Configuring Consoles

Overview

There are two types of consoles which are available in Bare Metal service:

Node graphical console

Graphical console drivers require a configured and running ironic-novncproxy service. Each supported driver is described below.

redfish-graphical

A driver for a subset of Redfish hosts. Starting the console will start a container which exposes a VNC server for ironic-novncproxy to attach to. When attached, a browser will start which displays an HTML5 based console on the following supported hosts:

  • Dell iDRAC

  • HPE iLO

  • Supermicro

[DEFAULT]
enabled_hardware_types = redfish
enabled_console_interfaces = redfish-graphical,no-console

fake-graphical

A driver for demonstrating working graphical console infrastructure. Starting the console will start a container which exposes a VNC server for ironic-novncproxy to attach to. When attached, a browser will start which displays an animation.

[DEFAULT]
enabled_hardware_types = fake-hardware
enabled_console_interfaces = fake-graphical,no-console

Node serial console

Serial consoles for nodes are implemented using socat. It is supported by the ipmi, irmc, and redfish hardware types.

Note

The use of the ipmitool-socat console interface on any hardware type requires the ipmi connection parameters to be set into the driver_info filed on the node.

Serial consoles can be configured in the Bare Metal service as follows:

  • Install socat on the ironic conductor node. Also, socat needs to be in the $PATH environment variable that the ironic-conductor service uses.

    Installation example:

    Ubuntu:

    sudo apt-get install socat

    RHEL/CentOS/Fedora:

    sudo dnf install socat

  • Append console parameters for bare metal PXE boot in the Bare Metal service configuration file. See the reference on how to configure them in Appending kernel parameters to boot instances.

  • Enable the ipmitool-socat console interface, for example:

    [DEFAULT]
enabled_console_interfaces = ipmitool-socat,no-console

  • Configure node console.

    If the node uses a hardware type, for example ipmi, set the node’s console interface to ipmitool-socat:

    baremetal node set <node> --console-interface ipmitool-socat

    Enable the serial console, for example:

    baremetal node set <node> --driver-info ipmi_terminal_port=<port>
baremetal node console enable <node>

    Check whether the serial console is enabled, for example:

    baremetal node validate <node>

    Disable the serial console, for example:

    baremetal node console disable  <node>
baremetal node unset <node> --driver-info <ipmi_terminal_port>

Serial console information is available from the Bare Metal service. Get serial console information for a node from the Bare Metal service as follows:

baremetal node console show <node>
+-----------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Property        | Value                                                                |
+-----------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| console_enabled | True                                                                 |
| console_info    | {u'url': u'tcp://<host>:<port>', u'type': u'socat'}                  |
+-----------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------+

If console_enabled is false or console_info is None then the serial console is disabled. If you want to launch serial console, see the Configure node console.

The node serial console of the Bare Metal service is compatible with the serial console of the Compute service. Hence, serial consoles to Bare Metal nodes can be seen and interacted with via the Dashboard service. In order to achieve that, you need to follow the documentation for Serial Console from the Compute service.

Configuring HA

When using Bare Metal serial console under High Availability (HA) configuration, you may consider some settings below.

  • If you use HAProxy, you may need to set the timeout for both client and server sides with appropriate values. Here is an example of the configuration for the timeout parameter.

    frontend nova_serial_console
  bind 192.168.20.30:6083
  timeout client 10m  # This parameter is necessary
  use_backend nova_serial_console if <...>

backend nova_serial_console
  balance source
  timeout server 10m  # This parameter is necessary
  option  tcpka
  option  tcplog
  server  controller01 192.168.30.11:6083 check inter 2000 rise 2 fall 5
  server  controller02 192.168.30.12:6083 check inter 2000 rise 2 fall 5

  • The Compute service’s caching feature may need to be enabled in order to make the Bare Metal serial console work under a HA configuration. Here is an example of a caching configuration in nova.conf.

    [cache]
enabled = true
backend = dogpile.cache.memcached
memcache_servers = memcache01:11211,memcache02:11211,memcache03:11211