Re: CIM for CMDB?

Hi Timo,

The problem with the CIM schema is that it is so huge.
It has to contain everything for everyone.
But they figured out a way to make it easier to read and understand.
It has been broken up into smaller "profiles".
These profiles are just suggest subsets for certain anticipated use models.
But by looking at them, you can much more easily understand intended interactions.
What you are trying to do with CMDB is all in there.
I am just not sure which profile to suggest.
Most likely you will end up using more than 1.
But here is the list of suggested profiles.
http://dmtf.org/standards/profiles
Maybe with more detailed discussion, someone here will be able help narrow it down better for you.

 
Kirk  Augustin
11821 NW McNamee Rd
Portland, OR 97231


HM: 503-289-4356


>________________________________
> From: Timo Veith <[email protected]>
>To: [email protected] 
>Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2012 3:59 AM
>Subject: CIM for CMDB?
> 
>Hello dear list readers,
>
>I am new on this list and am searching for some advice. The mailing list is probably not exactly the right place to ask the following but I hope I may get some advice or some pointers where to go from here and read further on.
>
>The systems department of the data center at the university where I work strives to introduce a holistic monitoring system. Every service and it's components - be it physical or logical - as well as the relationship to other services and their components shall be recorded, changes tracked and the whole thing beeing visualised. The aim is to have a tool or a solution that allows to enter and edit the relevant data, as well as to show a recent map of the dependencies between those items. With ITIL part of this called a CMDB, I would say it's a database with a frontend to enter and view your stuff and certain amount of interfaces allowing you to update the changes that are being done in your infrastructure.
>Later on, we want to connect this CMDB to a monitoring software such as Nagios or Shinken.
>
>As far as I have searched and read docs about this topic the Common Information Model (CIM) should be a great data model to describe the CIs and their relations and eventually save them to a database. But I haven't found such a solution, yet. At least none that is based on an open source License and is using CIM as the data model in the database.
>
>Do you know of any CMDB that uses CIM as the database schema? This relates to Relational DBs but maybe there are other products that solve this with a NoSQL DB or an object oriented DB respectively.
>
>In the beginning of this project, I thought I could just start by describing e.g. a mail server infrastructure with a self invented XML derivative. As I was hacking the first lines, I felt like reinventing the wheel and thus googled around searching for XML Schema files that already describe the base for what I was doing.
>That's how I came to CIM. I downloaded all XSD files of CIM and skimmed over them. Overwhelmed by the mass of stuff, I scratched my head and found my self lost.
>
>I also skimmed through the CIM tutorial. It is some kind of explanatory but I find it not to be not much like a real tutorial. Probably I missunderstood the whole thing somehow. But I thought that if I read it, I would not only get a basic understanding of CIM but also see and learn some examples so I could continue writing my own XML files using conforming to CIM.
>
>The CIM Tool (http://wiki.cimtool.org/index.html) seems coming close to this but it more relates to messages not to a CMDB
>
>
>Well, this message is very long already and I could even write more, but I will first wait and see if anyone of you answers to me.
>
>Kind regards and thank you in advance
>
>
>-- 
>Timo Veith                             Tel:  +49-7071-29-70389
>Universität Tübingen                   Fax:  +49-7071-29-5912
>Zentrum für Datenverarbeitung          Mail: [email protected]
>Wächterstraße 76
>72074 Tübingen
>
>
>
>