CIM Reference Guide

Introduction 7
Introduction
This reference guide documents the Dell OpenManage™ Server Administrator Common Information
Model (CIM) provider contained in the Management Object File (MOF) dccim32.mof.
CIM provides a conceptual model for describing manageable objects in a systems management
environment. CIM is a modeling tool rather than a programming language. CIM provides the
structure for organizing objects into a model of a managed environment. For modeling a managed
environment, CIM makes available a set of abstract and concrete classes of objects. These classes
model the basic characteristics of systems, networks, and applications, as well as groupings of
management-related data.
For more information about CIM, see the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) website at
www.dmtf.org and the Microsoft
®
website at www.microsoft.com.
Server Administrator
Server Administrator 1.0 or later provides a suite of systems management information for keeping
track of your networked systems. In addition to providing systems management agents that are
independent of the management console, Server Administrator supports these systems management
standards: CIM and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP).
In addition to supporting systems management industry standards, Server Administrator provides
additional systems management information about the specific components of your Dell™ system.
Documenting CIM Classes and Their Properties
The Dell CIM provider extends support to Dell-specific software and hardware components.
The Dell MOF defines the classes for the Dell CIM provider. All of the supported classes and
properties in the MOF are documented in this guide.
The following subsections define some of the basic building blocks of CIM classes that are used in
describing the dccim32 provider name. These subsections also explain how the elements used in
describing these classes are organized. This section does not document the entire CIM schema, but
only those classes and properties supported by the dccim32 provider. The list of properties for each
supported class varies greatly.