Common Information Model (CIM)

The Common Information Model (CIM) is a standard data model for describing and accessing systems management data in heterogeneous environments. It allows system administrators or vendors to write applications (CIM monitoring clients) that measure system resources in a network with different operating systems and hardware. With z/OS® CIM, it is possible to use the DMTF CIM open standard for systems managment which is also implemented on further major server platforms (for example, Linux on zSeries, Linux on xSeries, i5/OS™, or AIX®).

z/OS CIM implements the CIM server which is based on the OpenPegasus open source project. A CIM client invokes the CIM server which, in turn, collects z/OS data from the system and returns it to the calling client. To get the z/OS data, the CIM server invokes a CIM provider which retrieves the data from z/OS system resources.

The metrics obtained by this new API are common across server platforms so you can use it to create end-to-end monitoring applications.