The Common Information Model (CIM) is a standard developed by a consortium of major hardware and software vendors (including IBM®) called the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) as part of the Web Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) initiative.
WBEM includes a set of standards and technologies that provide management solutions for a distributed network environment. Interoperability is a major focus of WBEM, and using WBEM technologies can help you develop a single set of management applications for a diverse set of resources.
CIM is a major component of the WBEM initiative, providing a model for describing and accessing data across an enterprise. CIM comprises both a specification and a schema. The specification defines the details for integration with other management models, whereas the schema provides the actual model descriptions.
CIM on IBM i5/OS™ V5R4
includes:
- Instrumentation for server resources on the system called providers. The providers, which are based on a subset of the standardized CIM classes, gather data on a system. CIM clients can work with this data by accessing the providers through the Common Information Model Object Manager (CIMOM).
- An open source implementation of the CIMOM called Pegasus (version
2.5) that manages communication between clients and providers. The CIMOM also
provides several management functions, including security, and a set of commands
that provide configuration and management functions to administrators.
- A schema (CIM schema version 2.9) that defines an information
model for representing systems management functions.
- An implementation of the standardized formats for communication between clients and the CIMOM, called CIM in XML, V2.1 and CIM Operations over HTTP, V1.1. For more information about these standards, see the WBEM Web site.
For more information about the CIM standard, see the Introduction to CIM and the CIM Specification 2.2 on the DMTF Web site.
Each IBM operating system supports Pegasus (version 2.5). Pegasus supports most of the CIM operations defined in the CIM Operations over HTTP specification by the DMTF. For more information about what is supported in i5/OS, see to the Developer's reference provided below.
Pegasus is an open-source CIM implementation supported by each IBM operating system. For information about Pegasus support on other IBM operating systems, see CIM in the IBM Systems Software Information Center. For information about the open source Pegasus project, see the Pegasus Web site.
With support for Pegasus on systems running i5/OS V5R3 or later, users have the ability to access iSeries™ server resources through an extendible, industry-standard model.