Configure tenant networks

Below is an example flow of how to set up the Bare Metal service so that node provisioning will happen in a multi-tenant environment (which means using the neutron network interface as stated above):

  1. Network interfaces can be enabled on ironic-conductor by adding them to the enabled_network_interfaces configuration option under the default section of the configuration file:

    [DEFAULT]
...
enabled_network_interfaces=noop,flat,neutron

    Keep in mind that, ideally, all ironic-conductors should have the same list of enabled network interfaces, but it may not be the case during ironic-conductor upgrades. This may cause problems if one of the ironic-conductors dies and some node that is taken over is mapped to an ironic-conductor that does not support the node’s network interface. Any actions that involve calling the node’s driver will fail until that network interface is installed and enabled on that ironic-conductor.

  2. It is recommended to set the default network interface via the default_network_interface configuration option under the default section of the configuration file:

    [DEFAULT]
...
default_network_interface=neutron

    This default value will be used for all nodes that don’t have a network interface explicitly specified in the creation request.

    If this configuration option is not set, the default network interface is determined by looking at the dhcp.dhcp_provider configuration option value. If it is neutron, then flat network interface becomes the default, otherwise noop is the default.

  3. Define a provider network in the Networking service, which we shall refer to as the “provisioning” network. Using the neutron network interface requires that provisioning_network and cleaning_network configuration options are set to valid identifiers (UUID or name) of networks in the Networking service. If these options are not set correctly, cleaning or provisioning will fail to start. There are two ways to set these values:

    • Under the neutron section of ironic configuration file:

      [neutron]
cleaning_network = $CLEAN_UUID_OR_NAME
provisioning_network = $PROVISION_UUID_OR_NAME

    • Under provisioning_network and cleaning_network keys of the node’s driver_info field as driver_info['provisioning_network'] and driver_info['cleaning_network'] respectively.

    Note

    If these provisioning_network and cleaning_network values are not specified in node’s driver_info then ironic falls back to the configuration in the neutron section.

    Please refer to Configure the Bare Metal service for cleaning for more information about cleaning.

    Warning

    Please make sure that the Bare Metal service has exclusive access to the provisioning and cleaning networks. Spawning instances by non-admin users in these networks and getting access to the Bare Metal service’s control plane is a security risk. For this reason, the provisioning and cleaning networks should be configured as non-shared networks in the admin tenant.

    Note

    When using the flat network interface, bare metal instances are normally spawned onto the “provisioning” network. This is not supported with the neutron interface and the deployment will fail. Please ensure a different network is chosen in the Networking service when a bare metal instance is booted from the Compute service.

    Note

    The “provisioning” and “cleaning” networks may be the same network or distinct networks. To ensure that communication between the Bare Metal service and the deploy ramdisk works, it is important to ensure that security groups are disabled for these networks, or that the default security groups allow:

    • DHCP

    • TFTP

    • egress port used for the Bare Metal service (6385 by default)

    • ingress port used for ironic-python-agent (9999 by default)

    • if using Direct deploy, the egress port used for the Object Storage service or the local HTTP server (typically 80 or 443)

    • if using iPXE, the egress port used for the HTTP server running on the ironic-conductor nodes (typically 80).

  4. This step is optional and applicable only if you want to use security groups during provisioning and/or cleaning of the nodes. If not specified, default security groups are used.

    1. Define security groups in the Networking service, to be used for provisioning and/or cleaning networks.

    2. Add the list of these security group UUIDs under the neutron section of ironic-conductor’s configuration file as shown below:

      [neutron]
...
cleaning_network=$CLEAN_UUID_OR_NAME
cleaning_network_security_groups=[$LIST_OF_CLEAN_SECURITY_GROUPS]
provisioning_network=$PROVISION_UUID_OR_NAME
provisioning_network_security_groups=[$LIST_OF_PROVISION_SECURITY_GROUPS]

      Multiple security groups may be applied to a given network, hence, they are specified as a list. The same security group(s) could be used for both provisioning and cleaning networks.

    Warning

    If security groups are configured as described above, do not set the “port_security_enabled” flag to False for the corresponding Networking service’s network or port. This will cause the deploy to fail.

    For example: if provisioning_network_security_groups configuration option is used, ensure that “port_security_enabled” flag for the provisioning network is set to True. This flag is set to True by default; make sure not to override it by manually setting it to False.

  5. Install and configure a compatible ML2 mechanism driver which supports bare metal provisioning for your switch. See ML2 plugin configuration manual for details.

  6. Restart the ironic-conductor and ironic-api services after the modifications:

    • Fedora/RHEL8/CentOS8:

      sudo systemctl restart openstack-ironic-api
sudo systemctl restart openstack-ironic-conductor

    • Ubuntu:

      sudo service ironic-api restart
sudo service ironic-conductor restart

  7. Make sure that the ironic-conductor is reachable over the provisioning network by trying to download a file from a TFTP server on it, from some non-control-plane server in that network:

    tftp $TFTP_IP -c get $FILENAME

    where FILENAME is the file located at the TFTP server.

See Networking with the Bare Metal service for required node configuration.