Owner's Manual

Open Automation Framework | 11
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Open Automation Framework
Open Automation Framework is supported on the S4810, S4820T, S6000, Z9000,
and MXL platforms.
Dell Networking’s Open Automation Framework is designed to provide an open,
industry standards-based automation technology that simplifies the management of
dynamic virtual data centers and reduces risk and overhead.
With the Open Automation Framework, resources in a virtualized data center are
managed more flexibly and efficiently without requiring the manual reconfiguration
of virtual switches (vSwitches), virtual machines (VMs) on network servers, and VM
control software each time there is a change in the network. Automated provisioning
of network resources during virtual machine migration ensures that connectivity and
security policies are maintained.
Industry-standard scripting languages, such as Perl and Python, are used to automate
the monitoring and management of network devices. Virtual resources can be quickly
allocated to adapt to configuration changes. Failure of a network device is more
quickly detected and resolved. As a result, network uptime increases.
Automated bare metal provisioning allows you to reduce operational overhead by
automatically configuring Dell Networking switches, accelerating switch installation,
and simplifying operating system upgrades.
Support for multiple, industry-standard hypervisors, virtual switches, and system
management tools ensure that automated solutions work within an established
data-center environment in which heterogeneous server, storage, and networking
equipment inter-operate. In addition, Open Automation allows you to customize
automated solutions for your current multi-vendor virtualization environment.
An onboard Web-based graphical user interface (GUI) provides a user-friendly way
to monitor and manage a data center network. HTTP and HTTPS daemons run on
supported switches to provide additional management capability, such as the REST
application programming interface (API).
The Open Automation Framework consists of the following network management
tools:
• Bare Metal Provisioning
• Smart Scripting
• Virtual Server Networking