Application gateways (AGs) are software agents that communicate directly with the endpoints to relay the health and state of the endpoints to the DME. AG-managed endpoints include servers, chassis, modules, fabric extenders, fabric interconnects, and NX-OS. The AGs actively monitor the server through the IPMI and SELs using the Cisco Integrated Management Controller (CIMC). They provide the DME with the health, state, configuration, and potential fault conditions of a device. The AGs manage configuration changes from the current state to the desired state during FSM transitions when changes are made to the Cisco UCS XML database.

The module AG and chassis AG communicate with the chassis management controller (CMC) to get information about the health, state, configuration, and fault conditions observed by the CMC. The fabric interconnect NX-OS AG communicates directly with NX-OS to get information about the health, state, configuration, statistics, and fault conditions observed by NX-OS on the fabric interconnects. All AGs provide inventory details about the endpoints to the DME during the various discovery processes. The AGs perform the state changes necessary to configure endpoints during FSM-triggered transitions, monitor the health and state of the endpoints, and notify the DME of any faults.

Northbound Interfaces

The northbound interfaces include SNMP, syslog, CLI, and XML API. The XML API present in the Apache web server layer sends login, logout, query, and configuration requests using HTTP or HTTPS. SNMP and syslog are both consumers of data from the DME.

SNMP INFORMs and TRAPs are translated directly from the fault information stored in the Cisco UCS XML database. SNMP GET requests are sent through the same object translation engine in reverse, where the DME receives a request from the object translation engine. The data is translated from the XML database to an SNMP response.

Syslog messages use the same object translation engine as SNMP, where the source of the data (faults, events, audit logs) is translated from XML into a Cisco UCS Manager–formatted syslog message.