Solaris To Support WBEM Spec

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June 08, 1999 (12:21 PM EDT)

The Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) standard will get a boost on Tuesday from Sun.

A new release of Sun's Solaris Easy Access Server -- slated to ship this summer -- will support the Distributed Management Task Force's (DMTF) WBEM specification, a standard for managing systems from applications that support the spec.

Easy Access is a workgroup server bundled with the Solaris operating system, but the software release is included in Sun's Solaris Enterprise Server due out later this year. WBEM will also be included in Solaris 8, due out next year.

By adding WBEM support to Solaris, administrators can manage Solaris systems with any WBEM-compliant application or from a Web browser.

"Our goal is to simplify administration for Solaris and drive open standards for network computing," said Tom Goguen, Sun's Solaris product marketing manager.

But one analyst said that was not always Sun's goal, at least where WBEM was concerned. That's because Sun had its own spec, the Java Management API, or JMAPI, which it had championed.

"The WBEM architecture is the right one to support and implement, it's long past due," said Richard Ptak, an analyst at Hurwitz Group.

Ptak said Sun had been reluctant to throw all of its weight behind WBEM because archrival Microsoft was a key developer of the spec along with Cisco, BMC Software, Compaq, and Intel.

Microsoft already supports WBEM in Windows 98 and Windows NT and offers an SDK. In addition to supporting WBEM in Solaris, Sun said it too will offer its own SDK.

Sun said it's shipping release of WBEM Solaris Services will also support the XML/HTTP specification, which the DMTF is expected to finalize as early as next week at a meeting scheduled to take place in San Jose.

Among other things, XML/HTTP will provide interoperability of management applications by gathering data from both Windows- and Unix-based systems.

Without XML, WBEM-enabled applications would have to connect to NT and Solaris servers separately and couldn't interchange data. But by supporting XML, a user can write a standard management application and point it to an NT server or a Solaris server and manage both in the same way, Sun's Goguen said.

And by using XML, applications don't have to support competing object languages, notably Microsoft's COM and Sun's Java-based RMI. Rather, service providers take data and store it in the WBEM Common Information Model (CIM) Object Manager. CIM is a DMTF standard that allows the interchange of management data among different systems and platforms.

"When Microsoft did their implementation, they used COM to access the information," Goguen said. "In our implementation, we used Java, or RMI. By using a model that is not specific to either, both systems will be able to interoperate."

That could be key to getting IT managers to buy into WBEM, Ptak said.

"It will be accepted and implemented much more quickly in terms of applications," he said. "You'll be able to do management in a consistent manner. It's a significant step forward, it's not the end of the road."

Among other things, rigorous XML definitions are still needed.

Sun's Easy Access Server is due out this summer.