System administrators can use a CIM client application to query the name and version information for the vSphere Installation Bundles (VIBs) that are installed on the managed server. This information is valuable for diagnosing software problems.
This example shows how to get the name and software version string by traversing the CIM_ElementSoftwareIdentity association from the server Scoping Instance. The VMware implementation of the Software Inventory profile uses
CIM_InstalledSoftwareIdentity to associate only firmware and hypervisor instances of
CIM_SoftwareIdentity to the server Scoping Instance. For VIBs, VMware implements the
CIM_ElementSoftwareIdentity association. The
ElementSoftwareStatus property of the
CIM_ElementSoftwareIdentity association contains the value
6 (Installed).
Locating the Installed Software Versions from the Base Server Scoping Instance shows the relationships of the CIM objects involved. VIBs are modeled with instances of
VMware_ComponentSoftwareIdentity.
The CIM_InstalledSoftwareIdentity association that leads to the instance of
VMware_HypervisorSoftwareIdentity is included in the illustration for comparison only.
The VMware implementation of CIM_SoftwareIdentity for VIBs makes the version available in the
VersionString property rather than in the
MajorVersion and
MinorVersion properties.