How to Access the SBC

In this section:

EMA

The EMA provides an easy method to provision, maintain and administer the SBC platform from any Web browser. This is the most frequently used access method. For more details, refer to the EMA User Guide.

For login details, see Logging Into EMA.

EMA in Platform Mode

The EMA in Platform Mode provides current status of the platform, application software version information and system information. The EMA in Platform Mode is also used to start, stop and restart the application as well as reboot the host. The EMA in Platform Mode supports upgrading the operating system and application. Additional features include a web interface for generic troubleshooting activities, security and remote access management.

For more information, refer to Logging into EMA in Platform Mode.

Command Line Interface

Command Line Interface (CLI) is the traditional method to configure systems from any machine with network access using a secure shell (SSH) client terminal emulator).

For login details, refer to Logging Into the CLI.

Baseboard Management Controller

The Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) supports the following functions:

View basic system information
Change mouse mode
Configure BMC and EMA in Platform Mode network settings
Add, edit or remove users
Configure NTP settings
View or change SSL certificate
Perform remote control settings
Update BMC firmware and reboot BMC
Switch to EMA in Platform Mode
Integrated Lights Out Management (LOM)

For login details, refer to Logging Into the BMC

Note

Not applicable to the SBC Software Edition (SWe).

SOAP API

SBC Core SOAP APIs provide access to Simple Object Access (SOAP) API which is protocol specification used to exchange structured information in the implementation of web services. It uses XML information set for its message format, and usually relies on other application layer protocols, such as Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), for message negotiation and transmission. The advantage of using SOAP is that it is very versatile and uses different transport protocols. The standard stacks use HTTP as a transport protocol.

The SBC SOAP API supports the following requests for each managed object:

CREATE – creates a managed object in the SBC.
UPDATE – updates a managed object in the SBC.
DELETE – deletes a managed object in the SBC.
SHOW– retrieves managed object details from SBC.
User defined operations – For example, manual switchover of the SBC.

The EMS application maps each SOAP request to the corresponding REST request towards the SBC. In network configurations where EMS is deployed, the EMS is also used to configure SBC Core using SOAP API for SBC. This interface supports provisioning as well the operations exposed by the yang models. For details, refer to the EMS document SBC SOAP API reference.

For access details, refer to Accessing SOAP API.

REST API

REST APIs provide access to REpresentational State Transfer (REST) API which is a simple, stateless architecture style (not a protocol) that uses the HTTP/HTTPS method ( such as GET, PUT, POST, DELETE) to retrieve the management information from the database. The main advantage is its simple interfaces and can be modified while the application is running.

REST has the following properties:

Stateless: No client context is stored on the server. A request from the client will contain all the necessary information required to process the request.
Client-Server model: In a client-server model, clients are associated with the user interface, and the servers manage data storage behind the interface. This allows a separation between the client and server.
Cacheable: Improvement in scalability and performance when the client caches responses.
Language–independent: REST API uses open standards. Any language may be used to access the API ( C++, Java, etc. ) resources via URI paths.

To use a REST API, your application makes HTTPs requests and parses the responses. Currently, the only supported response format is XML. The methods used by developers are standard HTTP methods such as GET, PUT, POST, PATCH and DELETE. For details, refer to REST API User's Guide.

For access details, refer to Accessing REST API.

Insight EMS SBC Configuration Manager

If your network includes the Insight EMS platform, and the SBC is added as a managed node or is part of a managed cluster, you can access a web-based management interface from the EMS. The SBC Configuration Manager application provides GUI configuration and management options similar to what the EMA GUI provides. The SBC Configuration Manager is accessible under Node Management by navigating to the Node Inventory, Registration and Other Functions window (Network > Node Management > Function Manager) and selecting the Configure function for a node. The SBC Configuration Manager is also accessible under Cluster Management by navigating to the Configurations tab for a cluster (Network > Cluster Management > Manage VNFs > Configurations) and clicking on the Edit Configure option. Refer to EMS documentation for more information on node and cluster management.

A Note About SFTP

The SBC Core includes the utility /opt/sonus/bin/SbcSftp with permissions -rwsr-xr-x, which allows you to securely transfer files to a remote server using the Linux shell.

When executed, the program SbcSftp:

Creates the necessary Access Control List (ACL) to allow the sftp connection from the SBC Linux shell to a remote server
Uploads/Downloads specified files to/from the remote server over a SFTP session, if the user has permissions to access the file
Deletes the ACL

The advantage of using SbcSftp over standard sftp is that SbcSftp automatically creates and deletes ACLs for accessing the remote server. For details, refer to SbcSftp - Secure File Transfers with Automated ACL Creation and Deletion.

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