The DMTF (Desktop Management Task Force) has finalized its DMI (Desktop Management Interface) specifications that, once adopted by equipment manufacturers, will make hardware inventory easier. Over 150 vendors have already pledged support for the standard.
Basically, DMI defines a format of a management agent for desktop systems. Its layered-model architecture (
see the figure
) allows a wide range of software and hardware components to pass information about themselves to an asset management system. The layers include an MI (Management Interface), a Service Layer, a CI (Component Interface), and MIFs (Management Information Formats).
The MI passes requests for information (1) from the asset management system
to the device. Each component has a vendor-supplied MIF that describes the device. The Service Layer (2) uses the device information stored in an MIF database (3) to interpret what is being requested. The CI (4) makes calls to component management software routines, which, when run, yield the information (5) requested by the asset management system.
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Looking Under The Hood
