Continued innovation and evolution in computing technology have driven an increase in planned obsolescence and cost to Hyperscalers and Enterprise customers. Large investments in compute infrastructure cause vendor lock-in to customers, resulting in a lack of agility to switch and optimize architectures for workloads and scale as business requirements change. Datacenter Modular Hardware System (DC-MHS) combined with AMI Build Orchestrator Service (BOS) is a solution. To showcase this solution among other concepts to the attendees, AMI will participate in this year’s OCP Regional Summit in Prague, Czech Republic.
What is Data Center – Modular Hardware System (DC-MHS)?
DC-MHS exists to increase interoperability between server key elements and allows hyperscalers and enterprise customers to reduce costs and increase scalability, reliability, and sustainability. It supports modularity in compute, IO, and storage components across generations, architectures, and vendors. This modularity allows those same customers to upgrade components independently, with vendor-agnostic system configurations that meet their requirements. The ability to swap parts as needed adds sustainability by adding the benefit of decreasing e-waste and feeding into secondary markets.
What is AMI displaying at OCP Regional Summit 2023?
AMI is innovating to provide a sophisticated Build Orchestrator Service that supports hyperscalers’ and enterprise customers’ configuration, manageability, and provisioning needs. AMI’s Build Orchestrator Service (BOS) is a proof-of-concept product that will be the lynchpin of our cloud services, AMI Meridian, currently in development. AMI’s BOS can detect, build, and deploy BIOS and BMC firmware for images connected to AMI’s Meridian. The tool has intelligent hardware detection, enabling platform maintainers and end users to interchange components, automatically detect the changes, and new firmware images built and deployed for the new configuration.
Jabil is introducing a DC-MHS implementation in their J311-S 1U rackmount server. This device will have a Host Processor Module (HPM) hosting a 4th Generation Intel Xeon processor. A separate board, the Data Center-Secure Control Module DC-SCM) is populated with the BMC, BIOS flash, and hardware root of trust (HRoT).
When the hardware configuration changes, the firmware on the DC-SCM will need to be updated. At the OCP Regional Summit 2023, AMI will demonstrate a scenario where AMI BOS will detect the change from a managed Jabil node and notify the hardware maintainer of the change and the requirement for a specific image to be flashed. Via BOS, the user will have options to create a configurable build for the device, along with pre-built, validated images that can be downloaded and deployed. This removes multiple pain points for hardware maintainers, allowing them to manage the firmware of their servers quickly, reliably, and securely in the field.
Come Join Us at Booth A15 to Learn More!
AMI continues to support OCP via its Open Edition firmware for Aptio OE, MegaRAC OE, and Tektagon OE. Customers, open-source developers, and technology enthusiasts are encouraged to participate and view this demo and other AMI demos in Booth A15, on April 19-20, 2023.
