RedFish Platform Management

Hardware
Published

April 14, 2023

Modified

July 3, 2025

What is Redfish?

Scalable Platform Management API1 for out of band system-management…

  • …defined by the DMTF2 (Distributed Management Task Force)
  • …many improvements over IPMI standard
    • …modern technology stack based on HTTPS, JSON and OData
    • …secure replacement for IPMI-over-LAN
  • …purposefully designed for automation around physical platforms
  • …cross-vendor …interoperable management interface
    • …intended to meet OCP (Open Compute Project) remote machine management requirements
    • …brought support from industry, i.e. Supermicro, Dell, Mellanox, HP, Intel

Standard design for SDDC (Software Defined Data Center)…

  • …monitor equipment health …automate alerts
  • …power cycling …configure/update firmware
  • …bare-metal provisioning …console sessions
  • …power & thermal management
  • …inventory management
  • …logging data aggregation

Used along with SNIA Swordfish a standard for remote storage management

RESTful

Platform management REST API

  • …HTTPS in JSON format based on OData v4
  • …schema-backed but human-readable …usable by web-apps, GUIs and CLI scripts
  • …supports custom extension (i.e. SNMP) with OEM schema

Resource map (simplified)…

  • …GET https://<ip-addr>/redfish/v1/Systems/<id>/Processors/<id>
  • …major resources in collections …allow aggregation over many nodes/racks

…all resources linked from service entry point:

/redfish/v1/                   # service entry point...
           /Accounts/...
           /Events/...
           /Systems/...        # logical view of a computer systems
                   /<id>/Processor
                        /Disk
                        /...
           /Chassis/...        # physical view of a computer system
                   /<id>/Power
                        /Termal
                        /...
           /Managers/...       # administrative functions aka BMC
                    /<id>/LogService
                         /SerialInterface
                         /...
           /...

Data Model (Schema)

First versions mimics functionality provided by IPMI…

  • System data… /redfish/v1/Systems
    • …status & health …fan speed …temperatures
    • …hardware inventory …CPUs, memory, storage, network devices
    • …host OS information
  • Hardware management functionality… /redfish/v1/Chassis
    • …power cycle …reboot …boot device order
    • …power thresholds
    • …alerting …notifications (via email)
    • …event logs
    • …SSH serial console
  • BMC management… /redfish/v1/Managers
    • …network configuration …user accounts
    • …chassis inventory …DCIM sensors

Beyond the first versions …added support for data center equipment…

  • Power (meters, generators, UPS, PDUs) …/redfish/v1/DCMICooling
  • Cooling (chillers, pumps, fans, sensors) …/redfish/v1/DCMIPower
  • …alarm modeling …triggers & notifications

Mockup explorer for the data schema: https://redfish.dmtf.org/redfish/mockups/v1

Redfish Mockup Server…

# ...get the container
podman pull dmtf/redfish-mockup-server:latest
# ...start the container
podman run --rm dmtf/redfish-mockup-server:latest
# ...send a simple query
curl 0.0.0.0:8000/redfish

Usage

REST API

Query the Redfish API3 with curl…

curl -u "$BMC_USER:$BMC_PASSWORD" -k -s -X GET https://${bmc_fqdn}/redfish/v1/Chassis/1
# get the security token and store it to a file
curl -k -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -X POST https://${bmc_fqdn}/redfish/v1/SessionService/Sessions \
     -d "{\"UserName\" : \"$BMC_USER\", \"Password\" : \"$BMC_PASSWORD\"}' \
     -D /tmp/respons.txt

# read the security token into a variable
token=$(grep X-Auth-Token /tmp/respons.txt |cut -d ':' -f 2)

# query the chassis information
curl -k -H "${token}" -X GET https://${bmc_fqdn}/redfish/v1/Chassis/1 | jq '.'

Modify data…

>>> curl -s ${address}/redfish/v1/Chassis/1U | jq .Location.Placement
>>> cat location_update.json
{
    "Location": {
        "Placement": {
            "Rack": "DB06",
            "RackOffset": 8,
            "RackOffsetUnits": "EIA_310",
            "Row": "North"
          }
    }
}
# ...send the patch request
>>> curl -s -X PATCH -d @./location_update.json \
          -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
          ${address}/redfish/v1/Chassis/1U

Redfishtool

redfishtool4 implements the client side of the Redfish RESTful API:

  • …negotiates the latest Redfish protocol version …send and receive Redfish requests
  • …automatically handles multiple queries to a redfish service (to traverse the data schema)
  • …common functionality like …power-on/off/reset …setting power limits …indicator LEDs
sudo dnf install -y python3-pip
pip install redfishtool

The redfishtool requires authentication options…

redfishtool -u $BMC_USER -p "$BMC_PPASSWORD" -S Always -r $bmc_fqdn -ssss root

Tacklebox

Redfish Tacklebox5 …contains utilities to perform management operations:

sudo dnf install -y python3-pip   # dependency

# install in user-space
pip install redfish_utilities -U

Commands are prefixed with rf_* and use a common set of generic connection options:

Option Description
-u/--user User account used to login
-p/--password Login password
-r/--rhost Service module IP-address of hostname

Helper shell-function to inject account options…

redfish-tacklebox() {
        local rf_options="--user $BMC_USER --password '$BMC_PASSWORD'"
        local rf_command=rf_${1}.py
        shift
        exec="$rf_command $rf_options $@"
        eval $exec
}
alias rf=redfish-tacklebox

Example usage:

rf sensor_list -r https://$bmc_fqdn

# additional command-line arguments are passed...
rf raw_request -r https://$bmc_fqdn -req /redfish/v1/UpdateService

# inventory overview
rf sys_inventory -r https://$bmc_fqdn -details
rf firmware_inventory -r https://$bmc_fqdn

Ansible

DMTF provides a generic Ansible playbook6