Introduction to SNMP Support

[This is preliminary documentation and subject to change.]

The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) uses a distributed architecture consisting of several nodes (network devices such as hosts, routers, terminal servers, and so on), and one or more management stations. Management stations run applications that monitor and control the nodes. Each node includes a processing element, called an agent, that retrieves and updates local management information based on requests from the management stations. The agent also notifies management stations when significant events occur. Management information about the nodes is stored as a collection of managed objects in a database called the Management Information Base (MIB). SNMP communicates management information between the management stations and the agents.

The Web Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) SDK includes the following components to support SNMP:

• Two SNMP providers, a dynamic instance provider and a dynamic class provider, that seamlessly integrate the modeling and manipulation of SNMP information into WBEM. For additional information, see SNMP Providers.
• An SNMP information module compiler that compiles native SNMP schema information defined in MIBs into the equivalent Common Information Model (CIM) schema. For additional information, see SNMP Information Module Compiler and Mapping SNMP to the CIM Schema.

Because the SNMP providers manipulate CIM class definitions, they also provide mapping between MIB object values and CIM class instance values. For more information on how this mapping is done, see Mapping SNMP to the CIM Schema.

For a list of documents that provide more information on SNMP, see Additional Reading on SNMP.