WBEM/CIM (DMTF) Anyone?

semanticgap asks: "My employer is seeking to revamp the way its numerous servers and workstations are managed, and we're considering developing or piecing something together that is based on the DMTF CIM and WBEM specs. There are a few open source tools out there that implement these, e.g. Pegasus or IBM's SBLIM, and the spec seems to have been in development for years and supported by big guys like IBM, Sun, M$, etc. Does anyone use DMTF standards out there, and do you think it has a future?"

DTMF?

[arb]

For a minute there I thought you had written DTMF - I was trying to figure out how you were expecting to manage servers/workstations using a touch-tone phone?

Acronym expansion anyone?

[Bingo Foo]

In the title alone, there are 11 letters worth of unexpanded acronyms, and by the end of this three line post there are an additional 5. Would it be that hard to write something like:

"Dear Slashdot, I am a PTCBADUTAIK (Poster that can't believe anyone doesn't understand the acronyms I know), and I want to post an ask Slashdot. What should I do?"

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Acronym expansion anyone?

[Bingo Foo]

I shouldn't have to follow four links from an "ask /." story just to understand the question. It is good common practice in technical writing to expand acronyms upon first use, unless you're really sure the readership knows it (like "IBM"), or it's irrelevant to the purpose of the text to expand it (like "IBM").

And as far as me not having much of a chance of answering the question is concerned, I don't read Ask /. for the purpose of answering every question. Sometimes I just want to find out what other people are working on, and what other people find interesting.

I don't have enough knowledge of the subject

['nuffsaidguy]

to coherently reply, unfortuantely.

'nuff said.

WBEM/CIM (DMTF)

[bgins]

That's a good question. I don't know its current status as far as availability, interoperability and level of implementation.

For those who have never heard of WBEM, it was an initiative to provide a framework for cross-platform management of machines.

• WBEM = Web Based Enterprise Management
• CIM = Common Information Model
• DMTF = Distributed Management Task Force

WBEM comes in different flavors based on whose implementation on whose platform:

• SBLIM = IBM's "Standards Based Linux Instrumentation for Manageability" (Open-Source)
• WMI = Microsoft's "Windows Management Instrumentation"

Each implementation of WBEM consists of services which expose some core set of platform/application/host-specific objects via a (theoretically) platform-independent CIM object.

M$ had some sample scripts in the resource kit at one time, but the best link I can find is this [microsoft.com]. (One of these scripts found its way into Knowledge Base article Q271362 [microsoft.com]; it gives you the short names of services so that you can start and stop services from a W2K command line or script; my version is here [oz.net]).

There seems to be a WBEM implementation for Solaris as well in JIRO [sun.com], but my guess is that it's a small subset of CIM for managing storage devices.

I would recommend seeing what SW is out there from Computer Associates, Tivoli, and similar places that is "cross platform", particularly ones that might be MMC-based, or best yet that say they use WBEM/WMI/..., and get a trial version to see how interoperable it really is. Then decide how much functionality you need, and whether it's already hardwired into the implementations for your platforms or whether you want to buy something or implement it yourself.

I wouldn't try rolling your own solution.

[duffbeer703]

Getting anything out of a home brewed solution will take far too many man-hours to deliver something cost effective that provides the functionality that you need.

You might want to look at products like Tivoli Monitoring (www.tivoli.com). It is IBM commercial software, (read expensive) but it is one of the most flexible and powerful pieces of software out there.

We use it for monitoring, software distribution, inventory and remote control. Our implementation is currently at 10,000 computers and when complete will reach 85,000 workstations and 1,800 servers. All of this is done with a staff of 4.

Otherwise, check out this stuff:

Java Mgm't Extensions Home Page (Tivoli uses this for monitoring using CIM and WMI)0
http://java.sun.com/products/JavaManagement /

Tivoli's Implementation of JMX
http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/TMX4J

Open Source JMX
http://mx4j.sourceforge.net/

Good luck!

Re:I wouldn't try rolling your own solution.

[bgins]

In principle I agree with what you say. My only reservation is whether the original poster's company only needs a small subset of what most of these products have to offer. That's not to say that WBEM isn't rather sweeping in its capabilities, but as you say, it takes a lot of man-hours to figure it out. Also, there are many companies (Computer Associates, Tivoli, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, NetIQ, ON Technology, BMC, and Tangram) that make such products; there might be one that does specifically what the poster needs (functionality, size, platforms). At the risk of seeming pro-M$, you can find a pretty comprehensive list to start you off on their Datacenter site [microsoft.com].

Incidentally, the name WBEM (web-based enterprise management) is somewhat of a misnomer, as it has more to to with remote, than web-based, administration and instrumentation.

Re:I wouldn't try rolling your own solution.

[duffbeer703]

That's a good point too.

If the original poster just needs monitoring, it may be worth looking into configuring SMNP on the servers. I know of a couple of people who do that and are reasonably satisfied with it.

CIM/WBEM

[Dionysus]

I think you are somewhat confused about what CIM/WBEM does.

It doesn't really replace SNMP, in the sense that it can manage servers and routers in the same way you could do with SNMP. CIM is really just a way to describe the world. Note also that Microsoft's WMI is not compatible with the CIM standard.

The best bet would get hardware manufacturer to expose their data through CIM. I know Cisco does with their routers (I know because I wrote a client accessing that data), but you need CiscoWorks. Canon has exposed their printer data through WMI (you need PAU, and I don't know if they're actually selling it), but I don't know if they are selling it (again, reason I know is because I wrote the piece). Microsoft, of course, exposes their data through WMI. Solaris (I think 2.8 and up) exposes data through CIM (haven't really looked into this).

As to whether WBEM/CIM is the future. Hard to say. Problem is CIM seems needlessly complicated. Also it doesn't have support for stuff like events (although MS has put it in their WMI implementation), so you have to poll your nodes to find the status. All the major management companies (Tivoli, HP, CA) have said they will support it in a future version, but again, it's not there yet.

It all comes down to what you want to do. Feel free to email me if you have more questions.