WBEM Servers

openPegasus

openPegasus is an open source, C++-based WBEM server created by individuals and programmers committed by a number of companies (including IBM, HP, and EMC) under the umbrella of the Open Group (see http://www.opengroup.org). The code is released under an MIT-style Source Licence which I include in Appendix H and is available from the openPegasus Web site, http://www.openPegasus.org , in source code form as a "tar-ball" snapshot or as an extraction from CVS and in prebuilt form for a number of platforms. Because this is the WBEM server which I use for the example in Chapter 12, I have given full installation instructions in Appendix F.

Given its joint development by a number of companies, the platforms on which it runs are naturally wide and include:

• UNIX (AIX, HPUX, Solaris, Tru-UNIX)

• Linux

• OS 400

• Z/OS

• OpenVMS (alpha and IA64)

• Microsoft Windows (NT, 2000, 9x)

For many embedded applications, one possible criticism of the openPegasus CIMOM is its size ”it runs primarily on large servers where memory and disk footprint are not significant. There has been discussion within the openPegasus community for some time about producing a "Pegasus Lite" with a much smaller memory footprint but, at the time of writing, nothing is apparently happening in this area.

Several large companies are using the openPegasus code in their products which argues for its stability, level of support and readiness for deployment.

OpenWBEM

OpenWBEM is another C++-based, open source WBEM server, created initially by Caldera and now maintained by Vintela Inc ( http://www.vintela.com ). The code is available from the openWBEM Web site, http://www.openwbem.org .

In many ways the architecture of OpenWBEM is much cleaner than that of openPegasus and providers are easier to write. OpenWBEM, however, has fewer companies driving its development ”releases and innovations are slower and fewer than openPegasus. Because the DMTF standards are evolving, the slow innovation rate of OpenWBEM could also mean that it is diverging from the standards.

WBEM Services

This is an open source, Java-based WBEM server and is probably the most complete of all of the open source projects. Certainly the documentation is many times better than that of openPegasus and OpenWBEM. The project is supported strongly by Sun Microsystems and details can be found at http://wbemservices. sourceforge .net/ . The code is released under Sun's "Sun Industry Standards Source License" (SISSL).

SNIA Open Source CIMOM

The Storage Network Industry Association's (SNIA's) CIMOM (actually a full WBEM server ”the developers are currently seeking a new name for the product) is written in Java and, like openPegasus, is accessible through the Open Group Web site ( http://www.opengroup.org/snia-cimom/ ).

This WBEM server is very complete and forms the basis of SNIA's Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) (previously known as Bluefin) which was introduced in mid-2002 to encourage the industrywide adoption of an open interface for the management of storage networks. SMI-S is the basis of regular interoperability tests, known as "plug fests," organised by SNIA at which dozens of vendors of storage equipment demonstrate the inter-operability of their management systems.

The code is currently released under yet another open source licence: the Storage Networking Industry Association Public Licence, version 1.1. There is intent within the development community to migrate to the same licence as that used by openPegasus.

J WBEM

WBEM Solutions Inc sells a Java-based WBEM server known as J WBEM. This is a full implementation of the DMTF standards and WBEM Solutions engineers are active in the DMTF standards development. A C-based WBEM server, known as C WBEM, was released in the fourth quarter of 2003, in particular to address the market for embedded servers where memory footprint is particularly important. For more details, see http://www.wbemsolutions.com/index.html.

WMI

Although Microsoft ships a WBEM server, known as WMI, with copies of its Windows operating systems, the client/server interface is based on Microsoft's own COM/DCOM technology and Microsoft does not make the source code of the WBEM server publicly available.

The primary purpose of this WBEM server is to simplify the management of the Microsoft Windows operating system, but it can, of course, be used to manage other parts of a system running on Windows.

Solaris WBEM

The source code for this WBEM server has been released by Sun Microsystems as part of the WBEM Services initiative described earlier ”the code is available at http://wbemserv ices.sourceforge.net .

The primary purpose of this WBEM server is to simplify the management of the Solaris operating system, but it can, of course, be used to manage other parts of a system running on Solaris.

b4wbem

This project, which was started as a management interface for the Linux operating system, appears to have been moribund since 2001. See http://b4wbem.sourceforge.net/ for details.