Bare metal deployment with OpenStack

Design Consultant

Identifying the Hardware

The command:

openstack baremetal node manage node2

switches node2 to the manageable state. You can now call:

openstack baremetal node power on  node2
openstack baremetal node power off node2

to test the IPMI communication. Two configuration tweaks in the environments/kolla/files/overlays path, /ironic/ironic-conductor.conf and /ironic-inspector.conf, enable in-band inspection [6]:

[DEFAULT]
enabled_inspect_interfaces = inspector,no-inspect
 **
[processing]
add_ports = pxe
keep_ports = present

In addition to in-band inspection, out-of-band inspection uses, for example, the interfaces ilo, idrac, and irmc. The command:

# openstack baremetal node inspect node2

triggers the inspection. The procedure is similar to deployment: Start the PXE environment, initramfs, and the kernel, which is where Ironic gets the data for the nodes from the IPA. The command:

# openstack server create --image deployment-image --flavor baremetal-flavor node2

finally starts the deployment of node2.

Ironic Approach

Basically, Ironic and Nova use an image for the deployment that can be created in the same way as the images already in use. It is important to consider the underlying hardware (RAID controller, network cards, etc.); otherwise, the bridge is built with Ironic and Bifrost. Other interfaces besides IPMI provide additional options. For example, Ironic also lets you maintain the BIOS/UEFI or set up a hardware RAID.

In the form of Ironic and Bifrost, OpenStack brings well-functioning components to the table for configuring hardware with an operating system. The potential applications range from provisioning high-performance compute nodes to adding compute nodes to extend OpenStack. You have the option of customizing the image to be installed so that compute nodes can be deployed without additional manual steps.

Infos