A Practical Approach to WBEM/CIM Management / Edition 1

by Chris Hobbs

Overview

System architects and engineers in fields such as storage networking, desktop computing, electrical power distribution, and telecommunications need a common and flexible way of managing heterogeneous devices and services. Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) and its Component Information Model (CIM) provide the architecture, language, interfaces, and common models for the management of storage, computing, and telecommunication applications.

Now there is a practical guide for those who design or implement the emerging WBEM systems or produce a CIM model of a device or service. A Practical Approach to WBEM/CIM Management describes in detail WBEM/CIM architecture and explores the standard models developed by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF). It explores the interfaces with which your WBEM/CIM code will have to work, and offers examples of applicable models and related code.

This book introduces the components of WBEM architecture, defines models within CIM, and illustrates communication between the WBEM client and server. It also investigates transitioning from SNMP or proprietary systems to WBEM/CIM.

Realizing that the field is undergoing a period of massive growth and change, the author focuses primarily on the areas which have been standardized and which differ little between implementations. He does, however, provide coding examples using the openPegasus implementation, demonstrating concepts common to other C++ and Java-based implementations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367394547
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/05/2019
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Chris is a programmer at QNX Software Systems with some 40 years of software development experience. His specialty is Sufficiently Dependable Software, which is software that meets its dependability requirements with the minimum development effort and risk. In particular, he works with software for safety-critical systems that must meet the requirements of international safety standards such as IEC61508, ISO26262, EN50128 and IEC62304. Outside his professional work as a software developer, Chris is the author of several books including Flying Beyond: The Canadian Commercial Pilot Textbook and Embedded Software Development for Safety-Critical Systems.

Table of Contents

Section I Management

1 Introduction 3

The Aim 3

The Subject 3

The Readership 3

The Book 4

The Moving Target 5

WBEM Implementations 6

The DMTF 6

2 Device and Service Management 7

Device and Service Management 7

Frequently Asked Questions 13

3 WBEM and Other Management Systems 17

WBEM and CIM 17

The Need for New Management Standards 20

Frequently Asked Questions 28

Section II Structure

4 The WBEM Architecture 33

Overview 33

Structure of the WBEM Server 37

Architectural Options 38

Example 41

Frequently Asked Questions 43

5 CIM and mof 47

The Concept of a Model 47

Modelling Terms 51

"Is-A" and "Has-A" Relationships 56

UML for CIM 58

The mof Language 64

Frequently Asked Questions 80

6 Standard Models 87

The Core and Common Models 87

Versions of the Model 88

The Logical/Physical Distinction 89

The Core Model 90

The Common Models 98

Frequently Asked Questions 119

Section III Interfaces

7 The Client/Server Interface 123

Introduction 123

A Survey of the Client/Server Interface 125

The Connection/Disconnection Phase 126

CIM Message Transfer 127

Intrinsic Methods 128

Extrinsic Methods 140

Authentication 142

International Support 145

Frequently Asked Questions 148

8 The Listener Interface 151

The Indication Mechanism 151

Indications 154

Indication Filters 157

Handlers 158

Subscriptions 160

Listeners 160

Frequently Asked Questions 161

Section IV Practice

9 Building Your Own Model 167

The PBX Example 167

Commercial Decisions 169

Deciding What to Model 170

Modelling Guidelines 171

Constraints on Our Models 172

Naming the Schema 172

Positioning the PBX Class 173

Modelling the PBX's Components 177

Modelling the Statistics 179

Modelling the Events 180

Modelling the Services 181

Adding Unnecessary Classes 184

Adding Properties 184

Frequently Asked Questions 186

10 Modelling Tips 189

Instances and Classes 189

Subclassing or Defining Types 190

References 191

Underscores in CIM Names 192

Keys 192

Overrides 193

Creation Class Name and InstanceID 195

Namespaces 197

Boolean Qualifiers 198

Frequently Asked Questions 198

11 Writing Providers 201

Types of Provider 201

Provider/WBEM Server Interfacing 208

12 Implementing Providers: Example 211

Implementing Providers: General Steps 211

The Example 211

A Brief Introduction to openPegasus 212

Step 1 Write and Compile the mof 214

Step 2 Write the Provider Code 218

Step 3 Tie the Provider Code to the PBX Class 221

Invoking the Providers 223

Implementing Indication Providers 227

Frequently Asked Questions 229

13 Writing Clients and Listeners 247

What Clients Are Not 247

Semantic Knowledge 248

Server-Side Client Implementation 249

Discovery 249

Operator-Side Client Implementation 254

Frequently Asked Questions 257

14 Transition to WBEM/CIM 259

Some Upgrade Architectures 260

Some Theoretical Background 265

15 Implementations and Tools 269

WBEM Servers 270

Tools 273

16 Choosing WBEM Software 279

Home Brew 279

Reviewing a Bought-In Product 280

Open Source 281

Commercial 282

Section V Appendices

A Industry Adoption 285

B "Is-A" and "Has-A" Relationships 289

C FCAPS 297

D Miscellaneous Datatypes 299

The datetime Datatype 299

The string Datatype 300

E The MappingStrings Qualifier 301

Frequently Asked Questions 302

F Installing openPegasus 303

Obtaining openPegasus 303

Setting Environment Variables 304

Compiling openPegasus 305

Loading the Repository 305

Loading an Example Application 305

Running the WBEM Server 305

G Glossary 307

H Licencing 313

Index 315