A Practical Approach to WBEMCIM Management

Chris Hobbs

AUERBACH PUBLICATIONS A CRC Press Company

Boca Raton London New York Washington, D.C.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 Hobbs, Chris.    A practical approach to WBEM/CIM management / Chris Hobbs.       p. cm.    Includes index. 

ISBN 0-8493-2306-1(alk. paper)

1. Business enterprises ”Computer networks. 2. Computer networks ”Management. I. Title.

HD30.37.H623 2004

658'.054678-dc22 2003065978

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International Standard Book Number 0-8493-2306-1

Library of Congress Card Number 2003065978

Printed in the United States of America 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0

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Dedication

In Memory of My Father

Ronald Stanley Hobbs

1922-2001

who taught me more than he knew.

The Author

Chris Hobbs has worked in telecommunications since 1973. He moved from the circuit switching of 10-character-per-second paper tape readers to packet and cell switching in X.25, Frame Relay, ATM, and IP networks. In the transmission field he has worked through the evolution of asynchronous, plesiochronous, and synchronous networks to today's switched photonic networks.

Most of the technical problems which caused the shift from circuit to packet switching having been resolved, Chris is looking forward to the return of circuit switching and hopes to be present on the day (say, 24th October 2014) when the last packet travels over the Internet. This will be a sad day for many in the IETF, but will be a day of wonder for Internet users.

All of these networks, the fanciful, packet-free Internet included, require management. Perhaps more important, the services running on those networks require management. Over the years , Chris has worked with many ad hoc management systems as well as those standardised by the ITU-T and IETF.

Telecommunications has taken Chris (and his adventurous family) to work in England, Holland, Switzerland, Wales, the United States of America and now Canada. He has worked for national PTTs, consultancy companies, and telecommunications equipment manufacturers, and is currently employed by Nortel Networks in Ottawa.

The work being done on WBEM/CIM within the DMTF and elsewhere has excited Chris and appears to him to be a tremendous opportunity for a whole industry. WBEM is an initiative which at last seems to have learned from the past ”not from past mistakes, because CMIP and SNMP were not mistakes ”but from past experience.

Having been hampered himself by the lack of a clear text describing the WBEM/CIM architecture at a working level, Chris hopes that this book will fill that gap.

Chris programs in C++, C, and Python and is building up his strength to tackle Java (the size of the books on that subject being daunting).

Outside of telecommunications, Chris is a commercial pilot and teaches students to fly ”see his previous book on the pleasures of flying. He is also deeply interested in the interpretation of Schubert Lieder, particularly the Winterreise cycle.