MEGARAC XMS Sx EXTENDIBLE MANAGEMENT SUITE SERVER MANAGER EDITION

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1 MEGARAC XMS Sx EXTENDIBLE MANAGEMENT SUITE SERVER MANAGER EDITION

2 THE EXTENDIBLE MANAGEMENT SUITE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY MEGARAC XMS stands for Extendible Management Suite and this is a complete management software solution for a centralized and collaborative management for monolithic as well as modular (blade) servers. The XMS components can be also implemented on a specialized and dedicated embedded appliance which can provide the out-of-band manageability throughout the datacenter or the enterprise for managing all the servers. An embedded version of XMS solution can be packaged as a vital component on the modular (blade) server s Chassis Management Module (CMM) or Shelf Manager (ShMC) especially for ATCA servers. Using XMS, IT department can reduce the TCO dramatically and run their business critical servers much more efficiently. XMS VISION XMS is part of AMI s state of the art MEGARAC family of building block offerings for creating an advanced server management solution. XMS suite can include any or all three vital solution components/plug-ins - Sx (Server Manager Edition), Dx (Desktop/ Mobile Manager Edition) and Px (Power Manager Edition). In addition to XMS, MEGARAC family also offers sophisticated and powerful embedded manageability in the area of IPMI 2.0, KVM & virtual media redirection, SMASH, WSMAN and CIM etc. Combining XMS with these solutions, OEMs/ODMs can effortlessly build the most sophisticated management solution for their modular and monolithic servers. DEPLOYMENT SCENARIO MEGARAC XMS is a vital management entity inside your network. XMS centralized management server can monitor and rectify the problems automatically. The solution can manage the entire server installation in any location or multiple locations. XMS can be also incorporated as a dedicated embedded appliance or a regular server on the network to provide the same centralized manageability of all monolithic/blade servers. This unifies the manageability effort from the IT administrators across all servers and across all their locations.

3 BENEFITS YOU GET... MEGARAC XMS Sx can help you in many ways, especially in the area of the hardware level manageability for your servers and desktops/mobiles (clients). As a system administrator you can - Monitor the entire group of servers deployed for your organization in terms of their health Get the proactive notification in case of failures Enable your entire server line as a self-healing entity in the event of fatal failures Manage and reduce the power usage by the servers Securely access through robust authentication Provision your servers for patch, OS installation etc. ADVANTAGES OF OUT-OF-BAND MANAGEMENT The fundamentals of the manageability implement many modules and methods. They result many terms such as in-band, out-of-band, in-service and out-of-service. In-band vs. Out-of-band Primary to understanding such Service Model is an understanding of the terms In-Band and Out-of-Band and how they are different. In-Band Management operates with the support of hardware components that are critical to and used by the operating system. Out-of-Band Management operates with hardware resources and components that are independent of the operating system. These resources are dedicated to system management purposes and allow management of system s hardware components independent of their state. The most important and powerful feature of XMS is the ability of providing the Out-of-Band manageability of the organization. System administrators can control and manage the servers (equipped with necessary hardware system management component) at any system state. It is possible to power on a system remotely even the system is powered off. The out-of-band manageability of the XMS is a completely agent-less operation. This ensures a cross platform and OS independent solution. FLEXIBLE PLUG-IN ARCHITECTURE SUPPORT FOR INDUSTRY STANDARDS XMS centralized management server is designed to be able to extend its capabilities through various plug-ins. Such plug-ins are for example the Sx (Server Manager), Dx (Desktop/Mobile Manager) and Px (Power Manager). XMS architecture does not limit to have any fixed number of plug-ins and in the future AMI may provide many different plug-ins performing many different management tasks. A plug-in for the centralized management server can be developed independently using the XMS core API (Application Programming Interface). Currently this API is not published for third-party plug-in development, which will be released at a later time. Each plug-in can be installed separately and thus extends the overall scope of the manageability, features and functionalities. For example, while only Sx plug-in is installed, XMS provides the manageability for the servers, while both Sx and Dx are installed XMS can provide the manageability of the servers as well as the desktop/mobile computers. Plug-in licenses can be obtained separately at any time. Supporting industry standard protocols for manageability has no limit of its advantages. Now system administrators can take the benefits from the open specifications to be used for the system management. IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) This open specification from Intel is widely used in developing the server hardware and became the part and parcel of the system management instrumentation. SMASH (System Management Architecture for Server Hardware) This specification was published by DMTF ( and became a de facto standard for todays system management solution. SMASH manageability specification is based on CIM (Common Information Model), CLP (Command Line Protocol) and WSMAN (Web Services for Management). XMS addresses the entire SMASH initiative and supports a CIM based management from the core centralized server.

4 FEATURE LIST Discovery RMCP SLP (OEM feature only) UPnP (OEM feature only) XMS Console Rich Internet Application (RIA) Web browser based (also can be installed as a client) Cross browser and cross platform support A rich framework with API Multilingual interface Highly portable and customizing tool support Security Local user authentication LDAP and Active Directory support Monitoring Environmental (Temperature, voltage, fan etc.) Display monitoring database (fast response) Live fetch from the hardware (on demand) View thresholds Event Management View events with date stamp Clear / refresh events Alert Management SNMP trap gathering and display database Generate alert to system administrators WSMAN event and CIM indication to other suites Asset Tracking FRU (Field Replacable Unit) based List and track the vital components and product data Historical Data & Analysis Sensor information Event log Assets (FRU) Provisioning Intelligent script based Script editor for system administrators to write scripts Sample scripts for valuable manageability OS and image provisioning Advanced Options KVM and Media redirection (OEM customization needed) XMS CONSOLE A Programmable Framework The console is a unique Rich Internet Application (RIA) with a sophisticated, flexible and programmable framework. The framework allows customizing the look and feel of the user interface as well as adding the plug-ins for different managed entities (for example, servers, desktops, power supplies etc.). Cross Browser & Cross Platform The console is primarily launched from a browser and has been designed to work with all browsers on all platforms. In addition to this web browser based interface, the same console can also be installed as a client software on different platforms such as Windows, Linux and OS-X. Common Look & Feel XMS console can provide a guaranteed common look and feel across all the supported platforms and browsers by embedding language specific fonts. This capability needs prepackaging of the console and done through OEM level customization. Multilingual Interface XMS console supports complete UTF8 based string set, which means the console can support any language and font. The framework is so flexible that adding a new language does not require any programming (or change in the console software code).

5 KEY ADVANTAGE SUMMARY Provision your server through the advanced Script Manager One of the most important and valuable features inside XMS is the Script Manager. This feature allows you to import, write or edit powerful administrative scripts and schedule them to be executed at various schedules or even on demand at any time. These scripts are the key part of the automated manageability or intelligent provisioning offered by XMS. Script capability is highly programmable and completely object oriented. Administrators can write sophisticated scripts using PHP (JavaScript and Python support will be in the future releases). There are many sample scripts packed when you get the XMS. You can edit them, delete them or import new scripts from AMI. Examples of script functionality: Error Recovery: You can read all the fatal errors (non-functional) from the managed servers, then issue IPMI power cycle command to recover them in the event of such fatal error. Power Provisioning: You can monitor whether any noncritical servers are up at any off hour time period and turned them off. Even the script can turn them on automatically when do you want them to be. Thermal Provisioning: You can monitor the thermal characteristics of the servers. Based on the policy enforced, you can throttle their CPU (needs proper HW support at the server BMC) to stay within your thermal envelop of the server room and reduce the overall HVAC bill. Power Budgeting: You can employ a power policy for your server room to stay within your power budget. A power budget script can throttle the servers, scheduled and policy based power sequencing while constantly auditing the power usage. There are many such scripts can be deployed at any time. The complete scope of functionality and capability of Script Manager is unlimited and up to the system administrator for particular usage of that environment. Script Manager is capable of adopting to any environment and its specific needs as the scripts can be edited to satisfy the exact demand. Intelligent Device Pane View live server health at all time. Automatically updated with icon with notifying colors. Hover on any server name and display the summary of the server and the error-state. Device list pane allows selection of multiple servers at one time and manage them together. On demand Power control Remote power control of any managed server. A single click can control multiple servers power state at one time. Reports Detailed historical reports on FRU, Sensor readings and Event logs. You can get a graphical representation of the sensor history, or failure analysis. AND MUCH MORE... XMS allows IT administrators to run the servers more efficiently in an organization of any size. High availability of the servers is now easily achieved by using intelligent scripts. For example, just by running a script periodically to check nonfunctional server OS and restarting automatically (Auto Server Recovery) can earn five 9 s ( % up time) or more HA factor for your business critical servers. Even by running scripts to check the power usages and thermal characteristics of your servers and managing them properly will reduce the cost of running the server farm dramatically. Or even auto updating the firmware images, OS/Drivers and patches periodically ensures that your servers are up to date to take care of their day to day business.

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