Subject: YANG Device Profile for Data Center switches - in RTGWG and OPS-AREA

From: "Black, David" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2017 17:04:45 +0000

Gentle rtgwg and ops-area participants,

I wanted to call attention to a couple of drafts about early activity on a YANG profile for data center switches that will be discussed in RTGWG (first session, Wed , 9a start) and OPS-AREA (Thursday, 1p start):

	https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-wbl-rtgwg-yang-ci-profile-bkgd
	https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-wbl-rtgwg-baseline-switch-model

For those who don't want to wade through the drafts, the RTGWG chairs have already posted the slides:

https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/98/slides/slides-98-rtgwg-yang-device-profile-for-redfish-network-management-draft-wbl-rtgwg-baseline-switch-model-draft-wbl-rtgwg-yang-ci-profile-bkgd-00.pdf

[watch out for URL split across lines ...]

The short summary is that for data center converged infrastructure [CI], networking should be managed as part of the overall infrastructure - e.g., single "pane of glass" for an 84U rack of which 4U may be networking equipment.   Another standards body (DMTF - Distributed Management Task Force) is working on a standard for CI management, Redfish, and is reusing YANG models for network management via a translation approach (hallelujah - not-invented-here doesn't win every time!) - among the benefits of reuse this should be common views of underling state via YANG-based CI management and network management tools. 

This reuse is working "running code" today, as described in the slides and the ci-profile-background draft.  The next step is to define the minimum implementation requirements for what data center switches to be managed as part of CI - i.e., when a YANG-based management tool looks at such a switch, what does it expect to see as the minimum set of supported YANG modules, i.e., a device profile.  This avoids "defensive programming" in management tools to deal with different switch implementations supporting different YANG modules - that inevitably leads to switch-specific code in management tools.  The baseline-switch-model draft is a rather drafty first start on the minimum set of supported YANG modules for data center switches (NB: the set will differ for other classes of equipment/devices) - we're looking to do this work in the IETF so that the resulting device profile is broadly useful well beyond Redfish, and we (draft co-authors) are looking for all the help, advice, etc. that people care to offer.   In particular, we're not attached to the format of that draft - it was our first attempt to capture material.

The longer, more detailed discussion of this activity will be in RTGWG - the shorter OPS-AREA session is intended to be more of an overview of the activity and why it's useful in the hope of engendering interest.  We'll be happy to take questions on the lists, in the meetings or directly.

Thanks, --David (on behalf of Joe White, David Black and John Leung, the wbl draft co-authors)
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David L. Black, Distinguished Engineer
Dell EMC, 176 South St., Hopkinton, MA  01748
+1 (508) 293-7953     Cell: +1 (978) 394-7754
[email-masked]  <=== NEW ===
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