Upgrading to Hardware Types

Starting with the Rocky release, the Bare Metal service does not support classic drivers any more. If you still use classic drivers, please upgrade to hardware types immediately. Please see Enabling drivers and hardware types for details on hardware types and hardware interfaces.

Planning the upgrade

It is necessary to figure out which hardware types and hardware interfaces correspond to which classic drivers used in your deployment. The following table lists the classic drivers with their corresponding hardware types and the boot, deploy, inspect, management, and power hardware interfaces:

Classic Driver	Hardware Type	Boot	Deploy	Inspect	Management	Power
agent_ilo	ilo	ilo-virtual-media	direct	ilo	ilo	ilo
agent_ipmitool	ipmi	pxe	direct	inspector	ipmitool	ipmitool
agent_ipmitool_socat	ipmi	pxe	direct	inspector	ipmitool	ipmitool
agent_irmc	irmc	irmc-virtual-media	direct	irmc	irmc	irmc
iscsi_ilo	ilo	ilo-virtual-media	iscsi	ilo	ilo	ilo
iscsi_irmc	irmc	irmc-virtual-media	iscsi	irmc	irmc	irmc
pxe_drac	idrac	pxe	iscsi	idrac	idrac	idrac
pxe_drac_inspector	idrac	pxe	iscsi	inspector	idrac	idrac
pxe_ilo	ilo	ilo-pxe	iscsi	ilo	ilo	ilo
pxe_ipmitool	ipmi	pxe	iscsi	inspector	ipmitool	ipmitool
pxe_ipmitool_socat	ipmi	pxe	iscsi	inspector	ipmitool	ipmitool
pxe_irmc	irmc	irmc-pxe	iscsi	irmc	irmc	irmc
pxe_snmp	snmp	pxe	iscsi	no-inspect	fake	snmp

Note

The inspector inspect interface was only used if explicitly enabled in the configuration. Otherwise, no-inspect was used.

Note

pxe_ipmitool_socat and agent_ipmitool_socat use ipmitool-socat console interface (the default for the ipmi hardware type), while pxe_ipmitool and agent_ipmitool use ipmitool-shellinabox. See Console for details.

For out-of-tree drivers you may need to reach out to their maintainers or figure out the appropriate interfaces by researching the source code.

Configuration

You will need to enable hardware types and interfaces that correspond to your currently enabled classic drivers. For example, if you have the following configuration in your ironic.conf:

[DEFAULT]
enabled_drivers = pxe_ipmitool,agent_ipmitool

You will have to add this configuration as well:

[DEFAULT]
enabled_hardware_types = ipmi
enabled_boot_interfaces = pxe
enabled_deploy_interfaces = iscsi,direct
enabled_management_interfaces = ipmitool
enabled_power_interfaces = ipmitool

Note

For every interface type there is an option default_<INTERFACE>_interface, where <INTERFACE> is the interface type name. For example, one can make all nodes use the direct deploy method by default by setting:

[DEFAULT]
default_deploy_interface = direct

Migrating nodes

After the required items are enabled in the configuration, each node’s driver field has to be updated to a new value. You may need to also set new values for some or all interfaces:

export OS_BAREMETAL_API_VERSION=1.31

for uuid in $(baremetal node list --driver pxe_ipmitool -f value -c UUID); do
    baremetal node set <node> --driver ipmi --deploy-interface iscsi
done

for uuid in $(baremetal node list --driver agent_ipmitool -f value -c UUID); do
    baremetal node set <node> --driver ipmi --deploy-interface direct
done

See Enrolling hardware with Ironic for more details on setting hardware types and interfaces.

Warning

It is not recommended to change the interfaces for active nodes. If absolutely needed, the nodes have to be put in the maintenance mode first:

baremetal node maintenance set $UUID \
    --reason "Changing driver and/or hardware interfaces"
# do the update, validate its correctness
baremetal node maintenance unset $UUID

Other interfaces

Care has to be taken to migrate from classic drivers using non-default interfaces. This chapter covers a few of the most commonly used.

Ironic Inspector

Some classic drivers, notably pxe_ipmitool, agent_ipmitool and pxe_drac_inspector, use ironic-inspector for their inspect interface.

The same functionality is available for all hardware types, but the appropriate inspect interface has to be enabled in the Bare Metal service configuration file, for example:

[DEFAULT]
enabled_inspect_interfaces = inspector,no-inspect

See Enabling drivers and hardware types for more details.

Then you can tell your nodes to use this interface, for example:

export OS_BAREMETAL_API_VERSION=1.31
for uuid in $(baremetal node list --driver ipmi -f value -c UUID); do
    baremetal node set <node> --inspect-interface inspector
done

Note

A node configured with the IPMI hardware type, will use the inspector inspection implementation automatically if it is enabled. This is not the case for the most of the vendor drivers.

Console

Several classic drivers, notably pxe_ipmitool_socat and agent_ipmitool_socat, use socat-based serial console implementation.

For the ipmi hardware type it is used by default, if enabled in the configuration file:

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

If you want to use the shellinabox implementation instead, it has to be enabled as well:

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

Then you need to update some or all nodes to use it explicitly. For example, to update all nodes use:

export OS_BAREMETAL_API_VERSION=1.31
for uuid in $(baremetal node list --driver ipmi -f value -c UUID); do
    baremetal node set <node> --console-interface ipmitool-shellinabox
done

RAID

Many classic drivers, including pxe_ipmitool and agent_ipmitool use the IPA-based in-band RAID implementation by default.

For the hardware types it is not used by default. To use it, you need to enable it in the configuration first:

[DEFAULT]
enabled_raid_interfaces = agent,no-raid

Then you can update those nodes that support in-band RAID to use the agent RAID interface. For example, to update all nodes use:

export OS_BAREMETAL_API_VERSION=1.31
for uuid in $(baremetal node list --driver ipmi -f value -c UUID); do
    baremetal node set <node> --raid-interface agent
done

Note

The ability of a node to use the agent RAID interface depends on the ramdisk (more specifically, a hardware manager used in it), not on the driver.

Network and storage

The network and storage interfaces have always been dynamic, and thus do not require any special treatment during upgrade.

Vendor

Classic drivers are allowed to use the VendorMixin functionality to combine and expose several node or driver vendor passthru methods from different vendor interface implementations in one driver.

This is no longer possible with hardware types.

With hardware types, a vendor interface can only have a single active implementation from the list of vendor interfaces supported by a given hardware type.

Ironic no longer has in-tree drivers (both classic and hardware types) that rely on this VendorMixin functionality support. However if you are using an out-of-tree classic driver that depends on it, you’ll need to do the following in order to use vendor passthru methods from different vendor passthru implementations:

1. While creating a new hardware type to replace your classic driver, specify all vendor interface implementations your classic driver was using to build its VendorMixin as supported vendor interfaces (property supported_vendor_interfaces of the Python class that defines your hardware type).

2. Ensure all required vendor interfaces are enabled in the ironic configuration file under the DEFAULT.enabled_vendor_interfaces option. You should also consider setting the DEFAULT.default_vendor_interface option to specify the vendor interface for nodes that do not have one set explicitly.

3. Before invoking a specific vendor passthru method, make sure that the node’s vendor interface is set to the interface with the desired vendor passthru method. For example, if you want to invoke the vendor passthru method vendor_method_foo() from vendor_foo vendor interface:

   # set the vendor interface to 'vendor_foo`
   baremetal node set <node> --vendor-interface vendor_foo
   
   # invoke the vendor passthru method
   baremetal node passthru call <node> vendor_method_foo