Interface Standardization
Introduction
The Cloud Infrastructure Management Interface (CIMI) is an open, standard API specification for cloud infrastructure management.
The goal of CIMI is to enable users to manage cloud infrastructure in a simple way, standardizing interactions between cloud environments to achieve interoperable management of cloud infrastructure between service providers and their consumers and developers.
CIMI 1.1 was registered as an International Standard in August 2014 by the Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC 1) of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).[1].
Overview
The CIMI standard is defined and published by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF). It includes the Cloud Infrastructure Management Interface (CIMI) HTTP-based RESTful Model and Protocol specification,[2] the CIMI XML Schema, the CIMI Core Manual, and the CIMI Use Cases whitepaper:[3].
Goals
CIMI aims to provide a single set of interfaces that a cloud consumer can use to provision and manage their cloud infrastructure across multiple clouds, so customer code does not need to be adapted to each of these multiple providers' proprietary interfaces. CIMI has been described as a de jure standard that is under the change control of a body of standards, contrasting it with a de facto standard where typically one vendor has change control over the interface, and everyone else has to change the internal workings of it.[4] Vendors are expected to adopt a dual strategy of offering two options: one CIMI-compliant offering and the second a more proprietary offering that allows for more proprietary functionality.[5].
Scope of application
CIMI is adjusted to the basic functionality of IaaS "Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)"), such as the deployment and management of Machines, Volumes, Networks, Monitoring and Systems that group them. It includes a feature discovery mechanism to find out what features the cloud provider supports, including metadata that describes capabilities and resource constraints.[6].