White Paper

6 Scripting WSMAN Operating System Deployment – Boot Network ISO
Pictorial View of the Environment
WSMAN over SSL
Target System
Management Station
with WSMAN scripts
1
2
Figure 1 - Environment Diagram
Figure 1 shows the pictorial view of the environment. It starts with administrator (1) using the
management station to run scripts to send WSMAN commands through an SSL connection. The target
system in this case (2) is a Dell PowerEdge 11G or later server equipped with the iDRAC service
processor.
The scripts can be interactive and menu-driven, or non-interactive with positional or option-based
arguments. At Dell, we used either or both paradigms, based on the workflow or task that needed to
be accomplished. We also took into consideration natural interaction patterns to provide a fluid user
experience.
Common APIs
During our experience building scripts with WSMAN using Python, we found common patterns being
used frequently. We saw the need to reuse the code and create common APIs from those frequent
patterns. Some of them have been chosen for this white paper.
1. Detect Host Operating System
2. Construct WSMAN CLI command
3. Launch WSMAN CLI command
4. Ping test
5. Extract SSL certificate