What is a CIM Server and what are CIM credentials?

[Akshat Rastogi]

Hi, 

Being from BMC background I have no idea about storage discovery using CIM Server. I have read the documentation but could not make out what is meant by CIM Server and its credentials?

The storage discovery could be done using SMI-S provider or via management software but where is the CIM Server?

Kindly provide some insight.

Thanks.

[Michael Skov2]

Credentials is just... well credentials for the storage/device. Have you checked out https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/jakarta-it-operations-management/page/product/discovery/concept/c...?

Which storage system are you looking to discover? That might help us.

[Akshat Rastogi]

Hi Michael,

Its EMC Unity which we want to discover.

I have read the document, just got confused by CIM Server. Is it a dedicated server which we have to place separately in the infra environment with SMI-S agent installed?

I believe EMC unity has SMI-S service embedded into it so can we directly discover the device using its credentials?

Thanks.

[vNick]

Yes - CIM is an industry standard (well it was supposed to be at least), and results in the need for a server to be created and loaded with the storage vendor's SMI-S provider.  Discovery then queries the CIM server instead of directly against the storage device (the CIM server will collect the data from the storage servers)

[dcwilson · Accepted solution]

This link may provide some of the information you are looking for.  

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/jakarta-it-operations-management/page/product/discovery/reference/r_DataCollDiscoStorageviaSMISCIM.html

Common Information Model (CIM) are much like MIBs in the SNMP world.  https://www.dmtf.org/standards/cim

In my experience there is a single "management" CIM server that is communicating with all storage devices (in a perfect world) and the actual discovery of the storage device is triggered from that CIM management server.

EMC definitely has that management capability.  Discovered storage via an EMC CIM server at a previous employer.  

If you do that a couple of challenges faced.  The CIM server was in one of 3 data centers, we were populating location at the Discovery Schedule so the storage devices at the other 2 locations were getting the wrong location populated.  

You don't have to use a CIM server, just an option.  

You can discover the storage separately, which is what we ended up doing at my previous employer.

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/jakarta-it-operations-management/page/product/discovery/task/t_ConfigDiscoForStandaloneStorage.html