Remote NIC Configuration Management This Dell Technical White Paper addresses the issue of remotely managing the NIC configuration from a source server to a destination server Sankara Gara Divya Vijayvargiya
Remote NIC Configuration Management This document is for informational purposes only and may contain typographical errors and technical inaccuracies. The content is provided as is, without express or implied warranties of any kind. © 2012 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Dell and its affiliates cannot be responsible for errors or omissions in typography or photography. Dell, the Dell logo, and PowerEdge are trademarks of Dell Inc. Intel is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation in the U.S.
Remote NIC Configuration Management Contents Executive summary ................................................................................ 4 Introduction......................................................................................... 4 NIC configuration in general .................................................................. 4 Tools available prior to Lifecycle Controller ............................................... 4 Advantages of Lifecycle Controller ................................
Remote NIC Configuration Management Executive summary Dell™ provides a mechanism that enables users to work with NIC configuration settings as a whole, rather than having to work with each setting individually.
Remote NIC Configuration Management Manage RAID configurations Manage Auto-Discovery Manage certificates Perform remote updates Manage part replacement Use remote firmware inventory Retrieve hardware inventory View Lifecycle logs Simple NIC Profile The table below lists the classes, functions, operations, and methods available under the Simple NIC Profile. Table 1.
Remote NIC Configuration Management Read NIC attributes and settings The enumerate operation is used to get a list of all the attributes of a given class. A Get operation is used to get a specific attribute of a given class. All NIC attribute instances carry base properties like „AttributeName‟, „CurrentValue’, PendingValue‟, etc. In addition to this, each attribute also carries metadata such as MinLength, MaxLength, LowerBound, UpperBound, ValueExpression, PossibleValues, and etc.
Remote NIC Configuration Management NIC configuration methods The SetAttribute() method is used to set or change the value of a NIC attribute. The SetAttributes() method is used to set or change the values of a group of attributes. The CreateTargetedConfigJob() method is used to apply the pending values created by the SetAttribute() and SetAttributes() methods. The successful execution of this method creates a job for application of pending attribute values.
Remote NIC Configuration Management Figure 1. Work flow: Pull and Push 1. Pull the configuration from a baseline system. a. Configure the baseline system to the desired NIC configuration using remote services or any other existing NIC configuration methods. b.
Remote NIC Configuration Management The getnic python script internally enumerates on DCIM_NICEnumeration, DCIM_NICString, and DCIM_NICInteger to create a consolidated list of system configuration. 2. Push the configuration to one or more systems.
Remote NIC Configuration Management The setnic script internally uses SetAttributes and CreateTargetedConfigJob to set changed values and create and execute a configuration job to update the target system configuration. Pull and Diff with saved baseline This use case demonstrates steps to view differences between NIC configurations of two different systems using a two-step process. Figure 2. Work flow: Pull and Diff 1. Pull the NIC configuration from one of the systems using the following command: 2.
Remote NIC Configuration Management
Remote NIC Configuration Management Output of the diff command will be available in text file and html file formats. Conclusion The remote service functionality that allows the user to save a particular NIC configuration, clone that NIC configuration on another server with an identical NIC card and firmware, and view the difference between the saved configuration and one from another server enables a system configuration handler to easily view and set up a system with a target configuration.
