A Critical Collaboration: AMD, DMTF, And The Dash Standard
The Distributed Management Task Force is a not-for-profit association dedicated to promoting systems management and interoperability through standards development. The DMTF enjoys broad industry support, with participants from more than 200 member organizations including major silicon providers such as AMD, Intel, Nvidia, Qualcomm, and ARM, as well as top enterprise OEMs such as HP, Lenovo, and Dell.
AMD actively works with other DMTF members to collaboratively define standards that encourage increased interoperability among vendor solutions. Our goal is to ensure that these management standards are always relevant to real IT needs, making it easy for customers to manage increasingly diverse environments. We also collaborate closely with our partners to create tools and technologies that support real-life management requirements, including SDKs, reference implementations, and various test tools.
Why do we believe so strongly in DASH?
- DASH open standards create long-term stability while fostering interoperability among vendor solutions. Client PCs that employ the DASH standard to enable all essential features promote greater choice among a wider range of vendors, giving IT organizations greater flexibility to respond to changing business requirements without adding unnecessary complexity to their environments.
- Vendors also benefit from the flexibility of the DASH open standard because they can deliver a broader range of solutions with varying levels of functionality. This translates into more satisfied customers that have solutions tailored to their business needs.
- Standards-based applications and technologies lower overall management costs by centralizing tools and simplifying tasks. Instead of learning a set of proprietary management tools for each vendor, IT administrators can use a single set of tools to manage systems from multiple vendors, lowering management complexity for heterogeneous environments.
- Standards free IT organizations to focus on meeting business needs rather than juggling specialized tools for managing specific systems.
Ultimately, we believe DASH is the right path for industry innovation and offers the best possible experience for most customers.
In Detail: AMD PRO Manageability Use Cases
The promise of open standards is enticing, but how will AMD PRO manageability really affect an organization’s daily client management tasks?
Significantly.
AMD PRO manageability tools and technology let users remotely perform routine and emergency management tasks on clients that are powered off (out-of-band) or whose operating systems are not functioning (out-of-service), all using common, standards-based technology. We highlight a few here:
Remote Power Control
Just being able to remotely turn a computer on or off can greatly simplify daily client management tasks. AMD PRO manageability enabled clients can be powered on remotely using the secure, robust Wake-on-DASH capability via the WS-Management protocol, which provides a secure, session-based mechanism for powering on remote client systems.
Because AMD PRO manageability uses this robust mechanism to remotely power on client systems, users can allow (or force) PCs to go into sleep state to reduce energy consumption, and then securely power them back on when it’s time for maintenance.
This can be compelling for IT organizations that manage remote sites with a large number of clients used only at certain times, such as a bank’s branch offices. Instead of relying on employees to power PCs on and off, tasks can be automated on the management console, saving electricity without manual intervention.
Accelerating Patch Saturation
Applying updates and security patches can make up a significant part of an IT administrator’s daily routine. While in-band client management solutions make it fairly easy for systems that are powered on, clients with AMD PRO manageability simplify things even more by updating and patching remote systems that are powered off.
For example, suppose a team needs to apply a critical security patch after hours, and half of the clients are powered off. An environment with AMD PRO manageability clients makes this task very simple. Using a team’s preferred management console, they can select the affected clients and initiate an automated patching task.
For the clients that are powered on, the task is completed the same way it always has been. For powered-off clients with AMD PRO manageability:
- The automated task starts the client using the power control capability defined in the DASH Power State Management Profile,
- Checks its status,
- Applies the patch.
In this example, any DASH-enabled system, regardless of vendor, can be updated whether it is on or off, or has a functioning or non- functioning operating system.
Remotely Diagnose And Re-image
AMD PRO manageability can reduce the high cost of desk-side visits by letting IT perform diagnostics and troubleshooting on remote systems that are out-of-band or out-of-service. The DASH-enabled console lets you test remote systems for problems like hardware component failures, BIOS configuration problems, operating system driver conflicts, and others.
Here’s a hypothetical.
After crashing several times, a desktop client with AMD PRO manageability in the sales department is now failing to boot up properly. Using a standard DASH-enabled console such as AMC or SCCM with AMPS, you can access the sales desktop, remotely boot it, and redirect the serial console output to a management console for remote troubleshooting.
Fully KVM-enabled systems let you view the full boot process. If the PC refuses to boot, you can boot from a diagnostic image and continue troubleshooting. After identifying the cause of the problem, you can remotely take corrective action such as installing new drivers or reimaging the system. You can remote-boot by redirecting it to boot from a different image, such as a network share or other boot device. You can even remote boot a PC that has a corrupted OS or no OS installed.
Having access to asset inventory information, particularly the physical asset details, can help reduce desk-side visits required to troubleshoot and replace a faulty part.
And another typical scenario:
The platform cannot boot due to hardware issues such as boot drive corruption or memory failure. Using the DASH inventory profile, an AMD PRO manageability enabled client could provide product name and version information for installed software, while the Physical Asset profile would specify part number, serial number, and model information for Field Replaceable Unit (FRU) hardware components, such as a drive or memory.
Because DASH enables out-of-band management, you can collect hardware and software inventory information independent of a client’s system state. Having access to this information, particularly the physical asset details, can reduce the number of desk-side visits required to troubleshoot and replace a faulty part. Teams can identify the correct FRU needed for the repair that takes place during the first, and hopefully only, desk-side visit.
Auditing – Asset Inventory
AMD PRO manageability can also help with inventory management. Conventional tools for hardware asset discovery typically operate on an in-band basis only. They will also fail if the target is powered off or if the OS is missing or non-functional. They may also be inaccurate, as users can intentionally or inadvertently remove agents used for auditing. For this reason, IT organizations have traditionally either depended on users to report their IT assets, or they have sent IT staff to check on the assets manually.
The discovery and inventory features of the DASH standard make it easy to conduct hardware and software inventories for desktop and mobile clients with AMD PRO manageability, regardless of whether they are powered on or off. The automated discovery process lets IT administrators identify which clients on the network are DASHenabled and which out-of-band management capabilities are supported.
This discovery process could be done against a single IP address, a range of IP addresses, subnet, or Active Directory. For example, after discovering the DASH-enabled clients on a network, IT could query a system that is powered off and display the hardware asset information collected by the AMD PRO manageability implementation.
Teams could also specify that inventory data collected via DASH be stored along with asset information available in their favorite management tool. Whether auditing hardware or software, these features speed and simplify inventories because IT can gather and centralize needed asset information whether the client is on or off.
Remote access to asset information can help better optimize maintenance contracts, warranties, and configurations, as well as plan for repurposing of underutilized platforms. Increasing the volume and quality of information enables better decision-making that can directly impact the organization’s bottom line.
