Distributed Architecture
The NetManage Application Programming Interface is implemented on a Remote Procedure Call (RPC) library. This abstraction allows the client making the call to be physically remote from the device implementing the interface.
The distributed design is intended to provide management framework scalability that allows large numbers of switches in the datacenter to be managed as a single, collaborative entity.
The NetManage Protocol is implemented in compliance with the SunRPC IETF standard and is specified with an IDL (Interface Definition Language) that allows for additional services to be added and existing services to be modified easily.
Although SunRPC is a client-server architecture, the Application (client) and the Switch (server) contain both RPC client and RPC server components. This allows for events such as link status and power failure to be delivered to the application asynchronously.
The NetManage API allows for applications to listen for such events or choose to ignore them.