Redfish® at a glance

As per the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), Redfish® is a standard designed to deliver simple and secure management for converged, hybrid IT and the Software Defined Data Center (SDDC).

Key benefits of the Redfish RESTful API

The Redfish RESTful API is the main management interface for Hewlett Packard Enterprise servers. Its feature set is larger than the previous iLO XML API (RIBCL) and IPMI interfaces. Using the Redfish RESTful API, you can take full inventory of the server, control power and reset, configure BIOS and management controller (i.e. iLO) settings, fetch event logs, as well as many other functions.

The Redfish RESTful API follows the trend of the Internet in moving to a common pattern for new software interfaces. Many web services in a variety of industries use REST APIs because they are easy to implement, easy to consume, and offer flexibility and scalability advantages over previous technologies.

HPE OneView, OpenStack, the HPE Compute Ops Management and many other server management applications offer now REST APIs. Most Hewlett Packard Enterprise Management software offerings, as well as the entire Software Defined Infrastructure, are built upon REST APIs.

The Redfish RESTful API has the additional advantage of consistency across all present and projected server architectures. The same data model works for traditional rack-mount servers, blades, as well as newer types of systems. This advantage comes because the data model is designed to self-describe the service’s capabilities to the client and has room for flexibility designed in from the start.