So things are starting to get interesting with the HP IMC eAPI that was recently released. It’s really amazing to see the types of creative projects when technical people are presented with new toys. 🙂

So for those of you who didn’t read my last eAPI blog post, let me catch you up. The eAPI is a RESTFul inteface that allows programmers, or scripters to leverage the various network services that HP IMC presents.

Thanks@ioshintsfor a quick look at SNMP vs. RESTfull interface

Basically it looks a little like this.

note: This is not a full list of the IMC modules or services. Check out the HP website for a complete list.

The RESTfull inteface presents the services in a XML format which is consumable to any programming language that can parse XML. ( I’m not a programmer, but that’s pretty much all of the current ones from what I understand ).

Those services are then applied to specific devices. But what’s COOL about this, is the following.

Say you want to change a VLAN on a bunch of ports. Some of those happen to be HP Comware switches, some of them happen to be HP Procurve Switches, and some of them happen to be Cisco switches. The IMC device adapters at the bottom do all the work for you, providing a device abstraction layer so that you can just say ” add VLAN” rather than having to worry about the syntax of all the individual devices.

So what’s actually available in the HP IMC eAPI? Well you can checkout @neelixx’s blog for the documentation. This is the first release, but I’m told that the eAPI will continue to grow with each future release of the platform AND the modules.

But I think what’s a LOT more interesting is some of the projects that have started to creep up.

For example

1) Wouldn’t it be cool if when you sent someone an outlook invite for a meeting in your office that your network access control system would automatically create guest accounts for the day of the meeting and send them to your guests?

2) Wouldn’t it be cool if when your support desk could simply click on a user in Microsoft Lync and automatically see where they have been logged in the network? Check out what access service is assigned to them. Maybe they are having trouble accessing some resources and you want to make sure they are in the right VLAN.

I’ve also started to see other apps pop up such as an application that searches the entire network for the mac addresses of lost laptops and locates the interface they are plugged into. Pretty handy for a hospital where a lost laptop with patient data is a nightmare. Or something as simple as an app for a a College which allows the teacher to shut down all the interfaces for the switches which are in their classroom, and then to turn them all back on with a click of the button.

No login to the NMS.

No call to the help desk.

Just shutting down the ports when the students aren’t listening, and turning them back on when it’s time to work.

What about you guys? HP has given you some color. What are YOU going to paint?