Using Bare Metal service as a standalone service¶

Service settings¶

It is possible to use the Bare Metal service without other OpenStack services. You should make the following changes to /etc/ironic/ironic.conf:

Choose an authentication strategy which supports standalone, one option is noauth:
```
[DEFAULT]
...
auth_strategy=noauth
```
Another option is http_basic where the credentials are stored in an Apache htpasswd format file:
```
[DEFAULT]
...
auth_strategy=http_basic
http_basic_auth_user_file=/etc/ironic/htpasswd
```
Only the bcrypt format is supported, and the Apache htpasswd utility can be used to populate the file with entries, for example:
```
htpasswd -nbB myName myPassword >> /etc/ironic/htpasswd
```
If you want to disable the Networking service, you should have your network pre-configured to serve DHCP and TFTP for machines that you’re deploying. To disable it, change the following lines:
```
[dhcp]
...
dhcp_provider=none
```
Note

If you disabled the Networking service and the driver that you use is supported by at most one conductor, PXE boot will still work for your nodes without any manual config editing. This is because you know all the DHCP options that will be used for deployment and can set up your DHCP server appropriately.

If you have multiple conductors per driver, it would be better to use Networking since it will do all the dynamically changing configurations for you.
If you want to disable using a messaging broker between conductor and API processes, switch to JSON RPC instead:
```
[DEFAULT]
rpc_transport = json-rpc
```
JSON RPC also has its own authentication strategy. If it is not specified then the stategy defaults to [DEFAULT] auth_strategy. The following will set JSON RPC to noauth:
```
[json_rpc]
auth_strategy = noauth
```
For http_basic the conductor server needs a credentials file to validate requests:
```
[json_rpc]
auth_strategy = http_basic
http_basic_auth_user_file = /etc/ironic/htpasswd-json-rpc
```
The API server also needs client-side credentials to be specified:
```
[json_rpc]
auth_type = http_basic
username = myName
password = myPassword
```

Preparing images¶

If you don’t use Image service, it’s possible to provide images to Bare Metal service via a URL.

At the moment, only two types of URLs are acceptable instead of Image service UUIDs: HTTP(S) URLs (for example, “http://my.server.net/images/img”) and file URLs (file:///images/img).

There are however some limitations for different hardware interfaces:

If you’re using Direct deploy with HTTP(s) URLs, you have to provide the Bare Metal service with the a checksum of your instance image.

MD5 is used by default for backward compatibility reasons. To compute an MD5 checksum, you can use the following command:
```
$ md5sum image.qcow2
ed82def8730f394fb85aef8a208635f6  image.qcow2
```
Alternatively, use a SHA256 checksum or any other algorithm supported by the Python’s hashlib, e.g.:
```
$ sha256sum image.qcow2
9f6c942ad81690a9926ff530629fb69a82db8b8ab267e2cbd59df417c1a28060  image.qcow2
```
Direct deploy started supporting file:// images in the Victoria release cycle, before that only HTTP(s) had been supported.

Warning

File images must be accessible to every conductor! Use a shared file system if you have more than one conductor. The ironic CLI tool will not transfer the file from a local machine to the conductor(s).

Note

The Bare Metal service tracks content changes for non-Glance images by checking their modification date and time. For example, for HTTP image, if ‘Last-Modified’ header value from response to a HEAD request to “http://my.server.net/images/deploy.ramdisk” is greater than cached image modification time, Ironic will re-download the content. For “file://” images, the file system modification time is used.

Using CLI¶

To use the baremetal CLI, set up these environment variables. If the noauth authentication strategy is being used, the value none must be set for OS_AUTH_TYPE. OS_ENDPOINT is the URL of the ironic-api process. For example:

export OS_AUTH_TYPE=none
export OS_ENDPOINT=http://localhost:6385/

If the http_basic authentication strategy is being used, the value http_basic must be set for OS_AUTH_TYPE. For example:

export OS_AUTH_TYPE=http_basic
export OS_ENDPOINT=http://localhost:6385/
export OS_USERNAME=myUser
export OS_PASSWORD=myPassword

Enrolling nodes¶

Create a node in Bare Metal service. At minimum, you must specify the driver name (for example, ipmi). You can also specify all the required driver parameters in one command. This will return the node UUID:

baremetal node create --driver ipmi \
    --driver-info ipmi_address=ipmi.server.net \
    --driver-info ipmi_username=user \
    --driver-info ipmi_password=pass \
    --driver-info deploy_kernel=file:///images/deploy.vmlinuz \
    --driver-info deploy_ramdisk=http://my.server.net/images/deploy.ramdisk

+--------------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Property     | Value                                                                    |
+--------------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| uuid         | be94df40-b80a-4f63-b92b-e9368ee8d14c                                     |
| driver_info  | {u'deploy_ramdisk': u'http://my.server.net/images/deploy.ramdisk',       |
|              | u'deploy_kernel': u'file:///images/deploy.vmlinuz', u'ipmi_address':     |
|              | u'ipmi.server.net', u'ipmi_username': u'user', u'ipmi_password':         |
|              | u'******'}                                                               |
| extra        | {}                                                                       |
| driver       | ipmi                                                                     |
| chassis_uuid |                                                                          |
| properties   | {}                                                                       |
+--------------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Note that here deploy_kernel and deploy_ramdisk contain links to images instead of Image service UUIDs.

As in case of Compute service, you can also provide capabilities to node properties, but they will be used only by Bare Metal service (for example, boot mode). Although you don’t need to add properties like memory_mb, cpus etc. as Bare Metal service will require UUID of a node you’re going to deploy.
Then create a port to inform Bare Metal service of the network interface cards which are part of the node by creating a port with each NIC’s MAC address. In this case, they’re used for naming of PXE configs for a node:
```
baremetal port create $MAC_ADDRESS --node $NODE_UUID
```

Populating instance_info¶

You also need to specify image information in the node’s instance_info (see Create user images for the Bare Metal service):
- image_source - URL of the whole disk or root partition image, mandatory.
- root_gb - size of the root partition, required for partition images.
  
  Note
  
  Older versions of the Bare Metal service used to require a positive integer for root_gb even for whole-disk images. You may want to set it for compatibility.
- image_checksum - MD5 checksum of the image specified by image_source, only required for http:// images when using Direct deploy.
  
  Note
  
  Additional checksum support exists via the image_os_hash_algo and image_os_hash_value fields. They may be used instead of the image_checksum field.
  
  Warning
  
  If your operating system is running in FIPS 140-2 mode, MD5 will not be available, and you must use SHA256 or another modern algorithm.
  
  Starting with the Stein release of ironic-python-agent can also be a URL to a checksums file, e.g. one generated with:
```
cd /path/to/http/root
md5sum *.img > checksums
```
- kernel, ramdisk - HTTP(s) or file URLs of the kernel and initramfs of the target OS. Must be added only for partition images.
For example:
```
baremetal node set $NODE_UUID \
    --instance-info image_source=$IMG \
    --instance-info image_checksum=$MD5HASH \
    --instance-info kernel=$KERNEL \
    --instance-info ramdisk=$RAMDISK \
    --instance-info root_gb=10
```
With a SHA256 hash:
```
baremetal node set $NODE_UUID \
    --instance-info image_source=$IMG \
    --instance-info image_os_hash_algo=sha256 \
    --instance-info image_os_hash_value=$SHA256HASH \
    --instance-info kernel=$KERNEL \
    --instance-info ramdisk=$RAMDISK \
    --instance-info root_gb=10
```
With a whole disk image:
```
baremetal node set $NODE_UUID \
    --instance-info image_source=$IMG \
    --instance-info image_checksum=$MD5HASH
```
When using low RAM nodes with http:// images that are not in the RAW format, you may want them cached locally, converted to raw and served from the conductor’s HTTP server:
```
baremetal node set $NODE_UUID \
    --instance-info image_download_source=local
```
Boot mode can be specified per instance:
```
baremetal node set $NODE_UUID \
    --instance-info capabilities='{"boot_mode": "uefi"}'
```
Otherwise, the boot_mode capability from the node’s properties will be used.

Warning

The two settings must not contradict each other.

Note

This capability was introduced in the Wallaby release series, previously ironic used a separate instance_info/deploy_boot_mode field instead.

To override the boot option used for this instance, set the boot_option capability:

baremetal node set $NODE_UUID \
    --instance-info capabilities='{"boot_option": "local"}'

Starting with the Ussuri release, you can set root device hints per instance:
```
baremetal node set $NODE_UUID \
    --instance-info root_device='{"wwn": "0x4000cca77fc4dba1"}'
```
This setting overrides any previous setting in properties and will be removed on undeployment.
For iLO drivers, fields that should be provided are:
- ilo_deploy_iso under driver_info;
- ilo_boot_iso, image_source, root_gb under instance_info.
For software RAID with whole-disk images, the root UUID of the root partition has to be provided so that the bootloader can be correctly installed:
```
baremetal node set $NODE_UUID \
    --instance-info image_rootfs_uuid=<uuid>
```

Deployment¶

Validate that all parameters are correct:

baremetal node validate $NODE_UUID

+------------+--------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| Interface  | Result | Reason                                                         |
+------------+--------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| boot       | True   |                                                                |
| console    | False  | Missing 'ipmi_terminal_port' parameter in node's driver_info.  |
| deploy     | True   |                                                                |
| inspect    | True   |                                                                |
| management | True   |                                                                |
| network    | True   |                                                                |
| power      | True   |                                                                |
| raid       | True   |                                                                |
| storage    | True   |                                                                |
+------------+--------+----------------------------------------------------------------+

Now you can start the deployment, run:
```
baremetal node deploy $NODE_UUID
```

Ramdisk booting¶

Advanced operators, specifically ones working with ephemeral workloads, may find it more useful to explicitly treat a node as one that would always boot from a Ramdisk.

This functionality is largely intended for network booting, however some other boot interface, such as the redfish-virtual-media support enabling the same basic functionality through the existing interfaces.

To use, a few different settings must be modified.

Change the deploy_interface on the node to ramdisk:

baremetal node set $NODE_UUID \
        --deploy-interface ramdisk

Set a kernel and ramdisk to be utilized:

baremetal node set $NODE_UUID \
        --instance-info kernel=$KERNEL_URL \
        --instance-info ramdisk=$RAMDISK_URL

Deploy the node:
```
baremetal node deploy $NODE_UUID
```
Warning

Configuration drives, also known as a configdrive, is not supported with the ramdisk deploy interface. Please ensure your ramdisk CPIO archive contains all necessary configuration and credentials. This is as no disk image is written to the disk of the node being provisioned with a ramdisk.

The node ramdisk components will then be assembled by the conductor, appropriate configuration put in place, and the node will then be powered on. From there, normal node booting will occur. Upon undeployment of the node, normal cleaning proceedures will occur as configured with-in the conductor.

Ramdisk booting with ISO media¶

Currently supported for the use of ramdisks with the redfish-virtual-media and ipxe boot interfaces, an operator may request an explict ISO file to be booted.

Store the URL to the ISO image to instance_info/boot_iso, instead of a kernel or ramdisk setting:
```
baremetal node set $NODE_UUID \
        --instance-info boot_iso=$BOOT_ISO_URL
```
Deploy the node:
```
baremetal node deploy $NODE_UUID
```

Warning

This feature, when utilized with the ipxe boot_interface, will only allow a kernel and ramdisk to be booted from the supplied ISO file. Any additional contents, such as additional ramdisk contents or installer package files will be unavailable after the boot of the Operating System. Operators wishing to leverage this functionality for actions such as OS installation should explore use of the standard ramdisk deploy_interface along with the instance_info/kernel_append_params setting to pass arbitrary settings such as a mirror URL for the initial ramdisk to load data from. This is a limitation of iPXE and the overall boot process of the operating system where memory allocated by iPXE is released.

Other references¶

Enabling local boot without Compute

Using Bare Metal service as a standalone service