The physical hierarchy

The physical hierarchy consists of subclasses of the class ICIM_PhysicalElement, which describes any objects of a system that have distinct physical identities. All ECIM-R physical objects can contain or host other physical objects.

The most common class in the physical hierarchy is Card. Card is used to model any object that is capable of carrying signals or providing a mounting point for other physical components. Other classes that you will see include Chassis, which represents a physical object that encloses other objects and provide some definable functionality, and Rack, which represents an enclosure in which a Chassis is placed.

The most basic relationship in the physical hierarchy is ComposedOf, which relates a physical object to its component parts, which in turn are PartOf the enclosing object. A Chassis is ComposedOf the Cards that are placed in it. A Card that is used as a motherboard might in turn be ComposedOf Cards that are plugged in to it.

ComposedOf and other relationships are described in “ECIM-R relationships” on page 214.

Physical package classes instantiated by the IP Manager identifies the physical package classes that can be instantiated by the IP Manager.

Table 1. Physical package classes instantiated by the IP Manager

Class	Available to	Comment
Card	All IP Manager products	A type of physical container that can be plugged into another card or hosting board, or is itself a hosting board or motherboard in a Chassis.
Chassis	All IP Manager products	A physical element that encloses other elements and provides definable functionality, such as a desktop, processing node, Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS), disk or tape storage, or a combination of these.
NASChassis	All IP Manager products	The chassis of a Celerra network-attached storage (NAS) gateway.
Rack	All IP Manager products	An enclosure in which chassis are placed. Typically, a rack is nothing more than the enclosure, and all the functioning component is packaged in the chassis that is loaded in the rack.

Note:

The indentations in the Class column indicate class hierarchy.