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3 Understanding the differences between bare metal and
stateless deployments
Bare metal and stateless are the two methods of deployment available in OME 2.1. The primary
differentiator between these is who controls the virtual identities assigned to the device.
In bare metal deployment, the user defines the identities and manually enters these into OME. This could
also be considered manual identity deployment. The benefits of this is that the user can choose exactly
which identity gets tied to each interface. The drawbacks are that the user must manually type this in and
must also make sure not to reuse an identity on multiple interfaces. Also for this mode the use of
compute pools is optional.
New in OME 2.1, stateless deployment allows the user to define a range of identities as a virtual IO pool
and then OME will manage the assignment of the pool and automatically assign identities from the pool to
devices. This expedites the deployment process and removes the burden from the user for ensuring an
identity is not accidentally reused. Compute pools are required for this mode.
10 Stateless Deployment with Dell OpenManage Essentials | Revision A00