For those who may not be familiar with the term “OEM”, we are a consulting firm within Dell with specialist expertise in more than 40 vertical industries, for example, industrial automation, healthcare, telco, security and defense. We partner with organisations – from start-up companies to established global leaders – to help convert their ideas into market-ready products or services.
Exacting requirements
So why do we provide special tools for OEMs? It’s in response to the way they do business. They typically take our servers and add their own software solution or specialized IP on top before selling the appliance onto the final customer. The big thing is that OEMs are ultimately accountable. It’s their neck on the line, regardless of whether the server is managed by the customer or they keep full control. As a result, OEM partners and customers tend to have even more exacting requirements than the typical enterprise IT user. We understand this dynamic and in response have developed systems management tools for this environment.
An agent-less approach
The bedrock of our systems management toolset is the integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC). Think of it as a server within a server. OEMs can use it to deploy, update, monitor and maintain Dell PowerEdge servers, powered by Intel® Xeon processors, regardless of what operating system or hypervisor the server might be using. This “agentless” approach to systems management means that as long as a server has power and a network connection, it’s possible to control it without interfering with the operating system and running applications.
Customization and security
The Dell OEM Identity Module One is located one level up the stack. This is a software framework that sits outside of the operating system and the BIOS, and stores branding and configuration settings. Customization includes not only branding like logos and custom splash screens, but also security settings and hardware settings like thermal tables. In fact, much of the built-in security for our servers is actually provided by the intelligent use of systems management features.
Flexibility & open standards
Flexibility and the ability to customize at this level is precisely why so many of OEMs value our systems management tools. This is about being able to innovate; to get good ideas to market quicker by building systems management capabilities into the appliance as efficiently as possible. We know that many of OEMs want to integrate our systems management tools and features into their software. That’s why we provide scripting interfaces in iDRAC like WSman, Racadm, IPMI, PowerShell, and support for the Redfish RESTful API, so they don’t have to write custom code to control the appliances.
We also recognize that many OEMs will be providing appliances for a mixed-vendor environment, so we embrace open standards such as Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) and Redfish, which let OEMs or their customers manage Dell-EMC-based appliances in exactly the same way as they manage the rest of the estate.
We know that we don’t need to tell OEMs how to do systems management, so we give them options — whether that’s automation, remote management, or getting hands-on at-the-box. This is all about making everyone’s life simpler, more efficient and flexible. We want OEMs and their customers to use our systems management features to speed up deployment, increase the uptime of your appliance and save money.
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