napalm-redfish/README.md

napalm-redfish

NAPALM driver for server baseboard management controllers (BMCs) over DMTF Redfish, with an IPMI fallback for boards that predate Redfish. Built on napalm-device-types. Written for netOrk.

Status: early development. Two drivers, both ManagementControllerDrivers from napalm-device-types:

• redfish (napalm_redfish.RedfishDriver) implements the NAPALM getters and the role methods in docs/redfish-map.md, tested end to end against DMTF mockups. A BMC that refuses Redfish for want of a vendor license (a Supermicro X10 without SUM, DCMS or OOB) still opens: the driver reports bmc_license_required through get_device_warnings instead of failing.
• ipmi (napalm_redfish.ipmi.IpmiDriver) reads over IPMI 2.0: FRU facts and inventory, sensors, power state, event log, BMC firmware. It also switches the server's power (chassis control), but does not reset the BMC. Tested against recordings of a Supermicro X10DRL-i (BMC 3.91), which refuses Redfish without a license.

Why Redfish, and why not one driver per vendor

Redfish is the DMTF's REST API for management controllers. Supermicro (X10 with Redfish firmware, X11 and later), Dell iDRAC, HPE iLO and Lenovo XCC all implement it. One driver with small vendor quirk modules covers all of them; a napalm-supermicro-ipmi would cover one.

IPMI over LAN stays a fallback for boards without Redfish. Its IPMI 2.0 RAKP handshake hands the password hash to anyone who asks (CVE-2013-4786), so netOrk should not depend on it. Finding IPMI over LAN enabled is itself worth reporting, see docs/security.md.

Layout

Entry point	Transport	Scope
redfish	HTTPS, Redfish REST (session token or basic auth)	Read, plus power control and BMC reset
ipmi	IPMI 2.0 over LAN (UDP 623) via pyghmi	Read, plus power control (no graceful restart, no power cycle); no BMC reset

Vendor quirks (Supermicro, Dell, HPE, Lenovo) live in one module per vendor, selected from the service root's Vendor/Oem data and Manager.Model. No separate entry point per vendor.

Documents

• docs/role.md: the role base this needs in napalm-device-types (draft)
• docs/redfish-map.md: getters mapped to Redfish resources
• docs/supermicro-x10.md: first test device, its Redfish level, IPMI
• docs/security.md: credentials, IPMI over LAN, power control
• docs/testing.md: DMTF mockups, emulators, fixtures to record
• docs/references.md

Building without hardware

Unlike most drivers in this organisation, much of this one can be built and tested without a device: the DMTF publishes complete mockups of Redfish services (DSP2043), and both the DMTF Redfish-Mockup-Server and OpenStack's sushy-tools serve them over HTTP. Recorded output from the X10DRL-i then covers what the mockups do not: an old Redfish 1.0.x implementation and Supermicro's quirks.

Conventions

These follow the other drivers in the NAPALM organisation:

• Role bases declare, they never implement. Generic logic goes into napalm-device-types, vendor mechanics stay here.
• Parsing lives in pure functions, tested on recorded responses under tests/fixtures/<vendor>-<model>-<firmware>/, with a COMMANDS.txt (here: the request paths) listing what produced each file.
• napalm-device-types is not on PyPI: install it from git+https://git.netork.io/NAPALM/napalm-device-types.git before this package.

Usage

import napalm

driver = napalm.get_network_driver("redfish")
with driver("bmc01.example.net", "netork", "secret",
            optional_args={"verify_ssl": "/etc/netork/bmc-ca.pem"}) as bmc:
    bmc.get_facts()           # the BMC: firmware as os_version, its ports
    bmc.get_power_state()     # the server: {"state": "On", "actions": [...]}
    bmc.get_hardware_inventory()

Optional args: port (443), verify_ssl (True, False or a CA file path; default True), auth (auto, session or basic; auto uses a Redfish session and falls back to basic auth only if the service cannot create sessions), retries (1).

reboot_host restarts the BMC, never the server; the server is switched through set_power_state. get_config is not implemented: a BMC has no configuration file.

Development

python -m venv .venv && . .venv/bin/activate
pip install git+https://git.netork.io/NAPALM/napalm-device-types.git
pip install -e '.[test]'
pytest

Fixtures from the DMTF mockups live under tests/fixtures/dmtf-<mockup>/, unmodified, with the DMTF license and a COMMANDS.txt naming the source commit and request paths.

License

Apache License 2.0, see LICENSE.