIM DTD

WS-Management

WS-MAN forms part of the WBEM protocol family, and is standardised by the DMTF. WS-MAN comprises 3 specifications: # WS-CIM Mapping Specification # WS-Management CIM Binding Specification # Web Services for Management (WS- Management) Specification

CIM operations over RESTful services

CIM-RS forms part of the WBEM protocol family, and is standardised by the DMTF. CIM-RS comprises three specifications: # CIM Operations Over RESTful Services # CIM-RS Protocol Specification # CIM-RS Payload Representation in JSON

References

External links

*, including CIM Schema and CIM Infrastructure Specification. *. *. *. *. *. {{DMTF Standards DMTF standards Open standards Computer standards