HP dx7200 HP Client Management Interface Technical White Paper - Page 5

HP CMI exposes three classifications of management information about the underlying hardware platform: • Hardware sensor information This includes information about physical sensors within the client computer. The interface supports a wide variety of sensor types, including both numerical sensors such as fan speed (rpm) and sensors based on a physical state, such as the state of a case lock (open, closed). Sensor data is surfaced as an enumeration in WMI, which provides flexibility in the number and types of sensors reported from platform to platform. • Hardware configuration options Instrumentation information related to configuring hardware options includes a multitude of features. These features are exposed in both a general and specialized manner to systems management applications. As with sensor data, hardware configuration options are surfaced as an enumeration in WMI, which provides flexibility in the number and types of sensors reported from platform to platform. • System health events System health events are dynamically surfaced based on triggered hardware events. WMI provides a convenient, low-bandwidth mechanism for management information consumers to subscribe to these hardware events and be notified in real-time. These events can be monitored at the local client computer or by a remote console. Hardware Sensor Information HP CMI defines a base model for surfacing hardware sensor data to management applications. This model supports extension in two ways: 1. Enumeration of sensors physically attached to a given platform can be generalized by querying against the base class. This allows management tools to automatically detect available sensor devices without recoding. 2. Definition of new sensor types will extend the general definitions provided by the interface. This approach guarantees that properties known and understood today will continue to possess the same characteristics and behaviors as new features are introduced. The following table defines the basic set of services provided by HP CMI to support the surfacing of hardware sensor data to management applications. Management Class HP_BIOSSensor HP_BIOSStateSensor HP_BIOSNumericSensor Description Defines the basic set of properties common to all types of hardware sensors. All hardware sensors available on a particular platform can be surfaced by enumerating this class. This class provides access to a category of sensors that our monitored by state changes only. State changes are defined by an array of possible values within each sensor definition. Examples of state-based sensors would include POST warnings, physical switches, or solenoids. Defines the category of sensors that return numerical measurements. 5