Systems and methods for extension of server management functions

摘要

Systems and methods that may be implemented to provide a plug-in architecture framework to allow extension of server management functionalities in a unified extension firmware interface (“UEFI”) environment using available remote access controller memory space. The disclosed systems and methods may be implemented to provide a hardware and software interface to allow use of a plug-in framework in the embedded system management that may be run under the BIOS firmware and the UEFI environment. The disclosed systems and methods may also be implemented to provide a server management architecture that may be modified and enhanced over time, and/or that may also be employed to extend availability of the server management framework to third parties, as well as to extend support to original equipment manufacturer (“OEM”) servers.

主权项

1. An information handling system, comprising:
at least one processing device; one or more external input/output (I/O) interfaces coupled to the at least one processing device; a remote access controller coupled to the external one or more I/O interfaces and further coupled to the at least one processing device via a communication bus; persistent storage coupled to the remote access controller with the remote access controller being coupled between the persistent storage and the at least one processing device and one or more external I/O interfaces, the remote access controller being programmed to manage the persistent storage and the remote access controller and the persistent storage each being internal components of the information handling system; a server management framework present on the persistent storage, the server management framework including one or more server management functions that each include a configuration layer, the server management framework being configured to load the one or more server management functions on the at least one processing device of the information handling system; and system BIOS firmware residing on the persistent storage, the server management framework being configured to run under a unified extensible firmware interface (“UEFI”) environment provided by the BIOS firmware; wherein the server management framework is configured to access a configuration plug-in from one or more external devices across the one or more external I/O interfaces, the configuration plug-in including a configuration layer; wherein the server management framework is configured to extend the configuration layer of the server management framework across the one or more external I/O interfaces to include the configuration layer of the configuration plug-in; and wherein the server management framework is configured to then load the one or more server management functions on the at least one processing device with the one or more server management functions extended to include the configuration layer of the configuration plug-in.