In this overview video, we will show you how to automate the configuration of your PowerEdge Servers using OpenManage Ansible Modules. In addition, we will also show how you can deploy the entire stack using just a single Ansible playbook.
In this video we'll show you an overview of how to automate the configuration of your PowerEdge servers using OpenManage Ansible modules. We will also show you how to deploy the entire stack using a single Ansible playbook. You can accomplish all these using the OpenManage Ansible modules that leverage the Redfish restful APIs provided by the integrated dell remote access controller also known as iDRAC.
iDRAC restful APIs are based on DMTF Redfish standards and are enhanced with Dell EMC Extensions, OpenManage Ansible Modules enabled data center and IT administrators to rapidly deploy their PowerEdge infrastructure, manage server configurations and orchestrate advanced tasks such as continuous deployments and firmware upgrades. Delivering the enterprise IT services on demand and at scale requires that automation is enabled and pervasive from the beginning.
Automating physical server infrastructure is central to achieving the desired scale elasticity and agility. However the reality is that traditional data centers are operated in a siloed manner where every infrastructure element is managed using an independent array of management solutions and tools. iDRAC restful APIs allow you to configure, provision, and deploy your PowerEdge server infrastructure.
Using OpenManage Ansible modules you can automate the configuration of components such as BIOS, RAID, NICs and HBAs, deployment of the operating system, and firmware updates from a repository. With iDRAC restful API and Ansible integration, you can now provision the entire stack from the server through the application in a few minutes by running a single playbook.
This will help you in increasing your operational efficiency, integrating with existing DevOps processes, and improving overall infrastructure performance and compliance. Here we have a playbook that captures a server configuration profile file from a golden server configuration and then imports it to our inventory of target hosts. A server configuration profile contains all BIOS, iDRAC, Lifecycle Controller, network, and storage settings of a PowerEdge Server and it can be applied to multiple servers, thus enabling rapid, reliable, and reproducible configuration.
Once we have a desired server configuration profile applied to our inventory of target hosts, the OS is deployed using an unattended ISO installation image from a remote network share. Running the Ansible playbook will set up the PowerEdge Server infrastructure and deploy the operating system. A server configuration profile is exported from a golden server configuration and is then imported to inventory target hosts.
The OpenManage Ansible modules for iDRAC are available as an open source project on github under Dell. Thank you for watching and for more information please visit dell.com/openmanage
