Service Manual

Open Automation Framework

The Open Automation framework provides an open, industry standards-based automation technology that

simplifies managing dynamic virtual data centers and reduces risk and overhead.

The Dell Networking S4810, S4820T, S3048–ON, S3100 Series, S4048–ON, S5000, S6000, S6000-ON,

S6100–ON, Z9500, Z9100–ON, and MXL platforms support the Open Automation framework.

With the Open Automation framework, resources in a virtualized data center are efficiently managed without

requiring manual reconfiguration of virtual switches (vSwitches), virtual machines (VMs) on network servers,

and VM control software each time there is a network change. Automated provisioning of network resources

during VM migration also maintains connectivity and security policies.

To automate monitoring and network device management, the Open Automation framework uses industry

standard scripting languages, such as Perl, Python, and Ruby. To adapt to required configuration changes,

you can quickly allocate virtual resources. In addition, a network device failure is more quickly detected and

resolved; as a result, network uptime increases.

Automated bare metal provisioning (BMP) 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 interoperate. In addition, Open Automation allows you to

customize automated solutions for your current multivendor virtualization environment.

An onboard web server provides a user-friendly way to monitor and manage a data center network. To

provide additional management capability, HTTP and HTTPS daemons run on supported switches, such as the

representational state transfer (REST) application programming interface (API).

The Open Automation framework consists of the following network management tools:

• Bare metal provisioning

• Open management interface

• Puppet

• Smart scripting

• Virtual server networking

• Representational state transfer application programming interface

• Web server

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