simon wrote:
> Zenoss Enterprise supports polling data from WMI which essentially is the
> Windows implementation of WBEM. On other platforms WBEM isn't nearly as
> mature as Net-SNMP which is why Zenoss doesn't support it.
Heh. SNMP probing and monitoring by Zenoss doesn't pick up large chunks of
important detail on AIX and HPUX (and maybe not Solaris either). That's a
nice way of saying that there's a lot of vendor-specific stuff out there that
out-of-the-box isn't nicely manageable by Zenoss. The argument "WBEM isn't
nearly as mature as Net-SNMP [so WBEM isn't supported]" doesn't seem to be
particularly satisfying as not every operating system uses Net-SNMP out of the
box. :)
Dismissing WBEM / CIM out of hand because of a lack of client support (YMMV
:) seems to me to be missing out on a number of theoretical foundations on the
*server* side. For instance, the concept of relationships which maps objects
to one another is a very useful foundation, especially with the query language.
Make no mistake, this would be quite a step up from the simple inventory
tools currently available (NB: please don't read this as me dissing the tools
-- they're pretty useful!).
While there's probably a lot of historical artefacts in the CIM foundations
(there is in everything else! :), I think that it would be possible for many
people to agree that the theory behind a lot of CIM is valuable. CIM offers a
lot more than just the client-side functionality. :)
To give a particular example where WBEM would be of great benefit is on the
storage side of the world. The larger storage vendors (IBM, EMC, Hitachi) are
co-operating on building WBEM agents (aka CIM providers) into the high-end disk
and tape systems, starting from at least this generation of technology. Even if
someone were to *only* get a mapping of HBAs and SAN devices with WWNs, that
would be a *huge* deal for anyone working with director-class hardware. (Yes,
I'm sure that project Aperi is going to save us and make everything beautiful
-- once they work through all of the Java issues... :)
OTOH, saying that supporting the full gamut of CIM Server + CIMOM
functionality is a huge task is something that I will wholeheartedly believe.
:)
kells
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Read this topic online here:
http://community.zenoss.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=10327#10327
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