Focus on Open Standards in Server Management: The Redfish API from DMTF

Focus on Open Standards in Server Management: The Redfish API from DMTF

Tech Blog

In a recent post, we introduced the movement for open standards in server component design and management. Today we will take a closer look at the Redfish™ standard, which is promoted by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), a powerful and flexible hardware management API that AMI has incorporated into a number of its MegaRAC® products over the last few years.

WHAT IS REDFISH?

As described by DMTF, Redfish is an open industry standard specification and schema designed to meet the expectations of end-users for simple and secure management of modern scalable platform hardware. It is grounded in modern technologies including a RESTful interface and utilizes JSON and OData to help customers integrate solutions within their existing toolchains. The ultimate goal of Redfish is to address all of the components in the data center with a consistent API, and as the DMTF website points out, “an aggressive development schedule from the DMTF partner community is successfully making strides to that end.”

WHY REDFISH?

Redfish has some key advantages and features, chief among them is its use of existing Internet standards such as HTTPS and REST and modern toolchains like JSON and OData. It offers support for multiple platforms, including x86, x64, ARM, PPC and MIPS. It occupies a low memory footprint, making it extremely responsive. It also supports most operating systems, including Linux®, Mac® OS X® and Windows®, for both x86 and x64 platforms. Finally, it is extremely scalable and extendible, with a complete development framework, comprehensive test suite and OEM extensions for customization and value addition.

Moreover, Redfish is also compliant with industry standards including the SPMF 1.1 and Intel® Rack Scale Design Specification. It defines storage, power and network management among other things. It is also built to be accessible and usable by pros and amateurs alike. Redfish is a secure replacement for IPMI-over-LAN to manage multi-node servers, and is deployable on existing management controllers for excellent cost benefits.

THE OPEN REDFISH FRAMEWORK

AMI is hard at work with its key technology partners developing and expanding the Open Redfish Framework – an open architecture that will enable the industry with a complete ecosystem that is highly scalable and works on all levels, from enterprise servers to hyper-scale datacenters. Most importantly, it features common core support for all hardware components found in the data center, for now and always with an eye toward the future.

Illustration of the Open Redfish Framework Concept Architecture

MEGARAC SOLUTIONS FOR REDFISH

Products from AMI featuring support for Redfish include the fully-integrated MegaRAC Pooled System Management Engine (PSME) firmware solutions, which enable efficient resource management for Network, Storage and Compute hardware throughout the data center. Our MegaRAC Composer™ Pod Management Software also features support for Redfish, in addition to the Intel® Rack Scale Design specification. MegaRAC Composer allows users to browse physical resources at the rack, chassis and system-level through an intuitive web-based user interface. Administrators can then compose and assign those physical resources to create a logical node, which provides the advantage of demand-driven dynamic scaling to optimize datacenter resource utilization.

Beyond this, AMI is looking at more integrated applications of Redfish across product lines and groups for a more complete system manageability solution, where the BMC provides full out-of-band management and the Redfish interface, which Aptio® V UEFI BIOS Firmware delivers the system asset and platform configuration tools.

What are your thoughts on the future of open standards for server and data center design and management? Do you have any suggestions for any particular open standards you would like us to explore further in upcoming posts on this blog? Drop us a line via social media or our Contact Us form and let us know and as always, thanks for reading!

About AMI

AMI is Firmware Reimagined for modern computing. As a global leader in Dynamic Firmware for security, orchestration, and manageability solutions, AMI enables the world’s compute platforms from on-premises to the cloud to the edge. AMI’s industry-leading foundational technology and unwavering customer support have generated lasting partnerships and spurred innovation for some of the most prominent brands in the high-tech industry. 

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