Redfish listener example on ZAPP

Redfish listener architecture

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Redfish listener example combines Redfish sensor discovery, a ZAPP Listener pipeline, and ZAPP Aggregator forwarding.

The Redfish listener discovers or collects telemetry from Redfish-enabled baseboard management controllers (BMCs) and forwards telemetry to the ZAPP Aggregator.

Main components

BMC Redfish endpoints: BMC Redfish endpoints provide sensor metadata and telemetry from managed infrastructure.
Sensor pipeline: The envPlugins.sensorPipeline configuration runs before pipeline components start. It loads or discovers sensors and populates the listener sensor manifest.
Redfish listener pipeline: The listener pipeline runs inside the zapp container. For Redfish deployments, the pipeline includes Redfish configuration and forwards telemetry to an aggregatorStreamer component.
ZAPP Aggregator: The ZAPP Aggregator receives telemetry from the listener and exposes metrics, manifest data, and subscriber gRPC access.

Data flow

The listener reads the pipeline file and expands environment and secret references.
The sensor pipeline reads envPlugins.sensorPipeline.
ZAPP discovers or loads Redfish sensors into the manifest.
Pipeline components start.
The listener forwards telemetry to the ZAPP Aggregator.
Operators inspect /metrics, /manifest, or /manifest.json to validate deployment health.

The Helm chart mounts the pipeline at /config/pipeline.yaml, mounts Redfish credential files as Kubernetes Secrets, and passes the ZAPP Aggregator address to the listener with --aggregator.

Configure the pipeline

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Redfish listener pipeline is embedded in the listener Helm values under zapp.listeners[].config.pipeline. The chart mounts the content at /config/pipeline.yaml.

The Redfish pipeline discovers sensors before components start, then forwards telemetry to the ZAPP Aggregator.

Sensor pipeline

Configure Redfish endpoints under envPlugins.sensorPipeline. This block runs before components start and populates the listener manifest.

envPlugins:
 sensorPipeline:
 maxRedfishConnections: 1
 redfishDevices:
 - endpoint: ${secrets.redfish_endpoint}
 username: ${secrets.redfish_username}
 password: ${secrets.redfish_password}
 version: 1.11.0
 manifest:
 path: /data/redfish-sensor-manifest.yaml
 forceReload: false

Important fields:

Configure Redfish Secrets

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Redfish endpoints and credentials should come from Kubernetes Secrets. The listener reads secret files and expands ${secrets.<name>} references before it parses the pipeline YAML.

Secret keys

The default Redfish listener values use these keys:

redfish_endpoint
redfish_username
redfish_password

The pipeline references them like this:

redfishDevices:
 - endpoint: ${secrets.redfish_endpoint}
 username: ${secrets.redfish_username}
 password: ${secrets.redfish_password}

Use an existing Secret

Use existingSecret when another system manages the Secret.

zapp:
 listeners:
 - name: redfish
 secrets:
 - name: redfish-credentials
 existingSecret: redfish-credentials
 mountPath: /secrets/redfish

The Secret must contain a key named redfish-credentials. The value should be dotenv-style content:

Monitor the Redfish listener

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The listener and ZAPP Aggregator expose HTTP monitoring endpoints when metricsPort is greater than 0.

HTTP endpoints

Use these endpoints for health and telemetry inspection:

Endpoint	Purpose
`/metrics`	Prometheus metrics
`/manifest`	Sensor manifest web page
`/manifest.json`	Sensor manifest JSON

On the ZAPP Aggregator, the manifest page also shows connected listeners and sensor counts.

Port-forward the ZAPP Aggregator manifest

kubectl --namespace <namespace> port-forward svc/zapp-aggregator-metrics 8888:8888

Open the manifest page:

http://localhost:8888/manifest

Request manifest JSON:

Troubleshoot the Redfish listener

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Start with Kubernetes readiness, then check listener configuration, ZAPP Aggregator connectivity, Redfish access, and telemetry validation.

Use Kubernetes checks, HTTP monitoring endpoints, and zest to isolate Redfish listener deployment problems.

Check pods and releases

helm list --namespace <namespace>
kubectl get pods --namespace <namespace>
kubectl get statefulsets --namespace <namespace>

If a pod is not ready, describe it and inspect recent events: