Inspur has contribued a specification to the Open Compute Project that clarifies the scope of information collection, data presentation modes and hardware deployment options of collection modules in rack management.
Inspur said its specification provides a reference architecture for centralized rack management and lays the foundations for smarter operation of data centers.
Dozens of server nodes, fans, power supply and other components are integrated into a rack. These components are centrally managed and monitored by an RMC (Rack Management Controller). The OpenRMC design specification addresses the challenges of centralized management across different racks. In addition, it meets a range of needs among small and medium-sized data centers, such as enhancing automated operations capability, improving system availability, and reducing overall energy consumption.
OpenRMC Design Specification v1.0, contributed by Inspur, unifies the format and parameters of read data by defining the northbound and southbound specifications, allowing users to manage all racks in one interface. In terms of the northbound data presentation, OpenRMC is integrated with Redfish, the next-generation data center management standard, allowing all kinds of server data to be presented through a browser, an approach that is more user-friendly than a binary display mode. Meanwhile, firmware can be flashed remotely, making it more convenient for operations personnel to control.
“The OpenRMC Sub-project aims at an opensource-based rack management solution, which is fundamental to efficient, flexible, and open data center management. As the project-lead of the OpenRMC project, Inspur’s Rack Management Specification offers a significant push to the fulfillment of that goal,” said Rajeev Sharma, Director of Software & Technologies, of the OCP Foundation. “We are confident that Inspur and participating companies will yield more designs and specifications that apply Open Compute technologies to solving data center operation challenges.”
Wilson Guo, Inspur's senior technology director, said that Inspur has always been an active advocate of open source technologies ranging from Linux to OCP to OpenStack and is currently a member of three leading global open computing standards organizations. “Inspur has been involved in many open source communities in the hardware and software fields,” said Inspur’s Wilson. “To stay ahead of the future transformation of cloud data centers, Inspur has been driving the development of converged data centers and smart computing to advance the integration of open computing technologies and help build a truly open ecosystem.”
