IT organizations face increasing complexity and costs associated with operating multiple server platforms across diverse departments, sites and locations. With important initiatives such as grid and utility computing underway at many organizations, server management continues to be central to controlling costs in data centers – it is the building block on which successful management is built. As a result, standards that focus on server management are increasingly critical.
Until now there have been no cross-platform standards that let network administrators directly manage servers from multiple vendors. This led hardware manufacturers to develop varied tool sets to manage in-band and out-of-band traffic for different operating systems and system states. Today’s multi-vendor data centers contain an inefficient array of management commands and tools.
To address this, the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) recently announced details of its Systems Management Architecture for Server Hardware suite, including the SMASH Command Line Protocol (CLP) specification. SMASH CLP enables simple and intuitive management of heterogeneous servers in data centers independent of machine state, operating system state, server system topology or access method.
Building on the DMTF’s Common Information Model schema, SMASH CLP provides a “lightweight” command-line syntax; it lets different vendors’ systems be represented in similar ways. Server vendors’ products, including stand-alone servers, blades, racks and partitions, will be able to support SMASH CLP commands. With these SMASH CLP-enabled products, users on a management station or a client will be able to execute common operations – such as system power on and off, system log display, boot order configuration and text-based remote console – using the same commands across disparate vendor platforms.
SMASH CLP is a command/response specification (executed by a user or in an automated fashion by a script) transmitted and received over a text message-based transport protocol. The SMASH CLP syntax is explicitly defined, with selectable formats. Options include free-form text, comma form text, comma-separated, keyword=value and XML. In this simple interface, users navigate a directory-like hierarchy of command targets.
For example, once a session is established using authentication prompts, users initiate the SMASH CLP interaction using text message protocols such as Telnet or Secure Shell (SSH). The SMASH CLP specification contains mappings for SSH Version 2 and Telnet, but other transports are possible.
The text command message is transmitted from the user over the transport protocol to the server. SMASH CLP commands are transmitted and received between the two in the same way regardless of server platform – a breakthrough in simplified server management.
In addition to providing the protocol, the SMASH CLP specification will include server profiles spanning the spectrum of stand-alone servers, blades, racks and partitions, addressing enterprise and telco environments. The user-friendly views provided in the profiles are defined to simplify managing system boot, power, storage, driver firmware and software, system configuration and hardware product assets.
The SMASH CLP interface provides a uniform command set for controlling hardware in heterogeneous environments, helping reduce management complexity. SMASH CLP also enables the development of common scripts to increase data center automation, which can help to significantly reduce management costs.
The full SMASH suite, which includes CLP and additional specifications, is scheduled to be released by the DMTF next year, and already there is widespread vendor support. SMASH CLP will address the common problems of server management and usher in a new era of simplified management in the heterogeneous data center.
Bumpus is the president of the DMTF. He can be reached at president@dmtf.org.
