DELL PUBLIC Matt Domsch Technology Strategist, Office of the CTO, Dell September 21, 2009 Dynamic Driver Injection

DELL PUBLIC Agenda ● Problem ● Solution Options ● DKMS ● Vendor Driver Update Programs ● Dynamic Driver Injection using Dell Lifecycle Controller ● Virtualization ● Future Directions

Situation: OS Deployments Lag New Hardware Red Hat RHEL Dell Server Product Line 11G 10G End User Data Center OS Refresh Standardized on RHEL 5.2 Goal: Meet the needs of both the user's application and the hardware Today Problem: Older OS missing drivers for newer hardware

DELL PUBLIC Solution Option: DKMS ● Dynamic Kernel Module Support ● Tool to assist backporting drivers to older OS versions ● Build Driver Disks and RPMs / DEBs for deployment ● Deploy boot-critical driver disks on media (CD, Floppy, USB) ● Install other driver RPMs / DEBs via normal methods ● DKMS is Dell's preferred method of publishing updated drivers. ● DKMS is available in Ubuntu, EPEL, and on linux.dell.com. OS Installation is still a manual process Most suitable for individual deployments

DELL PUBLIC Solution Option: OS Vendor Driver Programs ● Red Hat Driver Update Program ● Novell/SuSE Partner Linux Driver Process ● End Users receive drivers, built, tested and supported by their OS Vendor ● Challenge: different tools / processes for each OS vendor ● Solution: Driver developers use DKMS to prepare Kernel Module Packages for either OS Installation is still a manual process Most suitable for individual deployments

DELL PUBLIC Solution Option: Dynamic Driver Injection using Dell Lifecycle Controller + = OS Installer CD Drivers Lifecycle Controller Provides Drivers Seamless, installed OS with all necessary drivers, without using a driver disk.

DELL PUBLIC Dell Lifecycle Controller + Latest drivers downloaded from dell.com before installation OS Installer automatically looks on LCC for drivers Implemented in SLES 10 SP3, SLES 11, RHEL 5.4 Work In Progress for Ubuntu 9.10

DELL PUBLIC Solution Option: Virtualization Hardware Virtual Machine Application Services OS Tailored for Application Needs Hypervisor-optimized Platform Services OS Tailored for Hardware Needs VM Isolation Hardware Systems Management Hardware Device Drivers Operating System Hardware Reducing Complexity through decomposition Simplifying User OS Image Management Solution's Technical Needs: e.g. RHEL 5.3 User’s Business Needs: e.g. RHEL 5.2 Application

DELL PUBLIC Future Integration ● iDRAC 6 Enterprise with Vflash ● Secure, PXE-less network deployments ● Remotely stage your own content ● Firmware-Tools: Dell Firmware Update Framework ● YUM & RPM-enabled ● APT and DEB-enabled ● Linux Foundation Driver Backport Working Group ● DKMS developer tool ● RPM Spec works across distributions and versions ● Jockey Online Driver Database

DELL PUBLIC I Like It! Questions?

DELL PUBLIC For More Information ● Dell Lifecycle Controller ● Red Hat Driver Update Program ● Novell Partner Linux Driver Process inux_Driver_Process ● DKMS ● Firmware-Tools ● Linux Foundation Driver Backport Working Group backport

DELL PUBLIC Acknowledgements ● CD photo license CC-BY-SA ● Hard Disk photo license CC-BY-SA 2.5