The purpose of the CIM is to allow applications to determine when it is safe to perform operations on shared resources. It is safe to perform operations on shared resources when a node is a member of a cluster that is in a consistent state.
A consistent state is means that all the nodes of a cluster that are members of the CIM set are in a known and safe state. The nodes that are members of the CIM set are specified in the CIM configuration. Only these nodes are considered when the CIM determines the state of the cluster. When a node first joins or forms a cluster, the CIM indicates that the cluster is consistent only if it can determine the status of the other nodes that make up the CIM set and that those nodes are in a safe state.
The CIM reports on a cluster state that a node state is known and safe (True), or a node state is unknown (False) for the node. True and False are defined as follows:
True: All CIM nodes in the cluster are in a known and safe state.
False: One or more CIM nodes in the cluster are in an unknown or unsafe state.
