The DMTF’s Web Services Management (WS-Man) provides interoperability between management applications and managed resources, and identifies a core set of web service specifications and usage requirements that expose a common set of operations central to all systems management. WS-Man has been adopted and published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as ISO/IEC 17963:2013.

A SOAP-based protocol for managing computer systems (e.g., personal computers, workstations, servers, smart devices), WS-Man supports web services and helps constellations of computer systems and network-based services collaborate seamlessly. 

The standard has the ability to:

• Get, put (update), create, and delete individual resource instances, such as settings and dynamic values
• Enumerate the contents of containers and collections, such as large tables and logs
• Subscribe to events emitted by managed resources
• Execute specific management methods with strongly typed input and output parameters

The protocol and transport in WS-Man have been decoupled, to ensure interoperability is not dependent on specific versions of encryption algorithms, such as Transport Layer Security (TLS).

The DMTF welcomes feedback on our standards, but requires that individuals submitting comments first agree to our DMTF Feedback Policy.

Get Involved

Work on the WS-Man standard takes place in the DMTF’s Architecture Working Group. Join the DMTF to participate.