HP dx7200 HP Client Management Interface Technical White Paper - Page 6

Hardware Configuration Options One of the most compelling features of HP CMI is the power to manipulate and change hardware configuration options in an open and adaptable manner. WMI provides a foundation for scriptable administration of operating system options that is well proven in the enterprise management community. HP CMI leverages that foundation to provide the IT administrator with an unprecedented degree of control in managing configurations across the enterprise. As with sensor information, the mechanisms provided for collecting and manipulating hardware configuration options are designed with forward compatibility and future capabilities in mind. The following table illustrates the inherent capability and flexibility of HP CMI in dealing with various types of hardware configuration options. Management Class HP_BIOSSetting HP_BIOSString HP_BIOSInteger HP_BIOSEnumeration HP_BIOSOrderedList HP_BIOSPassword HP_BIOSSettingInterface Description Defines the basic set of properties common to all forms of BIOS settings. All hardware configuration options supported by the platform can be surfaced by enumerating this class. Extension of HP_BIOSSetting to support string-based hardware configuration options. This would include such capabilities as: ownership tag, asset tracking number, and UUID. Extension of HP_BIOSSetting to support numeric hardware configuration options. Most hardware configuration options fall into an enumeration category. Enumerations are collections of possible values for a setting (usually expressed as human-readable text). Example enumerations would be: "On, Off" or "Enable, Disable". This class extends the HP_BIOSSetting to support such hardware features as boot order. While password values are never exposed through the HP CMI model, this class exists to help determine the existence of various password options on the client platform. This class would be queried to determine if a setup password was currently set on the platform, for example. This class provides access to the WMI methods exposed by HP CMI. This includes methods to set individual settings and reset all settings to a default state. System Health Events Traditionally, system health monitoring has required a management agent to poll hardware features at some deterministic frequency in order to discover possible warning and error conditions within the system. This polling model of health measurement requires system resources and, potentially, network resources to monitor and maintain. In addition, the longer the polling interval, the longer it takes to potentially discover the triggering event. HP CMI breaks this mold of system health notification by surfacing events directly from the hardware when they are discovered. Management applications designed to consume WMI events can be configured to subscribe to the events generated by HP CMI without impacting system performance or network bandwidth. The following table outlines some of the event monitoring capabilities provided by HP CMI. Like all HP CMI features, new events can be introduced with new hardware platforms or through system firmware updates without impacting the design of the interface or management tools designed to consume the events. 6