Web-Based Enterprise Management

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) is a set of systems management technologies developed to unify the management of distributed computing environments. WBEM is based on Internet standards and Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) open standards: Common Information Model (CIM) infrastructure and schema, CIM-XML, CIM operations over HTTP, and WS-Management. Although the name refers to WBEM as being "web-based", it is not necessarily tied in any way to a particular user interface (see below). Other systems management approaches are remote shells, proprietary solutions and network management architectures like SNMP.

Features

Investigation of potential copyright issue</font-size> Do not restore or edit the blanked content on this page until the issue is resolved by an administrator, copyright clerk or OTRS agent.
If you have just labeled this page as a potential copyright issue, please follow the instructions for filing at the bottom of the box.
The previous content of this page or section has been identified as posing a potential copyright issue, as a copy or modification of the text from the source(s) below, and is now listed on Wikipedia:Copyright problems (listing): http://books.google.de/books?id=JOSUimXOoGMC&lpg=PA148&dq=WBEM&hl=de&pg=PA147#v=onepage&q&f=false (Duplicate Detector report) Unless the copyright status of the text on this page is clarified, the problematic text or the entire page may be deleted one week after the time of its listing. Temporarily, the original posting is still accessible for viewing in the page history.
Can you help resolve this issue? If you hold the copyright to this text, you can license it in a manner that allows its use on Wikipedia. Click "Show" to see how. You must permit the use of your material under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA) and the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts). Explain your intent to license the content on this article's discussion page To confirm your permission, you can either display a notice to this effect at the site of original publication or send an e-mail from an address associated with the original publication to permissions-en at wikimedia dot org or a postal letter to the Wikimedia Foundation. These messages must explicitly permit use under CC-BY-SA and the GFDL. See Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials. Note that articles on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view and must be verifiable in published third-party sources; consider whether, copyright issues aside, your text is appropriate for inclusion in Wikipedia. To demonstrate that this text is in the public domain, or is already under a license suitable for Wikipedia, click "Show". Explain this on this article's discussion page, with reference to evidence. Wikipedia:Public domain and Wikipedia:Compatibly licensed may assist in determining the status. Otherwise, you may write a new article without copyright-infringing material. Click "Show" to read where and how. Your rewrite should be placed on this page, where it will be available for an administrator or clerk to review it at the end of the listing period. Follow this link to create the temporary subpage. Simply modifying copyrighted text is not sufficient to avoid copyright infringement—if the original copyright violation cannot be cleanly removed or the article reverted to a prior version, it is best to write the article from scratch. (See Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing.) For license compliance, any content used from the original article must be properly attributed; if you use content from the original, please leave a note at the top of your rewrite saying as much. You may duplicate non-infringing text that you had contributed yourself. It is always a good idea, if rewriting, to identify the point where the copyrighted content was imported to Wikipedia and to check to make sure that the contributor did not add content imported from other sources. When closing investigations, clerks and administrators may find other copyright problems than the one identified. If this material is in the proposed rewrite and cannot be easily removed, the rewrite may not be usable. State that you have created a rewrite on this article's discussion page.
About importing text to Wikipedia Posting copyrighted material without the express permission of the copyright holder is unlawful and against Wikipedia policy. If you have express permission, this must be verified either by explicit release at the source or by e-mail or letter to the Wikimedia Foundation. See Wikipedia:Declaration of consent for all enquiries. Policy requires that we block those who repeatedly post copyrighted material without express permission.	Instructions for filing If you have tagged the article for investigation, please complete the following steps: Add the following to the bottom of Wikipedia:Copyright_problems/2014 January 28 `* {{subst:article-cv\|:Web-Based Enterprise Management}} from http://books.google.de/books?id=JOSUimXOoGMC&lpg=PA148&dq=WBEM&hl=de&pg=PA147#v=onepage&q&f=false. ~~~~` Place this notice on the talk page of the contributor of the copyrighted material: `{{subst:Nothanks-web\|pg=Web-Based Enterprise Management\|url=http://books.google.de/books?id=JOSUimXOoGMC&lpg=PA148&dq=WBEM&hl=de&pg=PA147#v=onepage&q&f=false}} ~~~~` To blank a section instead of an entire article, add the template to the beginning of the section and </div> at the end of the portion you intend to blank.

Key features of WBEM technology include:

remote management of applications
management of several instances of an application as a single unit
standard interface for remote application management across different applications
decoupling of application management from the client
"publishing" of key information about an application to other applications

Architecture

To understand the WBEM architecture, consider the components which lie between the operator trying to manage a device (configure it, turn it off and on, collect alarms, etc.) and the actual hardware and software of the device:

the operator will invoke some form of graphical user interface (GUI), Browser User Interface (BUI), or command-line interface (CLI). The WBEM standard has nothing to say about this interface (although the definition of a CLI for specific applications has started): WBEM operates independently of the human interface, since human interfaces can change without the rest of the system needing to note such changes.
the GUI, BUI or CLI will interface with a WBEM client through a small set of application programming interfaces (API). This client will find the WBEM server for the managed device (typically on the device itself) and construct an XML message containing the request.
the client will use the HTTP (or HTTPS) protocol to pass the request, encoding in CIM-XML, to the WBEM server
the WBEM server will decode the incoming request, perform the necessary authentication and authorization checks and then consult the previously created model of the managed device to see how to handle the request. This model makes the architecture so powerful: it represents the pivot point of the transaction, with the client simply interacting with the model and the model interacting with the real hardware or software. The model uses the Common Information Model standard; the DMTF has published many models for commonly managed devices and services: IP routers, storage servers, desktop computers, etc.
for most operations, the WBEM server determines from the model that it needs to communicate with the actual hardware or software. So-called "providers" handle the interaction: small pieces of code interface between the WBEM server (using a standardised interface known as CMPI) and the real hardware or software. Because the interface is well-defined and the number of types of call is small, it is normally easy to write providers. In particular, the writer of the provider knows nothing of the GUI, BUI, or CLI used by the operator.

WBEM specifications

Mappings
- URI (WBEM URI Mapping Specification 1.0)
- XML (Representation of CIM using XML 1.2; CIM DTD 1.2)
- XML Schema (under development)
Protocols
- CIM-XML
- WS-Management
- CIM-RS (Under Development)
- SM-CLP (Command Line Protocol 1.0)
Discovery
- SLP (WBEM Discovery using SLP; SLP Template)
Query Language
- CQL (CIM Query Language 1.0)
- FQL (Filter Query Language 1.0)

Implementing support

So, which pieces of this does a device manufacturer or service provider have to write?

Firstly the model.

This is normally done by extending as necessary one of the standard models published by the DMTF.

Then the BUI, GUI, or CLI.

The client and server usually do not need to be written because there are many open-source and commercial implementations available (see External links below)

Then the providers

In summary, the WBEM architecture allows the manufacturer of a device or developer of a service to provide a standards-compliant management interface to that device simply and cheaply.

Implementations

WBEM in operating systems

Apple Inc. uses an implementation of WBEM in its Apple Remote Desktop management tool, and Mac OS X clients ship with support for Remote Management.
Hewlett Packard has included WBEM Services CORE Product in the HP-UX operating system (with all operating environments) since version 11iv1
IBM ships support in z/OS and AIX.
Microsoft has developed the WMI technology - which is not WBEM compatible but uses a similar data model and provides similar functionality - and has included it in Microsoft Windows
Novell has adopted the OpenWBEM open source implementation of WBEM and includes it in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Red Hat ships OpenPegasus as part of Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Oracle has WBEM-Services for the Solaris operating environment: Solaris WBEM Developer's Guide
Ubuntu ships with an updated CIM instrumentation stack, powered by the latest version of the lightweight CIMOM, SBLIM SFCB.

WBEM implementations

WBEM Solutions
Open Pegasus, open-source client and server written in C++
OpenWBEM, open-source client and server written in C++
WBEM Services, Java
SBLIM (pronounced "sublime") Standards Based Linux Instrumentation for Manageability, C, C++, Java
PyWBEM, open-source WBEM library written in Python
Purgos, open-source management client for Windows written in C++ (Product now discontinued and has reached End Of Life)

External links

Standards
- Official WBEM page at DMTF (Distributed Management Task Force), including standards documents
- DMTF FAQ on WBEM
Implementations
Other Resources
- NetworkWorld article on "From software to services - making management work"
- Novell Overview of WBEM and CIM

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike; additional terms may apply for the media files.