CIM (Common Information Model) is provided to monitor the system health. Several vendors offer additional CIM providers specific for their hardware. Take a look at e.g http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/hwhm41_technote.pdf to see how this works.
You can find a list of vendors who offer such CIM providers at http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/vcl/cimprovider.php
André