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Appendix A. Bare Metal Provisioning Drivers

Bare Metal Provisioning can be configured to use one of many drivers. Each driver is made up of a provisioning method and a power management type. Some drivers require additional configuration. Each driver described in this section uses PXE for provisioning; drivers are listed by their power management type. Agent drivers support whole disk image and partition image deployment. To enable a driver or drivers for Bare Metal Provisioning, see Section 1.4.4.4, “Configure Bare Metal Provisioning Drivers”.

IPMI is an interface that provides out-of-band remote management features, including power management and server monitoring. To use this power management type, all Bare Metal Provisioning nodes require an IPMI that is connected to the shared Bare Metal Provisioning Network. Enable the pxe_ipmitool driver, and set the following information in the node’s driver_info:

  • ipmi_address - The IP address of the IPMI NIC.
  • ipmi_username - The IPMI user name.
  • ipmi_password - The IPMI password.

A.2. Dell Remote Access Controller (DRAC)
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DRAC is an interface that provides out-of-band remote management features, including power management and server monitoring. To use this power management type, all Bare Metal Provisioning nodes require a DRAC that is connected to the shared Bare Metal Provisioning Network. Enable the pxe_drac driver, and set the following information in the node’s driver_info:

  • drac_address - The IP address of the DRAC NIC.
  • drac_username - The DRAC user name.
  • drac_password - The DRAC password.

iRMC from Fujitsu is an interface that provides out-of-band remote management features including power management and server monitoring. To use this power management type on a Bare Metal Provisioning node, the node requires an iRMC interface that is connected to the shared Bare Metal Provisioning Network. Enable the pxe_irmc driver, and set the following information in the node’s driver_info:

  • irmc_address - The IP address of the iRMC interface NIC.
  • irmc_username - The iRMC user name.
  • irmc_password - The iRMC password.

To use IPMI to set the boot mode or SCCI to get sensor data, you must complete the following additional steps:

  1. Enable the sensor method in ironic.conf: 

    # openstack-config --set /etc/ironic/ironic.conf \
   irmc sensor_method METHOD
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap

    Replace METHOD with scci or ipmitool.

  2. If you enabled SCCI, install the python-scciclient package: 

    # yum install python-scciclient
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap

  3. Restart the Bare Metal Provisioning conductor service: 

    # systemctl restart openstack-ironic-conductor.service
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap
Note

To use the iRMC driver, iRMC S4 or higher is required.

A.4. Integrated Lights-Out (iLO)
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iLO from Hewlett-Packard is an interface that provides out-of-band remote management features including power management and server monitoring. To use this power management type, all Bare Metal Provisioning nodes require an iLO interface that is connected to the shared Bare Metal Provisioning Network. Enable the pxe_ilo driver, and set the following information in the node’s driver_info:

  • ilo_address - The IP address of the iLO interface NIC.
  • ilo_username - The iLO user name.
  • ilo_password - The iLO password.

You must also install the python-proliantutils package and restart the Bare Metal Provisioning conductor service: 

# yum install python-proliantutils
# systemctl restart openstack-ironic-conductor.service
Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap
Note

HP nodes must have a 2015 firmware version for successful inspection.

A.5. Active Management Technology (AMT)
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AMT from Intel is an out-of-band remote management technology widely used to monitor and manage desktops, including controlling the desktop power, similar to how IPMI is used with servers.

AMT drivers use the WS-MAN protocol to interact with AMT clients.

AMT consists of two drivers:

  • pxe_amt uses AMT for power management and deploys the user image over iSCSI from the conductor.
  • agent_amt uses AMT for power management and deploys the user image with HTTP to the node.
Warning

DEPRECATION NOTICE. Beginning in Red Hat OpenStack Platform 11, AMT drivers will be deprecated and no longer supported in a future release.

Before you Begin

Set up the desktop environment and AMT client. See Manually configuring the AMT Client for details.

Set up Your Environment

  1. Install openwsman-python on the Bare Metal Provisioning service node: 

    # yum install openwsman-python
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap

  2. Enable the AMT driver in ironic.conf: 

    # openstack-config --set /etc/ironic/ironic.conf \
  enabled_drivers DRIVER
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap

    Where DRIVER is either pxe_amt or agent_amt.

  3. Restart the Bare Metal Provisioning conductor service: 

    # systemctl restart openstack-ironic-conductor.service
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap

After you enable the AMT driver, you need to set the following information in the node’s driver_info:

  • amt_address - The IP address of the AMT NIC.
  • amt_username - The AMT user name.
  • amt_password - The AMT password.
Note

Bare metal nodes that use AMT drivers should be deployed with the local boot option enabled. AMT currently has no support for setting a persistent boot device. Nodes deployed without the local boot option could fail to boot if they are restarted outside the control of the Bare Metal Provisioning service. For example, a node rebooted by a local user will not attempt to PXE or network boot the kernel. An AMT node deployed with the local boot option enabled solves this issue.

A.6. SSH and Virsh
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Bare Metal Provisioning can access a host that is running libvirt and use virtual machines as nodes. Virsh controls the power management of the nodes.

Important

The SSH driver is for testing and evaluation purposes only. It is not recommended for Red Hat OpenStack Platform enterprise environments.

To use this power management type, Bare Metal Provisioning must have SSH access to an account with full access to the libvirt environment on the host where the virtual nodes will be set up. Enable the pxe_ssh driver, and set the following information in the node’s driver_info:

  • ssh_virt_type - Set this option to virsh.
  • ssh_address - The IP address of the virsh host.
  • ssh_username - The SSH user name.
  • ssh_key_contents - The contents of the SSH private key on the Bare Metal Provisioning conductor node. The matching public key must be copied to the virsh host.
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