DMTF and The Green Grid Address Power and Cooling

21 September, 2017

DMTF and The Green Grid, long-standing alliance partners, are working together to address power and cooling in the data center. This work includes data center infrastructure management (DCIM) power and cooling schemas, which will be part of the DMTF’s Redfish®. In addition, The Green Grid is planning to reference established DMTF management technologies in its ongoing work on DCIM platforms.

“Efficient power and cooling are critical concerns in converged IT infrastructure management,” said Jeff Hilland, DMTF president. “The goal of Redfish is to publish a standard software defined data center API for managing all the components in the data center, and collaborating with The Green Grid – the key consortium that works to improve IT and data center resource efficiency around the world – on these new schemas will enable solutions and optimizations never before possible with a single, open industry standard.”

“Our strong, cooperative relationship with DMTF has given experts from The Green Grid member companies the ability to help define DMTF Redfish schema for power and cooling equipment. These schema improve DCIM products’ ability to create a holistic data center management experience,” said Roger Tipley, president and chairman of The Green Grid. “The Green Grid’s members hold the engineering expertise to develop practical frameworks for improved resource efficiency. Together with DMTF, we are providing a more consistent equipment instrumentation interface for inventory, monitoring, configuration, and lifecycle maintenance for data center equipment.”

DMTF’s Redfish is designed to meet the expectations of end users for simple and secure management of modern scalable infrastructure. An open industry standard specification and schema, Redfish specifies a RESTful interface and utilizes defined JSON payloads to help customers integrate solutions within their existing tool chains.

The Green Grid’s Redfish API Utilization project is developing prescriptive recommendations for architectural reference descriptions that incorporate manageability interfaces based on Redfish REST services, examples of equipment representation using Redfish-aligned data definitions and schema, and analysis of the value proposition for tools and evaluation algorithms using Redfish REST service APIs.

The initial work-in-progress schemas are available for public review in DSP-IS0005_0.1a - Redfish DCIM Artifacts. The public is invited to provide input and comment on this work via the DMTF Technology Submission and Feedback Portal.

To learn more about Redfish, click here or – for developers – visit the Redfish Developer Hub, a one-stop, in-depth technical resource with all the files, tools, community support, and education you may need to help you use Redfish. To participate in the development of Redfish, please join the DMTF’s Scalable Platforms Management Forum (SPMF).

To get involved in The Green Grid’s Power and Redfish API work groups and its development of best practices for DCIM systems, join the association.