Supermicro "Redfish" Firmware Replaces IPMI on X10 BMC's???

[TXAG26]

It looks like there is some type of new BMC management firmware/interface that purportedly replaces IPMI for X10 and beyond motherboards? I noticed this new firmware on the firmware update page for the X10SRH-CLN4F. The previous IPMI firmware link has been removed. Instead there is only a link to download a file called: REDFISH_X10_320.zip

Anyone know what this is? I found a SM FAQ that says to contact support for pricing. I have not yet applied the BMC "Redfish" firmware update as I do not want to loose access to the excellent IPMI interface that currently exists. Any ideas? I'm pretty computer savvy, but reading through this Redfish stuff makes my head hurt and I still can't make heads or tails of the actual functionality.

http://www.supermicro.com/products/nfo/Redfish.cfm

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C600/X10SRH-CLN4F.cfm

http://supermicro.com/support/faqs/faq.cfm?faq=21393

http://www.dmtf.org/sites/default/files/Introduction_to_Redfish_2015.pdf


_

 

[Ericloewe]

Interesting. Hadn't heard of this before...

 

[DrKK]

Interesting. Hadn't heard of this before...

Neither have I. I suppose this will turn into something we get a lot of questions on.

/me watches thread.

 

[jgreco]

Oh, cool, that happened faster than expected. And frack them, not available for the X10SRW. That's typical.

 

[Ericloewe]

Oh, cool, that happened faster than expected. And frack them, not available for the X10SRW. That's typical.

It's supposed to be available on all X10 models soon, from what they say.

Since you seem more enlightened, can you point us at any resources that explain this and/or compare it to what we've known as IPMI? The linked stuff above is rather light on details of what exactly it does.

 

[Arwen]

It appears, (from my limited and quick reading), that BMC & IPMI version 3.x firmware will support EXTERNAL
access from a Redfish management server or workstation. Meaning, our beloved and quite usable BMC & IPMI
will not change that much.

Redfish appears to be management software for MANY servers. For SuperMicro, that means IPMI version 3.x
running on X10 or later models, with HTTPS enabled.

 

[Ericloewe]

It appears, (from my limited and quick reading), that BMC & IPMI version 3.x firmware will support EXTERNAL
access from a Redfish management server or workstation. Meaning, our beloved and quite usable BMC & IPMI
will not change that much.

Redfish appears to be management software for MANY servers. For SuperMicro, that means IPMI version 3.x
running on X10 or later models, with HTTPS enabled.

I get a similar impression, but everything I see is rather light on the details: What capabilities are exposed via this protocol (set of protocols?), what degree of standardization is expected, does this mean we can finally get rid of the *redacted* java KVM applications, ...

 

[DrKK]

Let me ask a dumb question.

SuperMicro is our recommended go-to supplier for home FreeNAS's. They certainly sell tens of thousands of units, every year, specifically for people building FreeNAS's. I mean, shit, the guy at Micro Center two days ago told me the only reason they model the inventory to always stock a few X10SLH/L/M boards is because they "have people coming in building FreeNAS's".

Why have we not cultivated an organic relationship between their sales/tech people and the FreeNAS community? If we had, we'd have already known about this, and we have had an inside communications channel to get some relevant info on this. I could try to drum this up myself, but my understanding is that basically no one on the tech side over there in the SuperMicro California office speaks English, so I don't know how far I'm going to get.

 

[TXAG26]

Let me ask a dumb question.

SuperMicro is our recommended go-to supplier for home FreeNAS's. They certainly sell tens of thousands of units, every year, specifically for people building FreeNAS's. I mean, shit, the guy at Micro Center two days ago told me the only reason they model the inventory to always stock a few X10SLH/L/M boards is because they "have people coming in building FreeNAS's".

Why have we not cultivated an organic relationship between their sales/tech people and the FreeNAS community? If we had, we'd have already known about this, and we have had an inside communications channel to get some relevant info on this. I could try to drum this up myself, but my understanding is that basically no one on the tech side over there in the SuperMicro California office speaks English, so I don't know how far I'm going to get.

Excellent point. I would support new open lines of communication between the FreeNAS Community and Supermicro. The white box / home user crowd has to be more than just a flash in the pan regarding their overall sales. By far it's not their biggest customer base by any means, but it's definitely not negligible.

Let's make something happen.

_

 

[DrKK]

Excellent point. I would support new open lines of communication between the FreeNAS Community and Supermicro. The white box / home user crowd has to be more than just a flash in the pan regarding their overall sales. By far it's not their biggest customer base by any means, but it's definitely not negligible.

Let's make something happen.

_

I think it's far from negligible. Just run the numbers, figuring the unit net revenue after they pay for material/labor/taxes, and just non-commercial hobbyist FreeNAS deployments on the X10 series are considerable sources of profit for them. Then there's the much higher margin commercial deployments and rackmounts. If I were SuperMicro, I'd be very happy with the FreeNAS people.

 

[Arwen]

I get a similar impression, but everything I see is rather light on the details: What capabilities are exposed via this protocol (set of protocols?), what degree of standardization is expected, does this mean we can finally get rid of the *redacted* java KVM applications, ...

That's the key, Redfish IS using standards, (which I don't have the names handy).
If I am reading it right, they can get or set almost anything from the IPMI.

Don't know if they can do the equivelent to the remote console via Java.

 

[cehoffman]

Hello there. I'm new to FreeNAS and I'm one of the creators of Redfish. I just happened to stumble across this post while I was researching my own NAS build for home use. Perhaps I can answer some questions about the specification. First a little background.

Redfish is intended to bring the baseboard management controller (BMC) interface up to speed with the hardware deployment realizations in the datacenter. This means the ability to model and represent dense compute node distribution (hyperscale) across multiple chassis in a multitenant world through a single interface. Redfish only recently became a standard on August 3rd of 2015, but has received lots of industry support (see http://redfish.dmtf.org/ for list). I work for Emerson Network Power on that list.

A simple breakdown of capabilities you might be interested in:

• Vendor extensible in a discoverable way. Meaning, customers are encouraged to request features from vendors (Supermicro). Vendors implement those features as OEM extensions to their Redfish interface. The Redfish interface exposes those extensions in a common convention so all users (FreeNAS) can discover and use the functionality.
• Ability to discover other management protocols of BMC, e.g. discover IPMI/VirtualMedia/KVM and enable or disable those services. It delegates configuration of those protocols to the protocol itself.
• Inventory and health status reporting
• Boot/BIOS configuration
• Thermal and Power information reporting
• HTTP Web Hook based status reporting, e.g. when a thermal threshold is crossed you receive an HTTP POST at your desired endpoint with details.

Please take a look at the public mockup on http://redfish.dmtf.org/redfish/v1 to interactively see a simple 1U server example. The end goal is that your average user (us) can use common HTTP tools (their browser, curl, Postman) or languages (NodeJS, Go, Ruby, Python) to interact with a management interface.

Some of what it doesn't do.

• Get rid of the Java KVM implementation (sorry I hate that too). Shameless Plug: Emerson's firmware for management includes an HTML5 based KVM viewer.
• Represent everything IPMI does. The standard doesn't include every sensor type IPMI has, but it does allow a vendor to add missing sensor types to their implementation.
• Offer a Web GUI as part of the standard.

Redfish is controlled by the Scaleable Platform Management Forum (SPMF) in the DMTF. I am a representative for Emerson on that forum and we are always looking for feedback from end users. The only request we have is that feedback be given through the DMTF Feedback Portal. This allows us to legally use your suggestions to improve the specification without running afoul of IP ownership. Discussion before final feedback submission can happen here or anywhere; the feedback portal only needs to be used to transfer IP ownership.

 

[DrKK]

Hello there. I'm new to FreeNAS and I'm one of the creators of Redfish. I just happened to stumble across this post while I was researching my own NAS build for home use. Perhaps I can answer some questions about the specification. First a little background.

Redfish is intended to bring the baseboard management controller (BMC) interface up to speed with the hardware deployment realizations in the datacenter. This means the ability to model and represent dense compute node distribution (hyperscale) across multiple chassis in a multitenant world through a single interface. Redfish only recently became a standard on August 3rd of 2015, but has received lots of industry support (see http://redfish.dmtf.org/ for list). I work for Emerson Network Power on that list.

A simple breakdown of capabilities you might be interested in:

• Vendor extensible in a discoverable way. Meaning, customers are encouraged to request features from vendors (Supermicro). Vendors implement those features as OEM extensions to their Redfish interface. The Redfish interface exposes those extensions in a common convention so all users (FreeNAS) can discover and use the functionality.
• Ability to discover other management protocols of BMC, e.g. discover IPMI/VirtualMedia/KVM and enable or disable those services. It delegates configuration of those protocols to the protocol itself.
• Inventory and health status reporting
• Boot/BIOS configuration
• Thermal and Power information reporting
• HTTP Web Hook based status reporting, e.g. when a thermal threshold is crossed you receive an HTTP POST at your desired endpoint with details.

Please take a look at the public mockup on http://redfish.dmtf.org/redfish/v1 to interactively see a simple 1U server example. The end goal is that your average user (us) can use common HTTP tools (their browser, curl, Postman) or languages (NodeJS, Go, Ruby, Python) to interact with a management interface.

Some of what it doesn't do.

• Get rid of the Java KVM implementation (sorry I hate that too). Shameless Plug: Emerson's firmware for management includes an HTML5 based KVM viewer.
• Represent everything IPMI does. The standard doesn't include every sensor type IPMI has, but it does allow a vendor to add missing sensor types to their implementation.
• Offer a Web GUI as part of the standard.

Redfish is controlled by the Scaleable Platform Management Forum (SPMF) in the DMTF. I am a representative for Emerson on that forum and we are always looking for feedback from end users. The only request we have is that feedback be given through the DMTF Feedback Portal. This allows us to legally use your suggestions to improve the specification without running afoul of IP ownership. Discussion before final feedback submission can happen here or anywhere; the feedback portal only needs to be used to transfer IP ownership.

Thank you for coming to the forums. I am sure you will be hearing more from some of us.

 

[jgreco]

It's supposed to be available on all X10 models soon, from what they say.

Since you seem more enlightened, can you point us at any resources that explain this and/or compare it to what we've known as IPMI? The linked stuff above is rather light on details of what exactly it does.

Sorry for the delay. The forumware decided to blacklist me and refuse to let me on for a few weeks. As someone else reported, Redfish could be thought of as a modernized variant of IPMI that is oriented towards datacenter purposes. @cehoffman gave what I think is a great answer.