Redfish defined
Redfish is an open, royalty-free hardware management standard published in 2015 by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF). Built on a RESTful API (HTTP/HTTPS) with JSON payloads, it replaces the legacy IPMI binary protocol and provides a modern, secure, programmable interface for out-of-band management of servers, storage, and network devices.
Redfish vs IPMI
Redfish comprehensively out-designs IPMI:
- Protocol: IPMI uses a proprietary binary protocol; Redfish uses standard HTTPS+JSON
- Security: IPMI has no encryption by default; Redfish enforces TLS 1.2+
- Readability: IPMI needs specialized tools to decode; Redfish JSON is human-readable and debuggable
- Extensibility: IPMI features are fixed; Redfish discovers APIs dynamically via OData
- Developer-friendly: IPMI requires a dedicated client library; Redfish can be called directly with curl/Postman
Redfish core resource model
Redfish abstracts server hardware as a hierarchical resource model:
- Chassis: chassis info — chassis type, indicator LEDs, power state
- Systems: system info — CPU, memory, BIOS version
- Managers: BMC controller info — firmware version, network configuration
- Thermal: temperature sensors, fan speeds, cooling policy
- Power: PSU status, power readings, power limits
- EthernetInterfaces: BMC network port configuration
- Sessions: management of active Redfish sessions
- Events: hardware event subscription and push (Webhook, SSE)
Key Point
CloudSino DCOS natively supports Redfish, collecting data from Dell iDRAC, HPE iLO, Lenovo XClarity, Huawei iBMC, and other mainstream BMCs — without needing per-vendor collection plugins.