NIM objects

The machines you want to manage in the NIM environment, their resources, and the networks through which the machines communicate are all represented as objects within a central database that resides on the master.

Network objects and their attributes reflect the physical characteristics of the network environment. This information does not affect the running of a physical network but is used internally by NIM for configuration information.

Each object in the NIM environment has a unique name that you specify when the object is defined. The NIM name is independent of any of the physical characteristics of the object it identifies and is only used for NIM operations. The benefit of unique names is that an operation can be performed using the NIM name without having to specify which physical attribute should be used. NIM determines which object attributes to use. For example, to easily identify NIM clients, the host name of the system can be used as the NIM object name, but these names are independent of each other. When an operation is performed on a machine, the NIM name is used, and all other data for the machine (including the host name) is retrieved from the NIM database.