Intel IPMI driver

Overview

The intel-ipmi hardware type is same as the IPMI driver hardware type except for the support of Intel Speed Select Performance Profile (Intel SST-PP) feature. Intel SST-PP allows a server to run different workloads by configuring the CPU to run at 3 distinct operating points or profiles.

Intel SST-PP supports three configuration levels:

  • 0 - Intel SST-PP Base Config

  • 1 - Intel SST-PP Config 1

  • 2 - Intel SST-PP Config 2

The following table shows the list of active cores and their base frequency at different SST-PP config levels:

Config

Cores

Base Freq (GHz)

Base

24

2.4

Config 1

20

2.5

Config 2

16

2.7

This configuration is managed by the management interface intel-ipmitool for IntelIPMI hardware.

IntelIPMI manages nodes by using IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) protocol versions 2.0 or 1.5. It uses the IPMItool utility which is an open-source command-line interface (CLI) for controlling IPMI-enabled devices.

Glossary

  • IPMI - Intelligent Platform Management Interface.

  • Intel SST-PP - Intel Speed Select Performance Profile.

Enabling the IntelIPMI hardware type

Please see Configuring IPMI support for the required dependencies.

  1. To enable intel-ipmi hardware, add the following configuration to your ironic.conf:

    [DEFAULT]
enabled_hardware_types = intel-ipmi
enabled_management_interfaces = intel-ipmitool

  2. Restart the Ironic conductor service:

    sudo service ironic-conductor restart

# Or, for RDO:
sudo systemctl restart openstack-ironic-conductor

Registering a node with the IntelIPMI driver

Nodes configured to use the IntelIPMI drivers should have the driver field set to intel-ipmi.

All the configuration value required for IntelIPMI is the same as the IPMI hardware type except the management interface which is intel-ipmitool. Refer IPMI driver for details.

The openstack baremetal node create command can be used to enroll a node with an IntelIPMI driver. For example:

openstack baremetal node create --driver intel-ipmi \
    --driver-info ipmi_address=<address> \
    --driver-info ipmi_username=<username> \
    --driver-info ipmi_password=<password>

Features of the intel-ipmi hardware type

Intel SST-PP

A node with Intel SST-PP can be configured to use it via configure_intel_speedselect deploy step. This deploy accepts:

  • intel_speedselect_config: Hexadecimal code of Intel SST-PP configuration. Accepted values are ‘0x00’, ‘0x01’, ‘0x02’. These values correspond to Intel SST-PP Config Base, Intel SST-PP Config 1, Intel SST-PP Config 2 respectively. The input value must be a string.

  • socket_count: Number of sockets in the node. The input value must be a positive integer (1 by default).

The deploy step issues an IPMI command with the raw code for each socket in the node to set the requested configuration. A reboot is required to reflect the changes.

Each configuration profile is mapped to traits that Ironic understands. Please note that these names are used for example purpose only. Any name can be used. Only the parameter value should match the deploy step configure_intel_speedselect.

  • 0 - CUSTOM_INTEL_SPEED_SELECT_CONFIG_BASE

  • 1 - CUSTOM_INTEL_SPEED_SELECT_CONFIG_1

  • 2 - CUSTOM_INTEL_SPEED_SELECT_CONFIG_2

Now to configure a node with Intel SST-PP while provisioning, create deploy templates for each profiles in Ironic.

openstack baremetal deploy template create \
   CUSTOM_INTEL_SPEED_SELECT_CONFIG_BASE \
   --steps '[{"interface": "management", "step": "configure_intel_speedselect", "args": {"intel_speedselect_config": "0x00", "socket_count": 2}, "priority": 150}]'

openstack baremetal deploy template create \
    CUSTOM_INTEL_SPEED_SELECT_CONFIG_1 \
    --steps '[{"interface": "management", "step": "configure_intel_speedselect", "args": {"intel_speedselect_config": "0x01", "socket_count": 2}, "priority": 150}]'

openstack baremetal deploy template create \
   CUSTOM_INTEL_SPEED_SELECT_CONFIG_2 \
   --steps '[{"interface": "management", "step": "configure_intel_speedselect", "args": {"intel_speedselect_config": "0x02", "socket_count": 2}, "priority": 150}]'

All Intel SST-PP capable nodes should have these traits associated.

openstack baremetal node add trait node-0 \
   CUSTOM_INTEL_SPEED_SELECT_CONFIG_BASE \
   CUSTOM_INTEL_SPEED_SELECT_CONFIG_1 \
   CUSTOM_INTEL_SPEED_SELECT_CONFIG_2

To trigger the Intel SST-PP configuration during node provisioning, one of the traits can be added to the flavor.

openstack flavor set baremetal --property trait:CUSTOM_INTEL_SPEED_SELECT_CONFIG_1=required

Finally create a server with baremetal flavor to provision a baremetal node with Intel SST-PP profile Config 1.