Robin Systems, Inc.

Kapil Upadhayay

Ravi Kumar Alluboyina

Sree Nandan Atur

Lakshay Badlani

Pragash Vijayaragavan

A bare metal server, or other computing device, may be represented as a JSON file (extending the concept to infrastructure as code) containing hardware, firmware and software versions with links to a kickstarter file depending on the needs of an application, SKU type or some other criteria. Rather than a management node in an L2 network which has a DHCP server to IP lease and facilitate OS installation, a workflow then generates a bootstrap kernel which initializes the bare metal server with an IP address, VLAN, and network gateway which is used to reach out to the network to download and install a kernel, upgrade firmware for various hardware components like BIOS, BMC, NIC, RAID, SSD, NVME, FPGA, etc. The bootstrap kernel may further configure RAID and JBOD, flash custom images on hardware components and may further instruct the server to incrementally download and install an operating system.

Automated initialization of bare metal servers

Deployment of a network service pipeline may be automated by defining workflows comprising functions of instances of elements. Workflows may be defined in a graphical user interface including menus for the selection of elements, functions, and predefined workflows. A workflow may be dynamic such that addition or modification of a function invokes a trigger that automatically populates or modifies parameters of the functions of the workflow. Elements may each have a same set of functions that may be invoked by an orchestrator to perform automated implementation of the workflow. Functions of a workflow may be implemented in batches and may retrieve executable. data from a distributed file store. A test platform with hardware and network simulation may be used to develop functions and workflows.

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Bengaluru, India

Kapil Upadhayay