Enrollment

After all the services have been properly configured, you should enroll your hardware with the Bare Metal service, and confirm that the Compute service sees the available hardware. The nodes will be visible to the Compute service once they are in the available provision state.

Note

After enrolling nodes with the Bare Metal service, the Compute service will not be immediately notified of the new resources. The Compute service’s resource tracker syncs periodically, and so any changes made directly to the Bare Metal service’s resources will become visible in the Compute service only after the next run of that periodic task. More information is in the Troubleshooting section.

Note

Any bare metal node that is visible to the Compute service may have a workload scheduled to it, if both the power and management interfaces pass the validate check. If you wish to exclude a node from the Compute service’s scheduler, for instance so that you can perform maintenance on it, you can set the node to “maintenance” mode. For more information see the Maintenance mode section.

Choosing a driver

When enrolling a node, the most important information to supply is driver. See Enabling drivers and hardware types for a detailed explanation of bare metal drivers, hardware types and interfaces. The driver list command can be used to list all drivers enabled on all hosts:

baremetal driver list
+---------------------+-----------------------+
| Supported driver(s) | Active host(s)        |
+---------------------+-----------------------+
| ipmi                | localhost.localdomain |
+---------------------+-----------------------+

The specific driver to use should be picked based on actual hardware capabilities and expected features. See Drivers, Hardware Types and Hardware Interfaces for more hints on that.

Each driver has a list of driver properties that need to be specified via the node’s driver_info field, in order for the driver to operate on node. This list consists of the properties of the hardware interfaces that the driver uses. These driver properties are available with the driver property list command:

$ baremetal driver property list ipmi
+----------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Property             | Description                                                                                                 |
+----------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| ipmi_address         | IP address or hostname of the node. Required.                                                               |
| ipmi_password        | password. Optional.                                                                                         |
| ipmi_username        | username; default is NULL user. Optional.                                                                   |
| ...                  | ...                                                                                                         |
| deploy_kernel        | UUID (from Glance) of the deployment kernel. Required.                                                      |
| deploy_ramdisk       | UUID (from Glance) of the ramdisk that is mounted at boot time. Required.                                   |
+----------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

The properties marked as required must be supplied either during node creation or shortly after. Some properties may only be required for certain features.

Note on API versions

Starting with API version 1.11, the Bare Metal service added a new initial provision state of enroll to its state machine. When this or later API version is used, new nodes get this state instead of available.

Existing automation tooling that use an API version lower than 1.11 are not affected, since the initial provision state is still available. However, using API version 1.11 or above may break existing automation tooling with respect to node creation.

The default API version used by (the most recent) python-ironicclient is 1.9, but it may change in the future and should not be relied on.

In the examples below we will use version 1.11 of the Bare metal API. This gives us the following advantages:

  • Explicit power credentials validation before leaving the enroll state.

  • Running node cleaning before entering the available state.

  • Not exposing half-configured nodes to the scheduler.

To set the API version for all commands, you can set the environment variable IRONIC_API_VERSION. For the OpenStackClient baremetal plugin, set the OS_BAREMETAL_API_VERSION variable to the same value. For example:

$ export IRONIC_API_VERSION=1.11
$ export OS_BAREMETAL_API_VERSION=1.11

Enrollment process

Creating a node

This section describes the main steps to enroll a node and make it available for provisioning. Some steps are shown separately for illustration purposes, and may be combined if desired.

  1. Create a node in the Bare Metal service with the node create command. At a minimum, you must specify the driver name (for example, ipmi).

    This command returns the node UUID along with other information about the node. The node’s provision state will be enroll:

    $ export OS_BAREMETAL_API_VERSION=1.11
    $ baremetal node create --driver ipmi
    +--------------+--------------------------------------+
    | Property     | Value                                |
    +--------------+--------------------------------------+
    | uuid         | dfc6189f-ad83-4261-9bda-b27258eb1987 |
    | driver_info  | {}                                   |
    | extra        | {}                                   |
    | driver       | ipmi                                 |
    | chassis_uuid |                                      |
    | properties   | {}                                   |
    | name         | None                                 |
    +--------------+--------------------------------------+
    
    $ baremetal node show dfc6189f-ad83-4261-9bda-b27258eb1987
    +------------------------+--------------------------------------+
    | Property               | Value                                |
    +------------------------+--------------------------------------+
    | target_power_state     | None                                 |
    | extra                  | {}                                   |
    | last_error             | None                                 |
    | maintenance_reason     | None                                 |
    | provision_state        | enroll                               |
    | uuid                   | dfc6189f-ad83-4261-9bda-b27258eb1987 |
    | console_enabled        | False                                |
    | target_provision_state | None                                 |
    | provision_updated_at   | None                                 |
    | maintenance            | False                                |
    | power_state            | None                                 |
    | driver                 | ipmi                                 |
    | properties             | {}                                   |
    | instance_uuid          | None                                 |
    | name                   | None                                 |
    | driver_info            | {}                                   |
    | ...                    | ...                                  |
    +------------------------+--------------------------------------+
    

    A node may also be referred to by a logical name as well as its UUID. A name can be assigned to the node during its creation by adding the -n option to the node create command or by updating an existing node with the node set command. See Logical Names for examples.

  2. Starting with API version 1.31 (and python-ironicclient 1.13), you can pick which hardware interface to use with nodes that use hardware types. Each interface is represented by a node field called <IFACE>_interface where <IFACE> in the interface type, e.g. boot. See Enabling drivers and hardware types for details on hardware interfaces.

    An interface can be set either separately:

    $ baremetal node set $NODE_UUID --deploy-interface direct --raid-interface agent
    

    or set during node creation:

    $ baremetal node create --driver ipmi \
        --deploy-interface direct \
        --raid-interface agent
    

    If no value is provided for some interfaces, Defaults for hardware interfaces are used instead.

  3. Update the node driver_info with the required driver properties, so that the Bare Metal service can manage the node:

    $ baremetal node set $NODE_UUID \
        --driver-info ipmi_username=$USER \
        --driver-info ipmi_password=$PASS \
        --driver-info ipmi_address=$ADDRESS
    

    Note

    If IPMI is running on a port other than 623 (the default). The port must be added to driver_info by specifying the ipmi_port value. Example:

    $ baremetal node set $NODE_UUID --driver-info ipmi_port=$PORT_NUMBER
    

    You may also specify all driver_info parameters during node creation by passing the –driver-info option multiple times:

    $ baremetal node create --driver ipmi \
        --driver-info ipmi_username=$USER \
        --driver-info ipmi_password=$PASS \
        --driver-info ipmi_address=$ADDRESS
    

    See Choosing a driver above for details on driver properties.

  4. Specify a deploy kernel and ramdisk compatible with the node’s driver, for example:

    $ baremetal node set $NODE_UUID \
        --driver-info deploy_kernel=$DEPLOY_VMLINUZ_UUID \
        --driver-info deploy_ramdisk=$DEPLOY_INITRD_UUID
    

    See Add images to the Image service for details.

  5. Optionally you can specify the provisioning and/or cleaning network UUID or name in the node’s driver_info. The neutron network interface requires both provisioning_network and cleaning_network, while the flat network interface requires the cleaning_network to be set either in the configuration or on the nodes. For example:

    $ baremetal node set $NODE_UUID \
        --driver-info cleaning_network=$CLEAN_UUID_OR_NAME \
        --driver-info provisioning_network=$PROVISION_UUID_OR_NAME
    

    See Configure tenant networks for details.

  6. You must also inform the Bare Metal service of the network interface cards which are part of the node by creating a port with each NIC’s MAC address. These MAC addresses are passed to the Networking service during instance provisioning and used to configure the network appropriately:

    $ baremetal port create $MAC_ADDRESS --node $NODE_UUID
    

    Note

    When it is time to remove the node from the Bare Metal service, the command used to remove the port is baremetal port delete <port uuid>. When doing so, it is important to ensure that the baremetal node is not in maintenance as guarding logic to prevent orphaning Neutron Virtual Interfaces (VIFs) will be overriden.

Adding scheduling information

  1. Assign a resource class to the node. A resource class should represent a class of hardware in your data center, that corresponds to a Compute flavor.

    For example, let’s split hardware into these three groups:

    1. nodes with a lot of RAM and powerful CPU for computational tasks,

    2. nodes with powerful GPU for OpenCL computing,

    3. smaller nodes for development and testing.

    We can define three resource classes to reflect these hardware groups, named large-cpu, large-gpu and small respectively. Then, for each node in each of the hardware groups, we’ll set their resource_class appropriately via:

    $ baremetal node set $NODE_UUID --resource-class $CLASS_NAME
    

    The --resource-class argument can also be used when creating a node:

    $ baremetal node create --driver $DRIVER --resource-class $CLASS_NAME
    

    To use resource classes for scheduling you need to update your flavors as described in Create flavors for use with the Bare Metal service.

    Note

    This is not required for standalone deployments, only for those using the Compute service for provisioning bare metal instances.

  2. Update the node’s properties to match the actual hardware of the node:

    $ baremetal node set $NODE_UUID \
        --property cpus=$CPU_COUNT \
        --property memory_mb=$RAM_MB \
        --property local_gb=$DISK_GB
    

    As above, these can also be specified at node creation by passing the –property option to node create multiple times:

    $ baremetal node create --driver ipmi \
        --driver-info ipmi_username=$USER \
        --driver-info ipmi_password=$PASS \
        --driver-info ipmi_address=$ADDRESS \
        --property cpus=$CPU_COUNT \
        --property memory_mb=$RAM_MB \
        --property local_gb=$DISK_GB
    

    These values can also be discovered during Hardware Inspection.

    Warning

    The value provided for the local_gb property must match the size of the root device you’re going to deploy on. By default ironic-python-agent picks the smallest disk which is not smaller than 4 GiB.

    If you override this logic by using root device hints (see Specifying the disk for deployment (root device hints)), the local_gb value should match the size of picked target disk.

  3. If you wish to perform more advanced scheduling of the instances based on hardware capabilities, you may add metadata to each node that will be exposed to the Compute scheduler (see: ComputeCapabilitiesFilter). A full explanation of this is outside of the scope of this document. It can be done through the special capabilities member of node properties:

    $ baremetal node set $NODE_UUID \
        --property capabilities=key1:val1,key2:val2
    

    Some capabilities can also be discovered during Hardware Inspection.

  4. If you wish to perform advanced scheduling of instances based on qualitative attributes of bare metal nodes, you may add traits to each bare metal node that will be exposed to the Compute scheduler (see: Scheduling based on traits for a more in-depth discussion of traits in the Bare Metal service). For example, to add the standard trait HW_CPU_X86_VMX and a custom trait CUSTOM_TRAIT1 to a node:

    $ baremetal node add trait $NODE_UUID \
        CUSTOM_TRAIT1 HW_CPU_X86_VMX
    

Validating node information

  1. To check if Bare Metal service has the minimum information necessary for a node’s driver to be functional, you may validate it:

    $ baremetal node validate $NODE_UUID
    +------------+--------+--------+
    | Interface  | Result | Reason |
    +------------+--------+--------+
    | boot       | True   |        |
    | console    | True   |        |
    | deploy     | True   |        |
    | inspect    | True   |        |
    | management | True   |        |
    | network    | True   |        |
    | power      | True   |        |
    | raid       | True   |        |
    | storage    | True   |        |
    +------------+--------+--------+
    

    If the node fails validation, each driver interface will return information as to why it failed:

    $ baremetal node validate $NODE_UUID
    +------------+--------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
    | Interface  | Result | Reason                                                                                                                              |
    +------------+--------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
    | boot       | True   |                                                                                                                                     |
    | console    | None   | not supported                                                                                                                       |
    | deploy     | False  | Cannot validate iSCSI deploy. Some parameters were missing in node's instance_info. Missing are: ['root_gb', 'image_source']        |
    | inspect    | True   |                                                                                                                                     |
    | management | False  | Missing the following IPMI credentials in node's driver_info: ['ipmi_address'].                                                     |
    | network    | True   |                                                                                                                                     |
    | power      | False  | Missing the following IPMI credentials in node's driver_info: ['ipmi_address'].                                                     |
    | raid       | None   | not supported                                                                                                                       |
    | storage    | True   |                                                                                                                                     |
    +------------+--------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
    

    When using the Compute Service with the Bare Metal service, it is safe to ignore the deploy interface’s validation error due to lack of image information. You may continue the enrollment process. This information will be set by the Compute Service just before deploying, when an instance is requested:

    $ baremetal node validate $NODE_UUID
    +------------+--------+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
    | Interface  | Result | Reason                                                                                                                                                           |
    +------------+--------+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
    | boot       | False  | Cannot validate image information for node because one or more parameters are missing from its instance_info. Missing are: ['ramdisk', 'kernel', 'image_source'] |
    | console    | True   |                                                                                                                                                                  |
    | deploy     | False  | Cannot validate image information for node because one or more parameters are missing from its instance_info. Missing are: ['ramdisk', 'kernel', 'image_source'] |
    | inspect    | True   |                                                                                                                                                                  |
    | management | True   |                                                                                                                                                                  |
    | network    | True   |                                                                                                                                                                  |
    | power      | True   |                                                                                                                                                                  |
    | raid       | None   | not supported                                                                                                                                                    |
    | storage    | True   |                                                                                                                                                                  |
    +------------+--------+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
    

Making node available for deployment

In order for nodes to be available for deploying workloads on them, nodes must be in the available provision state. To do this, nodes created with API version 1.11 and above must be moved from the enroll state to the manageable state and then to the available state. This section can be safely skipped, if API version 1.10 or earlier is used (which is the case by default).

After creating a node and before moving it from its initial provision state of enroll, basic power and port information needs to be configured on the node. The Bare Metal service needs this information because it verifies that it is capable of controlling the node when transitioning the node from enroll to manageable state.

To move a node from enroll to manageable provision state:

$ baremetal node manage $NODE_UUID
$ baremetal node show $NODE_UUID
+------------------------+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Property               | Value                                                              |
+------------------------+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| ...                    | ...                                                                |
| provision_state        | manageable                                                         | <- verify correct state
| uuid                   | 0eb013bb-1e4b-4f4c-94b5-2e7468242611                               |
| ...                    | ...                                                                |
+------------------------+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

Note

Since it is an asynchronous call, the response for baremetal node manage will not indicate whether the transition succeeded or not. You can check the status of the operation via baremetal node show. If it was successful, provision_state will be in the desired state. If it failed, there will be information in the node’s last_error.

When a node is moved from the manageable to available provision state, the node will go through automated cleaning if configured to do so (see Configure the Bare Metal service for cleaning).

To move a node from manageable to available provision state:

$ baremetal node provide $NODE_UUID
$ baremetal node show $NODE_UUID
+------------------------+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Property               | Value                                                              |
+------------------------+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| ...                    | ...                                                                |
| provision_state        | available                                                          | < - verify correct state
| uuid                   | 0eb013bb-1e4b-4f4c-94b5-2e7468242611                               |
| ...                    | ...                                                                |
+------------------------+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

For more details on the Bare Metal service’s state machine, see the Ironic’s State Machine documentation.

Mapping nodes to Compute cells

If the Compute service is used for scheduling, and the discover_hosts_in_cells_interval was not set as described in Configure the Compute service to use the Bare Metal service, then log into any controller node and run the following command to map the new node(s) to Compute cells:

nova-manage cell_v2 discover_hosts

Logical names

A node may also be referred to by a logical name as well as its UUID. Names can be assigned either during its creation by adding the -n option to the node create command or by updating an existing node with the node set command.

Node names must be unique, and conform to:

The node is named ‘example’ in the following examples:

$ baremetal node create --driver ipmi --name example

or

$ baremetal node set $NODE_UUID --name example

Once assigned a logical name, a node can then be referred to by name or UUID interchangeably:

$ baremetal node create --driver ipmi --name example
+--------------+--------------------------------------+
| Property     | Value                                |
+--------------+--------------------------------------+
| uuid         | 71e01002-8662-434d-aafd-f068f69bb85e |
| driver_info  | {}                                   |
| extra        | {}                                   |
| driver       | ipmi                                 |
| chassis_uuid |                                      |
| properties   | {}                                   |
| name         | example                              |
+--------------+--------------------------------------+

$ baremetal node show example
+------------------------+--------------------------------------+
| Property               | Value                                |
+------------------------+--------------------------------------+
| target_power_state     | None                                 |
| extra                  | {}                                   |
| last_error             | None                                 |
| updated_at             | 2015-04-24T16:23:46+00:00            |
| ...                    | ...                                  |
| instance_info          | {}                                   |
+------------------------+--------------------------------------+

Defaults for hardware interfaces

For hardware types, users can request one of enabled implementations when creating or updating a node as explained in Creating a node.

When no value is provided for a certain interface when creating a node, or changing a node’s hardware type, the default value is used. You can use the driver details command to list the current enabled and default interfaces for a hardware type (for your deployment):

$ baremetal driver show ipmi
+-------------------------------+----------------+
| Field                         | Value          |
+-------------------------------+----------------+
| default_boot_interface        | pxe            |
| default_console_interface     | no-console     |
| default_deploy_interface      | iscsi          |
| default_inspect_interface     | no-inspect     |
| default_management_interface  | ipmitool       |
| default_network_interface     | flat           |
| default_power_interface       | ipmitool       |
| default_raid_interface        | no-raid        |
| default_vendor_interface      | no-vendor      |
| enabled_boot_interfaces       | pxe            |
| enabled_console_interfaces    | no-console     |
| enabled_deploy_interfaces     | iscsi, direct  |
| enabled_inspect_interfaces    | no-inspect     |
| enabled_management_interfaces | ipmitool       |
| enabled_network_interfaces    | flat, noop     |
| enabled_power_interfaces      | ipmitool       |
| enabled_raid_interfaces       | no-raid, agent |
| enabled_vendor_interfaces     | no-vendor      |
| hosts                         | ironic-host-1  |
| name                          | ipmi           |
| type                          | dynamic        |
+-------------------------------+----------------+

The defaults are calculated as follows:

  1. If the default_<IFACE>_interface configuration option (where <IFACE> is the interface name) is set, its value is used as the default.

    If this implementation is not compatible with the node’s hardware type, an error is returned to a user. An explicit value has to be provided for the node’s <IFACE>_interface field in this case.

  2. Otherwise, the first supported implementation that is enabled by an operator is used as the default.

    A list of supported implementations is calculated by taking the intersection between the implementations supported by the node’s hardware type and implementations enabled by the enabled_<IFACE>_interfaces option (where <IFACE> is the interface name). The calculation preserves the order of items, as provided by the hardware type.

    If the list of supported implementations is not empty, the first one is used. Otherwise, an error is returned to a user. In this case, an explicit value has to be provided for the <IFACE>_interface field.

See Enabling drivers and hardware types for more details on configuration.

Example

Consider the following configuration (shortened for simplicity):

[DEFAULT]
enabled_hardware_types = ipmi,redfish
enabled_console_interfaces = no-console,ipmitool-shellinabox
enabled_deploy_interfaces = iscsi,direct
enabled_management_interfaces = ipmitool,redfish
enabled_power_interfaces = ipmitool,redfish
default_deploy_interface = direct

A new node is created with the ipmi driver and no interfaces specified:

$ export OS_BAREMETAL_API_VERSION=1.31
$ baremetal node create --driver ipmi
+--------------+--------------------------------------+
| Property     | Value                                |
+--------------+--------------------------------------+
| uuid         | dfc6189f-ad83-4261-9bda-b27258eb1987 |
| driver_info  | {}                                   |
| extra        | {}                                   |
| driver       | ipmi                                 |
| chassis_uuid |                                      |
| properties   | {}                                   |
| name         | None                                 |
+--------------+--------------------------------------+

Then the defaults for the interfaces that will be used by the node in this example are calculated as follows:

deploy

An explicit value of direct is provided for default_deploy_interface, so it is used.

power

No default is configured. The ipmi hardware type supports only ipmitool power. The intersection between supported power interfaces and values provided in the enabled_power_interfaces option has only one item: ipmitool. It is used.

console

No default is configured. The ipmi hardware type supports the following console interfaces: ipmitool-socat, ipmitool-shellinabox and no-console (in this order). Of these three, only two are enabled: no-console and ipmitool-shellinabox (order does not matter). The intersection contains ipmitool-shellinabox and no-console. The first item is used, and it is ipmitool-shellinabox.

management

Following the same calculation as power, the ipmitool management interface is used.

Hardware Inspection

The Bare Metal service supports hardware inspection that simplifies enrolling nodes - please see Hardware Inspection for details.

Tenant Networks and Port Groups

See Multi-tenancy in the Bare Metal service and Port groups support.