Data Center Applications

Transcript Data Center Applications

Blade Server Management Standards Overview

The well-managed blade system

Bus and Hardware I/O Standards Distributed Environment Standards Hi-Speed interconnect standards © 2004 Hitachi Data Systems Software Management Standards Hardware Management Standards Storage Management Standards May 1, 2020 2

Hardware Management Standards - IPMI

 Intel’s Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) is a message-based hardware management interface implemented at the silicon level using a baseboard management controller, a small processor that sets up IPMI as a subsystem independent of the server's CPU or operating system. It enables remote monitoring, management and recovery capabilities, regardless of the status of the server.  IPMI defines a common interface to how vendors monitor their system hardware and sensors (temperature, voltage, fan, etc.), control system components (power, blades, etc.), log important system events (chassis intrusion, CPU performance, etc.), and to allow administrators to remotely manage and recover failed systems.  IPMI is promoted by Intel, Dell, HP, NEC and others  IPMI 2.0 offers enhanced security by adding SHA-1 for detecting changes to the data stream, AES for better encryption, and VLAN support for better traffic isolation. To improve remote monitoring, the specification also includes serial redirection over the LAN for remote viewing of an IPMI server's boot process, as well as use of emergency management consoles.

 IPMI 2.0 beefs up blade system support in three ways. First, it reports on the status of blades while being hot-swapped, indicating whether the module is active or inactive, for example. Second, it monitors a secondary IPMI management bus that's commonly used in carrier-grade products built with Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (ATCA). Finally, it improves hacker and malware protection by restricting management capabilities to a given interface through a so-called "Firmware Firewall." © 2004 Hitachi Data Systems May 1, 2020 3

Hardware Management Standards AdvancedTCA

 Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture  Developed as PICMG 3.x specs by PCI Industrial Computers Manufacturers Group  Focused primarily on telecom, but potentially useful in other applications  Rapidly gaining traction in telecom  With recent ECN-001, has 160+ pages on platform management – Currently based on & extends IPMI © 2004 Hitachi Data Systems May 1, 2020 4

Hardware Management Standards - DMTF

 Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) and the DMTF's Common Information Model (CIM). – – – – – CIM is a standard for a common information model that features object friendly data content format that can be expressed in XML. DMI is a component instrumentation interface for workstations and servers. SMBIOS (System Management BIOS) is the standard for management extensions to the BIOS interface on Intel-based architectures). ASF (Alert Standard Format) which is an evolution of IBM and Intels Alert on LAN (AoL) standard for status and control of devices before an O/S is loaded. DEN (Directory Enabled Network) standard so management services can use standard distributed directories (via LDAP).

 The Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), an industry standards organization developing management standards for enterprise and Internet environments, and the Blade Systems Alliance (BladeS), have entered into an alliance partnership where the two organizations will work to help strengthen and speed the implementation of DMTF's server management and utility computing standards  Other related standards incorporating the DMTFs work include SNIA-driven SMI-S, open source movement driven WBEM (Web Based Enterprise Management) initiative and Microsoft's WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) standard.

Hardware Management Standards - SMASH

 The DMTF has formed a new sub-group, called the Server Management Working Group which has released a new group of standards, dubbed Systems Management Architecture for Server Hardware (SMASH). SMASH is a collection of efforts aimed at enabling network managers to gather hardware and low-level software information up to the OS.

 SMASH, like SMI-S, is based on and uses CIM  The standard creates a unified way remote administration software can perform tasks such as rebooting a machine, reconfiguring a storage subsystem, assigning an Internet address to a machine or updating system software  SMASH augments the Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) standard, released by the DMTF in 1998.  SMASH includes a Command Line Protocol (CLP) for addressing and discovering CIM objects, as well as CIM models and profiles.  Working on the standard are Dell, IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Sun as well as Microsoft, Oracle, Intel and Advanced Micro Devices. © 2004 Hitachi Data Systems May 1, 2020 6

Microsoft’s WMX

 Microsoft has pushed its own proposed management framework, code-named Web services for Management Extension (WMX). The framework describes a generic SOAP-based management protocol that reuses Microsoft's existing Web Service (WS) specifications and security models to support server management operations.  Microsoft positions WMX as complementary to SMASH, noting that after integrating feedback about WMX from DMTF members, Microsoft would propose WMX as a standard to the DMTF  There are concerns about overlap © 2004 Hitachi Data Systems May 1, 2020 7

Software Management Standards

 Software Management products for blades falls into a variety of categories such as: – change and configuration management; – – – – image cloning and management; provisioning; application monitoring and control, and policy-based management  At a low level a variety of standards exist and are used for these applications, such as the DMTF standards, SNMP and syslog, but at higher levels there is little standardization. Instead what may be most appropriate and is happening is for the major cross-platform management tools to add blade management capabilities.

 So software management software is a key factor in differentiating among the vendors, for example (not complete list): – – – – – Egenera's Processing Area Network management software will provide the Epic and Oracle software with automatic backup and failover capabilities within the blade server chassis. IBM’s IBM Director connects with IBM’s Tivoli management software for more expansive capabilities and IBM‘s Web Infrastructure Orchestration software, designed to automate data-center operations for its Intel-based BladeCenter servers running its WebSphere middleware, DB2 database, and Tivoli Storage Manager software. RLX Technologies Control Tower XT software HP's Integrated Lights Out (iLO) server management package and HP’s Insight Manager which hooks into HP OpenView Dell's OpenManage server management package. © 2004 Hitachi Data Systems May 1, 2020 8

Distributed Environment Standards

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The web services standards community (WW3, DMTF, Oasis) and the grid computing standards community (Globus) are standardizing on a common set of Internet based standards for distributed services (IPC, directory, security, data formats, events). These will be important for both remote management and for commercial application support.

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