Common Information Model
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.
- What's new for V5R4
This topic highlights the changes made to this topic collection for V5R4.- Printable PDF
Use this to view and print a PDF of this information.- Configuring Pegasus
The Pegasus CIMOM provides the ability to set a number of configuration options.- Securing Pegasus
You can find out the options that are available for ensuring that the CIM server is secure in this topic.- Backup and recovery considerations
Regularly back up the Pegasus repository as part of your existing backup plan. In most cases, you can recover a damaged repository by restoring the last backup copy.- Restoring corrupted files
Use this information if the backup copy of your CIM repository files are corrupted.- Troubleshooting the CIM server
Use this information if the CIM server does not start or if the CIM server starts, but does not run as expected.- Pegasus command-line utilities
The open source Pegasus implementation includes a set of command line utilities that you can use to control or change the Pegasus environment.- Pegasus developer's reference
The CIM standard provides the ability to develop management application that work with the systems management data exposed by the CIM providers included with i5/OS.- Related information for CIM
Listed here are the Web sites and information center topics that relate to the Common Information Model topic.