Multi-tenancy in the Bare Metal service

Overview

It is possible to use dedicated tenant networks for provisioned nodes, which extends the current Bare Metal service capabilities of providing flat networks. This works in conjunction with the Networking service to allow provisioning of nodes in a separate provisioning network. The result of this is that multiple tenants can use nodes in an isolated fashion. However, this configuration does not support trunk ports belonging to multiple networks.

Network interface is one of the driver interfaces that manages network switching for nodes. There are 3 network interfaces available in the Bare Metal service:

• noop interface is used for standalone deployments, and does not perform any network switching;
• flat interface places all provisioned nodes and nodes being deployed into a single layer 2 network, separated from the cleaning network;
• neutron interface provides tenant-defined networking by integrating with the Networking service, while also separating tenant networks from the provisioning and cleaning provider networks.

Configuring the Bare Metal service

See the Configure tenant networks section in the installation guide for the Bare Metal service.

Configuring nodes

1. Multi-tenancy support was added in the 1.20 API version. The following examples assume you are using python-ironicclient version 1.5.0 or higher. They show the usage of both ironic and openstack baremetal commands.

   If you’re going to use ironic command, set the following variable in your shell environment:

   export IRONIC_API_VERSION=1.20
   

   If you’re using ironic client plugin for openstack client via openstack baremetal commands, export the following variable:

   export OS_BAREMETAL_API_VERSION=1.20
   

2. The node’s network_interface field should be set to a valid network interface. Valid interfaces are listed in the [DEFAULT]/enabled_network_interfaces configuration option in the ironic-conductor’s configuration file. Set it to neutron to use the Networking service’s ML2 driver:

   • ironic command:

     ironic node-create --network-interface neutron \
     --driver agent-ipmitool
     

   • openstack command:

     openstack baremetal node create --network-interface neutron \
     --driver agent-ipmitool
     

   Note

   If the [DEFAULT]/default_network_interface configuration option is set, the --network-interface option does not need to be specified when creating the node.

3. To update an existing node’s network interface to neutron, use the following commands:

   • ironic command:

     ironic node-update $NODE_UUID_OR_NAME add network_interface=neutron
     

   • openstack command:

     openstack baremetal node set $NODE_UUID_OR_NAME \
     --network-interface neutron
     

4. The Bare Metal service provides the local_link_connection information to the Networking service’s ML2 driver. The ML2 driver uses that information to plug the specified port to the tenant network.

   local_link_connection fields

   Field	Description
   switch_id	Required. Identifies a switch and can be a MAC address or an OpenFlow-based datapath_id.
   port_id	Required. Port ID on the switch, for example, Gig0/1.
   switch_info	Optional. Used to distinguish different switch models or other vendor-specific identifier. Some ML2 plugins may require this field.

   Create a port as follows:

   • ironic command:

     ironic port-create -a $HW_MAC_ADDRESS -n $NODE_UUID \
     -l switch_id=$SWITCH_MAC_ADDRESS -l switch_info=$SWITCH_HOSTNAME \
     -l port_id=$SWITCH_PORT --pxe-enabled true
     

   • openstack command:

     openstack baremetal port create $HW_MAC_ADDRESS --node $NODE_UUID \
     --local-link-connection switch_id=$SWITCH_MAC_ADDRESS \
     --local-link-connection switch_info=$SWITCH_HOSTNAME \
     --local-link-connection port_id=$SWITCH_PORT --pxe-enabled true
     

5. Check the port configuration:

   • ironic command:

     ironic port-show $PORT_UUID
     

   • openstack command:

     openstack baremetal port show $PORT_UUID
     

After these steps, the provisioning of the created node will happen in the provisioning network, and then the node will be moved to the tenant network that was requested.