What does vCenter Hardware Status use for monitoring?

vCenter Hardware Status utilizes CIM (Common Information Model) monitoring to keep track of the hardware health of virtual machines and the physical hosts in a VMware environment. CIM is an open standard that allows for the representation of information about computer systems and their management in a single model.

By using CIM monitoring, vCenter can receive health and status information from the hardware that is being monitored. This allows vCenter to alert administrators about potential issues, ensure proper functioning of the hardware components, and maintain the overall reliability of the virtual infrastructure. Through CIM, hardware manufacturers can provide drivers that enable communication between the hardware components and management software like vCenter, ensuring a comprehensive overview of system health.

Other methods mentioned, like SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) and WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation), serve specific purposes for network and system management but are not the primary method used by vCenter for monitoring hardware status. Similarly, API endpoints can be useful for various integrations or data accesses, but they do not directly monitor hardware health in the way CIM does. Thus, CIM monitoring stands out as the correct choice for vCenter Hardware Status monitoring.