The Dell™ OpenManage™ Client Instrumentation (OMCI) software enables remote management application programs to access information about the client system, monitor the status of the client system, or change the state of the system, such as shutting it down remotely. OMCI exposes, through standard interfaces, key system parameters that allow administrators to manage, inventory, monitor the system health of, and gather information on deployed Dell client systems.
OMCI enables Dell client systems to be managed using the Common Information Model (CIM) standard. CIM reduces your total cost of ownership, improves security and provides a holistic approach to managing all devices in the enterprise, including clients, servers, storage, network, and software devices.
Since Dell has adopted CIM as the preferred management standard for client systems, what follows is a brief overview of some concepts of CIM.
CIM Overview
The Common Information Model, created by the Desktop Management Task Force (DMTF) as part of the Web-based Enterprise Management (WBEM) initiative, provides a unified view of physical and logical objects in the managed environment. OMCI uses CIM, which is a systems management protocol defined by industry standards.
The following are important information related to CIM:
CIM is an object-oriented data model for describing management information. CIM describes the way the data is organized, not necessarily the transport model used to transport the data. The most prevalent transport method is the Microsoft® Windows® Management Instrumentation (WMI).
CIM-capable management applications gather information from a variety of CIM objects and devices, including client and server systems, network infrastructure devices, and applications.
The CIM specification details mapping techniques for improved compatibility with other management protocols.
The CIM data model abstracts and describes all elements in a network environment and the CIM schema provides the actual data model descriptions and arranges the network into a series of managed objects, all interrelated and broadly classified.
The CIM schema is defined by the Managed Object Format (MOF) file, which provides a standardized model for describing management information between clients in a management system. The MOF file is not bound to a particular implementation, and it allows the interchange of management information between many different management systems and clients.
WMI Overview
WMI is Microsoft's implementation of CIM instrumentation. WMI supports CIM and Microsoft-specific CIM extensions. The WMI management infrastructure also includes the CIM Object Manager (CIMOM), which is the interface and manipulation point for CIM objects and information. It acts as a facilitator in gathering information and manipulating object properties. OMCI provides data to WMI, which is the common interface to WMI management applications. For more information, see "Windows Management Instrumentation."
Data Sources Used by OMCI
OMCI contains the underlying driver set that collects system information from a number of different sources on the client system, including the BIOS, CMOS, System Management BIOS (SMBIOS), System Management Interface (SMI), operating system, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), Dynamic Link Libraries (DLLs), and registry settings. OMCI exposes that information through the CIMOM interface of the WMI stack and enables IT administrators to remotely collect asset information, modify CMOS settings, receive proactive notification of potential fault conditions, and be alerted to potential security breaches.
OMCI uses a variety of data sources resident on the client system which includes:
Microsoft Win32 WMI providers
SMBIOS
Device drivers
Operating system registry
Operating system APIs
WMI Repository
OMCI Architecture
The OMCI architecture is based on a layered model that is tightly integrated with the Microsoft WMI stack as shown in Figure 1-1.
WMI application layer — This layer consists of management applications such as Dell OpenManage Client Connector (OMCC), Dell Client Manager, Dell OpenManage IT Assistant, Dell OpenManage Client Administrator (OMCA), and other standards-based management tools and WMI applications. This layer is not a part of OMCI and the applications are consumers of systems management data supplied from the client by OMCI. These applications request client information and receive client alerts through the CIMOM.
Dell WMI provider — This layer lies beneath the CIMOM and contains two CIM providers which register with the CIMOM. When the CIMOM receives a request for information, it routes the request to the appropriate provider. Both Dell and Microsoft providers exist in this layer, and they provide information on system devices. The providers send management application requests from the CIMOM to the data router.
Data router — This layer collects information from system components in the data provider layer and passes the information up to the Dell WMI provider layer, which then presents it to the CIMOM.
Data provider — This layer provides data to the data router. When it receives a request from the data router, the data provider queries the client system's hardware, drivers, and operating system to determine the available instrumentation. It then applies all platform and customer overrides to the data before returning it to the data router.
For example, a management console in the WMI application layer requests the available free space on the client system hard drive. The WMI application layer makes the request over the network to the CIMOM (in the Dell WMI provider layer) on the client system. The CIMOM routes the request to the appropriate WMI provider, which, in turn, routes the request through the data router layer to the disk data provider in the data provider layer. The information is then returned (through the same path in reverse) to the management console.
CIM is a standard that describes management data that can be used by many management application programs. OMCI conforms to the CIM 2.6 Schema, and includes two WMI providers: Dell WMI Indication Provider/Polling Agent and Dell WMI Instance/Method Provider.
Dell LegacySelect 2.0 Support
LegacySelect allows a network administrator to selectively enable or disable legacy components in a Dell system. It is a BIOS-level interface which lets you control the level of legacy technology your varied workgroups require. LegacySelect 2.0 supports the ability to enable or disable ports, including USB, PCI slots, and disk drives.
The LegacySelect 2.0 specification supports the following components:
Serial port
Parallel port
Diskette drive controller
Personal System/2 (PS/2) mouse port
Integrated audio controller
Integrated network interface controller (NIC)
Universal Serial Bus (USB) controller
Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) slot
A network administrator can change the settings of these components either through the computer's system setup or by using a WMI management application such as IT Assistant.
NOTICE: Changing LegacySelect attributes such as Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) Controller may cause a computer system to become unusable. If this occurs, enter system setup on the client system and change the applicable setting.
Remote Boot Device Select
Remote Boot Device Select allows a network administrator to remotely configure the order of devices from which the system attempts to boot. It consists of two groups: Hard Disk Drive Sequence and Boot Device Sequence.Hard Disk Drive Sequence is used to set the order of the hard drives, and Boot Device Sequence is used to set the order of the type of boot device, such as hard drive, NIC, CD-ROM drive, and diskette drive.
WMI Security
WMI provides for user authentication before granting access to CIM data and methods. Access privileges are enforced by distributed component object model (DCOM) security and the CIMOM.
Event Reporting
OMCI detects events on Dell systems and can alert the local user and network administrator to potential failures, configuration changes, and chassis intrusions. These events are displayed by a system management application program such as IT Assistant.
OMCI allows you to set polling intervals for a client Dell computer's Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART) hard drive, environmental monitors, chassis intrusion, hard drive threshold, or error checking and correction (ECC) code single-bit memory error events.
A polling interval defines how often the instrumentation code checks the status of the device. Polling intervals are important to note since they determine how often OMCI checks to see if an alert state is present on the system, and therefore, how often it generates an alert. If the polling intervals are set too high, it may be possible to miss an alert. For example, systems that support a thermal probe also have a maximum temperature where the system will shut down regardless of what else is going on. If the temperature increases too quickly and OMCI does not poll the system in time, it will not generate a shutdown message and the system will not shut down cleanly.
OMCI also contains a start delay for the polling intervals. This determines how long after the operating system loads, OMCI starts checking for the alert status. An alert may be missed if the start delay is set too high.
For instructions on setting polling intervals and enabling or disabling alerts for these devices, see the documentation for your systems management application program.
Remote Shutdown
OMCI supports remote system shutdown and restart.
Remote Wake-Up Configurability
OMCI supports configuration of remote wake-up settings. Remote wake-up is a function of the client system and NIC.
WfM Version 2.0 Compliance
OMCI is fully compliant with the Intel® Wired for Management (WfM) 2.0 standard. For more information on this standard and its specifications, see the Intel website at www.intel.com.
What's New
The following are new updates to OMCI 7.4:
OMCI does not support hard drives configured in a RAID array. Earlier versions of OMCI can generate anomalous disk number, and DiskSizeIncreased and DiskSizeDecreased alerts, when installed on a system with RAID implemented. This behavior depends on the RAID configuration and on what RAID controller is used. OMCI 7.4 includes an upgrade to address these abnormal alerts.
Support for new platforms: Support for Dell Latitude™, Dell OptiPlex™ and Dell Precision™ systems shipped after OMCI 7.3 release.
Option to suppress local alerting popups: Two new properties GlobalNTEventLogSeverityLevel and GlobalDisplaySeverityLevel determine how severe an event must be for alerts to be sent to the NT event log or to the local display (popup). Setting the severity levels of these properties to different levels, helps you to suppress various types of alerts. For example, if the value of the GlobalDisplaySeverityLevel property is set to 5 (MAJOR), then Smart and TemperatureProbe alerts are displayed. If the GlobalDisplaySeverityLevel property is set to 4 (MINOR), then Smart, TemperatureProbe, FanProbe, CurrentProbe, DiskCapacity, EccMemory, and VoltageProbe alerts are displayed.
Unique event ID number for each event type: Each type of event (for example, CurrentProbe, TemperatureProbe, Smart, and so on) that gets logged has an unique event ID number. The events have unique IDs to allow log scraping; this way you can programmatically look at the event log and determine what events have triggered.
Event filtering: You are provided with an option to receive either a single notice or a limited number of notices of the occurrence of an event, of a given type. You can mask out specific events and can generate single alert messages for only those events. The Dell_IndicationStaticValues class has the MaxNTEventLogNotifications, MaxDisplayNotifications, and the OccurrencesCount properties, which control how many notices of each alert condition are sent to the NT event log and to the local display. For example, setting a value of 0 will not send any notices.
BIOS tokens:Most systems today support six distinct power modes, or sleep states, commonly defined as S0 through S5. S0 is a system's normal full-power state. Modes S1 to S4 offer increasing levels of power savings. S5 is the highest power-savings mode, representing a complete power-off such as that achieved by a shutdown command. OMCI supports the Enable S5 low power mode and Disable S5 low power mode BIOS HW tokens and exposes the LowPowerS5 property in the Dell_Configuration class in order to access the tokens.
Configuration of BIOS settings for Alert Standard Format (ASF) 2.0: The ASF Specification defines the Remote Management Control Protocol (RMCP), which allows a network administrator to respond to an alert remotely in many different ways like powering on the system, powering off the system, or forcing a reboot. ASF 2.0 adds important security measures to the ASF standard, which defines alerting and remote control interfaces to proactively manage networked devices when their operating system is absent. Operating system absent is defined as a computer system state where the operating system is not available and could occur due to boot problems or operating system errors, or because the system is in a low power sleep state. The first industry specification for operating system absent management, ASF, allows a network administrator to be alerted to failures of specific components within a networked device, thereby minimizing on on-site maintenance while maximizing remote visibility of and access to local systems. Without ASF, operating system absent problems require manual intervention to force a reboot of the system.
The three settings in the system BIOS that OMCI allows for configuration are:
Off— The system is configured so that all ASF 2.0 features are turned off.
Alert Only— The system is configured so that ASF 2.0 alert is the only feature that is turned on.
On— The system is configured so that alerts and remote control are turned on.
The system NIC and BIOS support ASF 2.0. If the BIOS allows for any ASF 2.0 configuration, then that is exposed through the WMI.
Supported Operating Systems
The following operating systems are supported for installing OMCI:
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
Microsoft Windows XP Professional (all versions)
Microsoft Windows XP x64 Edition
Latest Updates
For the latest update information about OMCI, see the readme file located in the installation directory.
Other Dell Documents You Might Need
In addition to this User's Guide, you can find the following guides either on the Dell Support website or on the documentation CD:
The Dell OpenManage Client Connector User's Guide provides information on how to view and configure OMCI properties and perform remote management functions.
The Dell Client Configuration Utility User's Guide provides information on how to obtain or configure BIOS settings. You can restart or shut down the system or flash the BIOS with Dell Client Configuration Utility. The utility creates an executable that can be run as a standalone package or used with software deployment tools to execute remotely across an enterprise.
The Dell OpenManage IT Assistant User's Guide, provides information on IT Assistant, which provides notification of problems in the client systems, as well as the ability to configure a broad range of hardware components. IT Assistant also reports on system content and identifies asset information, including firmware and BIOS versions, system model, service tag number, instrumentation version, processor family, and speed of the processor.
Other Resources Which Might Be Of Interest
The Dell OpenManage Client Administrator (OMCA), an integrated suite of client management applications developed in partnership with Altiris®, to provide optimized client system management, can be downloaded from the Altiris website.
Dell Client Manager, a new solution added in the 3.0 version of OMCA, includes Dell-specific hardware and BIOS inventory information, helps configure and update BIOS, and provides hardware health monitoring.
Obtaining Technical Assistance
If at any time you do not understand a procedure described in this guide, or if your product does not perform as expected, different types of help are available. For more information see "Getting Help" in your system's Installation and Troubleshooting Guide or the Hardware Owner's Manual.
Additionally, Dell Enterprise Training and Certification is available; see www.dell.com/training for more information. This service might not be offered in all locations.
