ProLiant servers are getting some REST – a RESTful API. Â One of the innovations HP is showing off on the HP Discover showroom floor is a new RESTful interface packaged as part of the iLO management chips on ProLiant servers. Â With the RESTful API, HP hopes to deliver future generations of ProLiant that can be easily provisioned and controlled from tools like HP OneView. Â RESTful interfaces are becoming the go-to standard within HP for interoperability between their products.
HP RESTful API is a management interface can be used to perform configuration, inventory, and monitoring.  The RESTful API is available on Gen8 and Gen9 hardware with iLO firmware 2.0 and greater.  On Gen9 and future hardware, the interface will be able to configure both BIOS and iLO settings on the server.  On Gen8 servers, the RESTful API will only expose the capabilities inside of the iLO.
According to HP, a REST client will send HTTPS operations to the iLO web server and there are three modes that can be used – command line interface, file based and JSON-formatted data. Â The use of HTTPS is a big security plus versus many other remote management interfaces that are often
The folks at HP are working with other vendors in the market to establish a standard that they call the Redfish Specification.  Redfish is supposed to create a standardized interface for IP Management Interfaces on servers to allow uniform control and reporting across multi-vendor server environments. The standardization should allow the same management software to be able to manage heterogeneous servers.  Redfish is corporately sponsored by Dell, Intel, HP and Emerson.
For more information, see http://www.hp.com/go/restfulapi.
Disclaimer: HP invited and paid for my trip to attend HP Discover EMEA.  The views and opinions I’ve written were not dictated or approved by HP and are my own. Â
