iLO driver

Overview

iLO driver enables to take advantage of features of iLO management engine in HPE ProLiant servers. The ilo hardware type is targeted for HPE ProLiant Gen8 and Gen9 systems which have iLO 4 management engine. From Pike release ilo hardware type supports ProLiant Gen10 systems which have iLO 5 management engine. iLO5 conforms to Redfish API and hence hardware type redfish (see Redfish driver) is also an option for this kind of hardware but it lacks the iLO specific features.

For more details and for up-to-date information (like tested platforms, known issues, etc), please check the iLO driver wiki page.

For enabling Gen10 systems and getting detailed information on Gen10 feature support in Ironic please check this Gen10 wiki section.

Hardware type

ProLiant hardware is primarily supported by the ilo hardware type. ilo5 hardware type is only supported on ProLiant Gen10 and later systems. Both hardware can be used with reference hardware type ipmi (see IPMI driver) and redfish (see Redfish driver). For information on how to enable the ilo and ilo5 hardware type, see Enabling hardware types.

Note

Only HPE ProLiant Gen10 servers supports hardware type redfish.

Warning

It is important to note that while the HPE Edgeline series of servers may contain iLO adapters, they are known to not be compatible with the ilo hardware type. The redfish hardware type should be used instead.

The hardware type ilo supports following HPE server features:

• Boot mode support

• UEFI Secure Boot Support

• Node Cleaning Support

• Node Deployment Customization

• Hardware Inspection Support

• Swiftless deploy for intermediate images

• HTTP(S) Based Deploy Support

• Support for iLO driver with Standalone Ironic

• RAID Support

• Disk Erase Support

• Initiating firmware update as manual clean step

• Smart Update Manager (SUM) based firmware update

• Updating security parameters as manual clean step

• Update Minimum Password Length security parameter as manual clean step

• Update Authentication Failure Logging security parameter as manual clean step

• Activating iLO Advanced license as manual clean step

• Removing CA certificates from iLO as manual clean step

• Firmware based UEFI iSCSI boot from volume support

• Certificate based validation in iLO

• Rescue mode support

• Inject NMI support

• Soft power operation support

• BIOS configuration support

• IPv6 support

• Layer 3 or DHCP-less ramdisk booting

Apart from above features hardware type ilo5 also supports following features:

• Out of Band RAID Support

• Out of Band Sanitize Disk Erase Support

• Out of Band One Button Secure Erase Support

• UEFI-HTTPS Boot support

Hardware interfaces

The ilo hardware type supports following hardware interfaces:

• bios

  Supports ilo and no-bios. The default is ilo. They can be enabled by using the [DEFAULT]enabled_bios_interfaces option in ironic.conf as given below:

  [DEFAULT]
  enabled_hardware_types = ilo
  enabled_bios_interfaces = ilo,no-bios
  

• boot

  Supports ilo-virtual-media, ilo-pxe and ilo-ipxe. The default is ilo-virtual-media. The ilo-virtual-media interface provides security enhanced PXE-less deployment by using iLO virtual media to boot up the bare metal node. The ilo-pxe and ilo-ipxe interfaces use PXE and iPXE respectively for deployment(just like PXE boot). These interfaces do not require iLO Advanced license. They can be enabled by using the [DEFAULT]enabled_boot_interfaces option in ironic.conf as given below:

  [DEFAULT]
  enabled_hardware_types = ilo
  enabled_boot_interfaces = ilo-virtual-media,ilo-pxe,ilo-ipxe
  

• console

  Supports ilo and no-console. The default is ilo. They can be enabled by using the [DEFAULT]enabled_console_interfaces option in ironic.conf as given below:

  [DEFAULT]
  enabled_hardware_types = ilo
  enabled_console_interfaces = ilo,no-console
  

  Note

  To use ilo console interface you need to enable iLO feature ‘IPMI/DCMI over LAN Access’ on iLO4 and iLO5 management engine.

• inspect

  Supports ilo and inspector. The default is ilo. They can be enabled by using the [DEFAULT]enabled_inspect_interfaces option in ironic.conf as given below:

  [DEFAULT]
  enabled_hardware_types = ilo
  enabled_inspect_interfaces = ilo,inspector
  

  Note

  Ironic Inspector needs to be configured to use inspector as the inspect interface.

• management

  Supports only ilo. It can be enabled by using the [DEFAULT]enabled_management_interfaces option in ironic.conf as given below:

  [DEFAULT]
  enabled_hardware_types = ilo
  enabled_management_interfaces = ilo
  

• power

  Supports only ilo. It can be enabled by using the [DEFAULT]enabled_power_interfaces option in ironic.conf as given below:

  [DEFAULT]
  enabled_hardware_types = ilo
  enabled_power_interfaces = ilo
  

• raid

  Supports agent and no-raid. The default is no-raid. They can be enabled by using the [DEFAULT]enabled_raid_interfaces option in ironic.conf as given below:

  [DEFAULT]
  enabled_hardware_types = ilo
  enabled_raid_interfaces = agent,no-raid
  

• storage

  Supports cinder and noop. The default is noop. They can be enabled by using the [DEFAULT]enabled_storage_interfaces option in ironic.conf as given below:

  [DEFAULT]
  enabled_hardware_types = ilo
  enabled_storage_interfaces = cinder,noop
  

  Note

  The storage interface cinder is supported only when corresponding boot interface of the ilo hardware type based node is ilo-pxe or ilo-ipxe. Please refer to Boot From Volume for configuring cinder as a storage interface.

• rescue

  Supports agent and no-rescue. The default is no-rescue. They can be enabled by using the [DEFAULT]enabled_rescue_interfaces option in ironic.conf as given below:

  [DEFAULT]
  enabled_hardware_types = ilo
  enabled_rescue_interfaces = agent,no-rescue
  

The ilo5 hardware type supports all the ilo interfaces described above, except for boot and raid interfaces. The details of boot and raid interfaces is as under:

• raid

  Supports ilo5 and no-raid. The default is ilo5. They can be enabled by using the [DEFAULT]enabled_raid_interfaces option in ironic.conf as given below:

  [DEFAULT]
  enabled_hardware_types = ilo5
  enabled_raid_interfaces = ilo5,no-raid
  

• boot

  Supports ilo-uefi-https apart from the other boot interfaces supported by ilo hardware type. This can be enabled by using the [DEFAULT]enabled_boot_interfaces option in ironic.conf as given below:

  [DEFAULT]
  enabled_hardware_types = ilo5
  enabled_boot_interfaces = ilo-uefi-https,ilo-virtual-media
  

The ilo and ilo5 hardware type support all standard deploy and network interface implementations, see Enabling hardware interfaces for details.

The following command can be used to enroll a ProLiant node with ilo hardware type:

baremetal node create \
    --driver ilo \
    --deploy-interface direct \
    --raid-interface agent \
    --rescue-interface agent \
    --driver-info ilo_address=<ilo-ip-address> \
    --driver-info ilo_username=<ilo-username> \
    --driver-info ilo_password=<ilo-password> \
    --driver-info deploy_iso=<glance-uuid-of-deploy-iso> \
    --driver-info rescue_iso=<glance-uuid-of-rescue-iso>

Note

The fields deploy_iso and rescue_iso used to be called ilo_deploy_iso and ilo_rescue_iso before the Xena release.

The following command can be used to enroll a ProLiant node with ilo5 hardware type:

baremetal node create \
    --driver ilo5 \
    --deploy-interface direct \
    --raid-interface ilo5 \
    --rescue-interface agent \
    --driver-info ilo_address=<ilo-ip-address> \
    --driver-info ilo_username=<ilo-username> \
    --driver-info ilo_password=<ilo-password> \
    --driver-info deploy_iso=<glance-uuid-of-deploy-iso> \
    --driver-info rescue_iso=<glance-uuid-of-rescue-iso>

Please refer to Enabling drivers and hardware types for detailed explanation of hardware type.

Node configuration

• Each node is configured for ilo and ilo5 hardware type by setting the following ironic node object’s properties in driver_info:

  • ilo_address: IP address or hostname of the iLO.

  • ilo_username: Username for the iLO with administrator privileges.

  • ilo_password: Password for the above iLO user.

  • client_port: (optional) Port to be used for iLO operations if you are using a custom port on the iLO. Default port used is 443.

  • client_timeout: (optional) Timeout for iLO operations. Default timeout is 60 seconds.

  • ca_file: (optional) CA certificate file to validate iLO.

  • console_port: (optional) Node’s UDP port for console access. Any unused port on the ironic conductor node may be used. This is required only when ilo-console interface is used.

• The following properties are also required in node object’s driver_info if ilo-virtual-media boot interface is used:

  • deploy_iso: The glance UUID of the deploy ramdisk ISO image.

  • instance info/boot_iso property to be either boot iso Glance UUID or a HTTP(S) URL. This is optional property and is used when boot_option is set to netboot or ramdisk.

    Note

    When boot_option is set to ramdisk, the ironic node must be configured to use ramdisk deploy interface. See Ramdisk deploy for details.

    Note

    The boot_iso property used to be called ilo_boot_iso before the Xena release.

  • rescue_iso: The glance UUID of the rescue ISO image. This is optional property and is used when rescue interface is set to agent.

• The following properties are also required in node object’s driver_info if ilo-pxe or ilo-ipxe boot interface is used:

  • deploy_kernel: The glance UUID or a HTTP(S) URL of the deployment kernel.

  • deploy_ramdisk: The glance UUID or a HTTP(S) URL of the deployment ramdisk.

  • rescue_kernel: The glance UUID or a HTTP(S) URL of the rescue kernel. This is optional property and is used when rescue interface is set to agent.

  • rescue_ramdisk: The glance UUID or a HTTP(S) URL of the rescue ramdisk. This is optional property and is used when rescue interface is set to agent.

• The following properties are also required in node object’s driver_info if ilo-uefi-https boot interface is used for ilo5 hardware type:

  • deploy_kernel: The glance UUID or a HTTPS URL of the deployment kernel.

  • deploy_ramdisk: The glance UUID or a HTTPS URL of the deployment ramdisk.

  • bootloader: The glance UUID or a HTTPS URL of the bootloader.

  • rescue_kernel: The glance UUID or a HTTPS URL of the rescue kernel. This is optional property and is used when rescue interface is set to agent.

  • rescue_ramdisk: The glance UUID or a HTTP(S) URL of the rescue ramdisk. This is optional property and is used when rescue interface is set to agent.

  Note

  ilo-uefi-https boot interface is supported by only ilo5 hardware type. If the images are not hosted in glance, the references must be HTTPS URLs hosted by secure webserver. This boot interface can be used only when the current boot mode is UEFI.

  Note

  The fields deploy_kernel, deploy_ramdisk, rescue_kernel rescue_ramdisk and bootloader used to have an ilo_ prefix before the Xena release.

• The following parameters are mandatory in driver_info if ilo-inspect inspect inteface is used and SNMPv3 inspection (SNMPv3 Authentication in HPE iLO4 User Guide) is desired:

  • snmp_auth_user : The SNMPv3 user.

  • snmp_auth_prot_password : The auth protocol pass phrase.

  • snmp_auth_priv_password : The privacy protocol pass phrase.

  The following parameters are optional for SNMPv3 inspection:

  • snmp_auth_protocol : The Auth Protocol. The valid values are “MD5” and “SHA”. The iLO default value is “MD5”.

  • snmp_auth_priv_protocol : The Privacy protocol. The valid values are “AES” and “DES”. The iLO default value is “DES”.

Note

If configuration values for ca_file, client_port and client_timeout are not provided in the driver_info of the node, the corresponding config variables defined under [ilo] section in ironic.conf will be used.

Prerequisites

• proliantutils is a python package which contains a set of modules for managing HPE ProLiant hardware.

  Install proliantutils module on the ironic conductor node. Minimum version required is 2.8.0:

  $ pip install "proliantutils>=2.8.0"
  

• ipmitool command must be present on the service node(s) where ironic-conductor is running. On most distros, this is provided as part of the ipmitool package. Please refer to Hardware Inspection Support for more information on recommended version.

Different configuration for ilo hardware type

Glance Configuration

1. Configure Glance image service with its storage backend as Swift.

2. Set a temp-url key for Glance user in Swift. For example, if you have configured Glance with user glance-swift and tenant as service, then run the below command:

   swift --os-username=service:glance-swift post -m temp-url-key:mysecretkeyforglance
   

3. Fill the required parameters in the [glance] section in /etc/ironic/ironic.conf. Normally you would be required to fill in the following details:

   [glance]
   swift_temp_url_key=mysecretkeyforglance
   swift_endpoint_url=https://10.10.1.10:8080
   swift_api_version=v1
   swift_account=AUTH_51ea2fb400c34c9eb005ca945c0dc9e1
   swift_container=glance
   

   The details can be retrieved by running the below command:

   $ swift --os-username=service:glance-swift stat -v | grep -i url
   
   StorageURL:     http://10.10.1.10:8080/v1/AUTH_51ea2fb400c34c9eb005ca945c0dc9e1
   Meta Temp-Url-Key: mysecretkeyforglance
   

4. Swift must be accessible with the same admin credentials configured in Ironic. For example, if Ironic is configured with the below credentials in /etc/ironic/ironic.conf:

   [keystone_authtoken]
   admin_password = password
   admin_user = ironic
   admin_tenant_name = service
   

   Ensure auth_version in keystone_authtoken to 2.

   Then, the below command should work.:

   $ swift --os-username ironic --os-password password --os-tenant-name service --auth-version 2 stat
   
                        Account: AUTH_22af34365a104e4689c46400297f00cb
                     Containers: 2
                        Objects: 18
                          Bytes: 1728346241
   Objects in policy "policy-0": 18
     Bytes in policy "policy-0": 1728346241
              Meta Temp-Url-Key: mysecretkeyforglance
                    X-Timestamp: 1409763763.84427
                     X-Trans-Id: tx51de96a28f27401eb2833-005433924b
                   Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
                  Accept-Ranges: bytes
   

5. Restart the Ironic conductor service:

   $ service ironic-conductor restart
   

Web server configuration on conductor

• The HTTP(S) web server can be configured in many ways. For apache web server on Ubuntu, refer here

• Following config variables need to be set in /etc/ironic/ironic.conf:

  • use_web_server_for_images in [ilo] section:

    [ilo]
    use_web_server_for_images = True
    

  • http_url and http_root in [deploy] section:

    [deploy]
    # Ironic compute node's http root path. (string value)
    http_root=/httpboot
    
    # Ironic compute node's HTTP server URL. Example:
    # http://192.1.2.3:8080 (string value)
    http_url=http://192.168.0.2:8080
    

use_web_server_for_images: If the variable is set to false, the ilo-virtual-media boot interface uses swift containers to host the intermediate floppy image and the boot ISO. If the variable is set to true, it uses the local web server for hosting the intermediate files. The default value for use_web_server_for_images is False.

http_url: The value for this variable is prefixed with the generated intermediate files to generate a URL which is attached in the virtual media.

http_root: It is the directory location to which ironic conductor copies the intermediate floppy image and the boot ISO.

Note

HTTPS is strongly recommended over HTTP web server configuration for security enhancement. The ilo-virtual-media boot interface will send the instance’s configdrive over an encrypted channel if web server is HTTPS enabled. However for ilo-uefi-https boot interface HTTPS webserver is mandatory as this interface only supports HTTPS URLs.

Enable driver

1. Build a deploy ISO (and kernel and ramdisk) image, see Building or downloading a deploy ramdisk image

2. See Glance Configuration for configuring glance image service with its storage backend as swift.

3. Upload this image to Glance:

   glance image-create --name deploy-ramdisk.iso --disk-format iso --container-format bare < deploy-ramdisk.iso
   

4. Enable hardware type and hardware interfaces in /etc/ironic/ironic.conf:

   [DEFAULT]
   enabled_hardware_types = ilo
   enabled_bios_interfaces = ilo
   enabled_boot_interfaces = ilo-virtual-media,ilo-pxe,ilo-ipxe
   enabled_power_interfaces = ilo
   enabled_console_interfaces = ilo
   enabled_raid_interfaces = agent
   enabled_management_interfaces = ilo
   enabled_inspect_interfaces = ilo
   enabled_rescue_interfaces = agent
   

5. Restart the ironic conductor service:

   $ service ironic-conductor restart
   

Optional functionalities for the ilo hardware type

Boot mode support

The hardware type ilo supports automatic detection and setting of boot mode (Legacy BIOS or UEFI).

• When boot mode capability is not configured:

  • If config variable default_boot_mode in [ilo] section of ironic configuration file is set to either ‘bios’ or ‘uefi’, then iLO driver uses that boot mode for provisioning the baremetal ProLiant servers.

  • If the pending boot mode is set on the node then iLO driver uses that boot mode for provisioning the baremetal ProLiant servers.

  • If the pending boot mode is not set on the node then iLO driver uses ‘uefi’ boot mode for UEFI capable servers and “bios” when UEFI is not supported.

• When boot mode capability is configured, the driver sets the pending boot mode to the configured value.

• Only one boot mode (either uefi or bios) can be configured for the node.

• If the operator wants a node to boot always in uefi mode or bios mode, then they may use capabilities parameter within properties field of an ironic node.

  To configure a node in uefi mode, then set capabilities as below:

  baremetal node set <node> --property capabilities='boot_mode:uefi'
  

  Nodes having boot_mode set to uefi may be requested by adding an extra_spec to the nova flavor:

  nova flavor-key ironic-test-3 set capabilities:boot_mode="uefi"
  nova boot --flavor ironic-test-3 --image test-image instance-1
  

  If capabilities is used in extra_spec as above, nova scheduler (ComputeCapabilitiesFilter) will match only ironic nodes which have the boot_mode set appropriately in properties/capabilities. It will filter out rest of the nodes.

  The above facility for matching in nova can be used in heterogeneous environments where there is a mix of uefi and bios machines, and operator wants to provide a choice to the user regarding boot modes. If the flavor doesn’t contain boot_mode then nova scheduler will not consider boot mode as a placement criteria, hence user may get either a BIOS or UEFI machine that matches with user specified flavors.

The automatic boot ISO creation for UEFI boot mode has been enabled in Kilo. The manual creation of boot ISO for UEFI boot mode is also supported. For the latter, the boot ISO for the deploy image needs to be built separately and the deploy image’s boot_iso property in glance should contain the glance UUID of the boot ISO. For building boot ISO, add iso element to the diskimage-builder command to build the image. For example:

disk-image-create ubuntu baremetal iso

UEFI Secure Boot Support

The hardware type ilo supports secure boot deploy, see UEFI secure boot mode for details.

iLO specific notes:

In UEFI secure boot, digitally signed bootloader should be able to validate digital signatures of kernel during boot process. This requires that the bootloader contains the digital signatures of the kernel. For the ilo-virtual-media boot interface, it is recommended that boot_iso property for user image contains the glance UUID of the boot ISO. If boot_iso property is not updated in glance for the user image, it would create the boot_iso using bootloader from the deploy iso. This boot_iso will be able to boot the user image in UEFI secure boot environment only if the bootloader is signed and can validate digital signatures of user image kernel.

For HPE ProLiant Gen9 servers, one can enroll public key using iLO System Utilities UI. Please refer to section Accessing Secure Boot options in HP UEFI System Utilities User Guide. One can also refer to white paper on Secure Boot for Linux on HP ProLiant servers for additional details.

For more up-to-date information, refer iLO driver wiki page

Node Cleaning Support

The hardware type ilo and ilo5 supports node cleaning.

For more information on node cleaning, see Node cleaning

Supported Automated Cleaning Operations

• The automated cleaning operations supported are:

  • reset_bios_to_default: Resets system ROM settings to default. By default, enabled with priority 10. This clean step is supported only on Gen9 and above servers.

  • reset_secure_boot_keys_to_default: Resets secure boot keys to manufacturer’s defaults. This step is supported only on Gen9 and above servers. By default, enabled with priority 20 .

  • reset_ilo_credential: Resets the iLO password, if ilo_change_password is specified as part of node’s driver_info. By default, enabled with priority 30.

  • clear_secure_boot_keys: Clears all secure boot keys. This step is supported only on Gen9 and above servers. By default, this step is disabled.

  • reset_ilo: Resets the iLO. By default, this step is disabled.

  • erase_devices: An inband clean step that performs disk erase on all the disks including the disks visible to OS as well as the raw disks visible to Smart Storage Administrator (SSA). This step supports erasing of the raw disks visible to SSA in Proliant servers only with the ramdisk created using diskimage-builder from Ocata release. By default, this step is disabled. See Disk Erase Support for more details.

• For supported in-band cleaning operations, see In-band vs out-of-band.

• All the automated cleaning steps have an explicit configuration option for priority. In order to disable or change the priority of the automated clean steps, respective configuration option for priority should be updated in ironic.conf.

• Updating clean step priority to 0, will disable that particular clean step and will not run during automated cleaning.

• Configuration Options for the automated clean steps are listed under [ilo] and [deploy] section in ironic.conf

  [ilo]
  clean_priority_reset_ilo=0
  clean_priority_reset_bios_to_default=10
  clean_priority_reset_secure_boot_keys_to_default=20
  clean_priority_clear_secure_boot_keys=0
  clean_priority_reset_ilo_credential=30
  
  [deploy]
  erase_devices_priority=0
  

For more information on node automated cleaning, see Automated cleaning

Supported Manual Cleaning Operations

• The manual cleaning operations supported are:

  activate_license:

  Activates the iLO Advanced license. This is an out-of-band manual cleaning step associated with the management interface. See Activating iLO Advanced license as manual clean step for user guidance on usage. Please note that this operation cannot be performed using the ilo-virtual-media boot interface as it needs this type of advanced license already active to use virtual media to boot into to start cleaning operation. Virtual media is an advanced feature. If an advanced license is already active and the user wants to overwrite the current license key, for example in case of a multi-server activation key delivered with a flexible-quantity kit or after completing an Activation Key Agreement (AKA), then the driver can still be used for executing this cleaning step.

  clear_ca_certificates:

  Removes the CA certificates from iLO. See Removing CA certificates from iLO as manual clean step for user guidance on usage.

  apply_configuration:

  Applies given BIOS settings on the node. See BIOS configuration support. This step is part of the bios interface.

  factory_reset:

  Resets the BIOS settings on the node to factory defaults. See BIOS configuration support. This step is part of the bios interface.

  create_configuration:

  Applies RAID configuration on the node. See RAID Configuration for more information. This step is part of the raid interface.

  delete_configuration:

  Deletes RAID configuration on the node. See RAID Configuration for more information. This step is part of the raid interface.

  update_firmware:

  Updates the firmware of the devices. Also an out-of-band step associated with the management interface. See Initiating firmware update as manual clean step for user guidance on usage. The supported devices for firmware update are: ilo, cpld, power_pic, bios and chassis. Please refer to below table for their commonly used descriptions.

  Device	Description
  ilo	BMC for HPE ProLiant servers
  cpld	System programmable logic device
  power_pic	Power management controller
  bios	HPE ProLiant System ROM
  chassis	System chassis device

  Some devices firmware cannot be updated via this method, such as: storage controllers, host bus adapters, disk drive firmware, network interfaces and Onboard Administrator (OA).

  update_firmware_sum:

  Updates all or list of user specified firmware components on the node using Smart Update Manager (SUM). It is an inband step associated with the management interface. See Smart Update Manager (SUM) based firmware update for more information on usage.

  security_parameters_update:

  Updates the Security Parameters. See Updating security parameters as manual clean step for user guidance on usage. The supported security parameters for this clean step are: Password_Complexity, RequiredLoginForiLORBSU, IPMI/DCMI_Over_LAN, RequireHostAuthentication and Secure_Boot.

  update_minimum_password_length:

  Updates the Minimum Password Length security parameter. See Update Minimum Password Length security parameter as manual clean step for user guidance on usage.

  update_auth_failure_logging_threshold:

  Updates the Authentication Failure Logging security parameter. See Update Authentication Failure Logging security parameter as manual clean step for user guidance on usage.

• iLO with firmware version 1.5 is minimally required to support all the operations.

For more information on node manual cleaning, see Manual cleaning

Node Deployment Customization

The hardware type ilo and ilo5 supports customization of node deployment via deploy templates, see Node Deployment.

The supported deploy steps are:

• apply_configuration:

  Applies given BIOS settings on the node. See BIOS configuration support. This step is part of the bios interface.

• factory_reset:

  Resets the BIOS settings on the node to factory defaults. See BIOS configuration support. This step is part of the bios interface.

• reset_bios_to_default:

  Resets system ROM settings to default. This step is supported only on Gen9 and above servers. This step is part of the management interface.

• reset_secure_boot_keys_to_default:

  Resets secure boot keys to manufacturer’s defaults. This step is supported only on Gen9 and above servers. This step is part of the management interface.

• reset_ilo_credential:

  Resets the iLO password. The password need to be specified in ilo_password argument of the step. This step is part of the management interface.

• clear_secure_boot_keys:

  Clears all secure boot keys. This step is supported only on Gen9 and above servers. This step is part of the management interface.

• reset_ilo:

  Resets the iLO. This step is part of the management interface.

• update_firmware:

  Updates the firmware of the devices. This step is part of the management interface. See Initiating firmware update as manual clean step for user guidance on usage. The supported devices for firmware update are: ilo, cpld, power_pic, bios and chassis. This step is part of management interface. Please refer to below table for their commonly used descriptions.

  Device	Description
  ilo	BMC for HPE ProLiant servers
  cpld	System programmable logic device
  power_pic	Power management controller
  bios	HPE ProLiant System ROM
  chassis	System chassis device

  Some devices firmware cannot be updated via this method, such as: storage controllers, host bus adapters, disk drive firmware, network interfaces and Onboard Administrator (OA).

• flash_firmware_sum:

  Updates all or list of user specified firmware components on the node using Smart Update Manager (SUM). It is an inband step associated with the management interface. See Smart Update Manager (SUM) based firmware update for more information on usage.

• apply_configuration:

  Applies RAID configuration on the node. See RAID Configuration for more information. This step is part of the raid interface.

Example of using deploy template with the Compute service

Create a deploy template with a single step:

baremetal deploy template create \
    CUSTOM_HYPERTHREADING_ON \
    --steps '[{"interface": "bios", "step": "apply_configuration", "args": {"settings": [{"name": "ProcHyperthreading", "value": "Enabled"}]}, "priority": 150}]'

Add the trait CUSTOM_HYPERTHREADING_ON to the node represented by $node_ident:

baremetal node add trait $node_ident CUSTOM_HYPERTHREADING_ON

Update the flavor bm-hyperthreading-on in the Compute service with the following property:

openstack flavor set --property trait:CUSTOM_HYPERTHREADING_ON=required bm-hyperthreading-on

Creating a Compute instance with this flavor will ensure that the instance is scheduled only to Bare Metal nodes with the CUSTOM_HYPERTHREADING_ON trait. When an instance is created using the bm-hyperthreading-on flavor, then the deploy steps of deploy template CUSTOM_HYPERTHREADING_ON will be executed during the deployment of the scheduled node, causing Hyperthreading to be enabled in the node’s BIOS configuration.

Hardware Inspection Support

The hardware type ilo supports hardware inspection.

Note

• The disk size is returned by RIBCL/RIS only when RAID is preconfigured on the storage. If the storage is Direct Attached Storage, then RIBCL/RIS fails to get the disk size.

• The SNMPv3 inspection gets disk size for all types of storages. If RIBCL/RIS is unable to get disk size and SNMPv3 inspection is requested, the proliantutils does SNMPv3 inspection to get the disk size. If proliantutils is unable to get the disk size, it raises an error. This feature is available in proliantutils release version >= 2.2.0.

• The iLO must be updated with SNMPv3 authentication details. Pleae refer to the section SNMPv3 Authentication in HPE iLO4 User Guide for setting up authentication details on iLO. The following parameters are mandatory to be given in driver_info for SNMPv3 inspection:

  • snmp_auth_user : The SNMPv3 user.

  • snmp_auth_prot_password : The auth protocol pass phrase.

  • snmp_auth_priv_password : The privacy protocol pass phrase.

  The following parameters are optional for SNMPv3 inspection:

  • snmp_auth_protocol : The Auth Protocol. The valid values are “MD5” and “SHA”. The iLO default value is “MD5”.

  • snmp_auth_priv_protocol : The Privacy protocol. The valid values are “AES” and “DES”. The iLO default value is “DES”.

The inspection process will discover the following essential properties (properties required for scheduling deployment):

• memory_mb: memory size

• cpus: number of cpus

• cpu_arch: cpu architecture

• local_gb: disk size

Inspection can also discover the following extra capabilities for iLO driver:

• ilo_firmware_version: iLO firmware version

• rom_firmware_version: ROM firmware version

• secure_boot: secure boot is supported or not. The possible values are ‘true’ or ‘false’. The value is returned as ‘true’ if secure boot is supported by the server.

• server_model: server model

• pci_gpu_devices: number of gpu devices connected to the bare metal.

• nic_capacity: the max speed of the embedded NIC adapter.

• sriov_enabled: true, if server has the SRIOV supporting NIC.

• has_rotational: true, if server has HDD disk.

• has_ssd: true, if server has SSD disk.

• has_nvme_ssd: true, if server has NVME SSD disk.

• cpu_vt: true, if server supports cpu virtualization.

• hardware_supports_raid: true, if RAID can be configured on the server using RAID controller.

• nvdimm_n: true, if server has NVDIMM_N type of persistent memory.

• persistent_memory: true, if server has persistent memory.

• logical_nvdimm_n: true, if server has logical NVDIMM_N configured.

• rotational_drive_<speed>_rpm: The capabilities rotational_drive_4800_rpm, rotational_drive_5400_rpm, rotational_drive_7200_rpm, rotational_drive_10000_rpm and rotational_drive_15000_rpm are set to true if the server has HDD drives with speed of 4800, 5400, 7200, 10000 and 15000 rpm respectively.

• logical_raid_level_<raid_level>: The capabilities logical_raid_level_0, logical_raid_level_1, logical_raid_level_2, logical_raid_level_5, logical_raid_level_6, logical_raid_level_10, logical_raid_level_50 and logical_raid_level_60 are set to true if any of the raid levels among 0, 1, 2, 5, 6, 10, 50 and 60 are configured on the system.

• overall_security_status: Ok or Risk or Ignored as returned by iLO security dashboard. iLO computes the overall security status by evaluating the security status for each of the security parameters. Admin needs to fix the actual parameters and then re-inspect so that iLO can recompute the overall security status. If the all security params, whose security_status is Risk, have the Ignore field set to True, then iLO sets the overall security status value as Ignored. All the security params must have the security_status as Ok for the overall_security_status to have the value as Ok.

• last_firmware_scan_status: Ok or Risk as returned by iLO security dashboard. This denotes security status of the last firmware scan done on the system. If it is Risk, the recommendation is to run clean_step update_firmware_sum without any specific firmware components so that firmware is updated for all the components using latest SPP (Service Provider Pack) ISO and then re-inspect to get the security status again.

• security_override_switch: Ok or Risk as returned by iLO security dashboard. This is disable/enable login to the iLO using credentials. This can be toggled only by physical visit to the bare metal.

• gpu_<vendor>_count: Integer value. The capability name is dynamically formed as gpu_<vendor>_count. The vendor name is replaced in the “<vendor>”. If the vendor name is not returned by the hardware, then vendor ID in hexadecimal form is replaced in the capability name. Examples: {‘gpu_Nvidia_count’: 1}, {‘gpu_0x102b_count’: 1}.

• gpu_<vendor_device_name>_count: Integer value. The capability name is formed dynamically by replacing the gpu device name as returned by ilo in “<vendor_device_name>”. Examples: {‘gpu_Nvidia_Tesla_M10_count’: 1}, {‘gpu_Embedded_Video_Controller_count’: 1}

• gpu_<vendor_device_name>: Boolean. The capability name is formed dynamically by replacing the gpu device name as returned by ilo in “<vendor_device_name>”. Examples: {‘gpu_Nvidia_Tesla_M10’: True}, {‘gpu_Embedded_Video_Controller’: True}

  Note

  • The capability nic_capacity can only be discovered if ipmitool version >= 1.8.15 is used on the conductor. The latest version can be downloaded from here.

  • The iLO firmware version needs to be 2.10 or above for nic_capacity to be discovered.

  • To discover IPMI based attributes you need to enable iLO feature ‘IPMI/DCMI over LAN Access’ on iLO4 and iLO5 management engine.

  • The proliantutils returns only active NICs for Gen10 ProLiant HPE servers. The user would need to delete the ironic ports corresponding to inactive NICs for Gen8 and Gen9 servers as proliantutils returns all the discovered (active and otherwise) NICs for Gen8 and Gen9 servers and ironic ports are created for all of them. Inspection logs a warning if the node under inspection is Gen8 or Gen9.

  • The security dashboard capabilities are applicable only for Gen10 ProLiant HPE servers and above. To fix the security dashboard parameters value from Risk to Ok, user need to fix the parameters separately and re-inspect to see the security status of the parameters.

The operator can specify these capabilities in nova flavor for node to be selected for scheduling:

nova flavor-key my-baremetal-flavor set capabilities:server_model="<in> Gen8"

nova flavor-key my-baremetal-flavor set capabilities:nic_capacity="10Gb"

nova flavor-key my-baremetal-flavor set capabilities:ilo_firmware_version="<in> 2.10"

nova flavor-key my-baremetal-flavor set capabilities:has_ssd="true"

See Capabilities discovery for more details and examples.

Swiftless deploy for intermediate images

The hardware type ilo with ilo-virtual-media as boot interface can deploy and boot the server with and without swift being used for hosting the intermediate temporary floppy image (holding metadata for deploy kernel and ramdisk) and the boot ISO. A local HTTP(S) web server on each conductor node needs to be configured. Please refer to Web server configuration on conductor for more information. The HTTPS web server needs to be enabled (instead of HTTP web server) in order to send management information and images in encrypted channel over HTTPS.

Note

This feature assumes that the user inputs are on Glance which uses swift as backend. If swift dependency has to be eliminated, please refer to HTTP(S) Based Deploy Support also.

Deploy Process

Please refer to Netboot in swiftless deploy for intermediate images for partition image support and Localboot in swiftless deploy for intermediate images for whole disk image support.

HTTP(S) Based Deploy Support

The user input for the images given in driver_info like deploy_iso, deploy_kernel and deploy_ramdisk and in instance_info like image_source, kernel, ramdisk and boot_iso may also be given as HTTP(S) URLs.

The HTTP(S) web server can be configured in many ways. For the Apache web server on Ubuntu, refer here. The web server may reside on a different system than the conductor nodes, but its URL must be reachable by the conductor and the bare metal nodes.

Deploy Process

Please refer to Netboot with HTTP(S) based deploy for partition image boot and Localboot with HTTP(S) based deploy for whole disk image boot.

Support for iLO driver with Standalone Ironic

It is possible to use ironic as standalone services without other OpenStack services. The ilo hardware type can be used in standalone ironic. This feature is referred to as iLO driver with standalone ironic in this document.

Configuration

The HTTP(S) web server needs to be configured as described in HTTP(S) Based Deploy Support and Web server configuration on conductor needs to be configured for hosting intermediate images on conductor as described in Swiftless deploy for intermediate images.

Deploy Process

Note

Network boot is deprecated and will be removed in the Zed release.

Netboot with glance and swift

Localboot with glance and swift for partition images

Localboot with glance and swift

Netboot in swiftless deploy for intermediate images

Localboot in swiftless deploy for intermediate images

Netboot with HTTP(S) based deploy

Localboot with HTTP(S) based deploy

Netboot in standalone ironic

Localboot in standalone ironic

Activating iLO Advanced license as manual clean step

iLO driver can activate the iLO Advanced license key as a manual cleaning step. Any manual cleaning step can only be initiated when a node is in the manageable state. Once the manual cleaning is finished, the node will be put in the manageable state again. User can follow steps from Manual cleaning to initiate manual cleaning operation on a node.

An example of a manual clean step with activate_license as the only clean step could be:

"clean_steps": [{
    "interface": "management",
    "step": "activate_license",
    "args": {
        "ilo_license_key": "ABC12-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-YZ345"
    }
}]

The different attributes of activate_license clean step are as follows:

Attribute	Description
interface	Interface of clean step, here management
step	Name of clean step, here activate_license
args	Keyword-argument entry (<name>: <value>) being passed to clean step
args.ilo_license_key	iLO Advanced license key to activate enterprise features. This is mandatory.

Removing CA certificates from iLO as manual clean step

iLO driver can remove the invalidated CA certificates as a manual step. Any manual cleaning step can only be initiated when a node is in the manageable state. Once the manual cleaning is finished, the node will be put in the manageable state again. User can follow steps from Manual cleaning to initiate manual cleaning operation on a node.

An example of a manual clean step with clear_ca_certificates as the only clean step could be:

"clean_steps": [{
    "interface": "management",
    "step": "clear_ca_certificates",
    "args": {
        "certificate_files" : ["/path/to/certsA", "/path/to/certsB"]
    }
}]

The different attributes of clear_ca_certificates clean step are as follows:

Attribute	Description
interface	Interface of clean step, here management
step	Name of clean step, here clear_ca_certificates
args	Keyword-argument entry (<name>: <value>) being passed to clean step
args.certificate_files	List of CA certificates which are to be removed.
This is mandatory.

Initiating firmware update as manual clean step

iLO driver can invoke secure firmware update as a manual cleaning step. Any manual cleaning step can only be initiated when a node is in the manageable state. Once the manual cleaning is finished, the node will be put in the manageable state again. A user can follow steps from Manual cleaning to initiate manual cleaning operation on a node.

An example of a manual clean step with update_firmware as the only clean step could be:

"clean_steps": [{
    "interface": "management",
    "step": "update_firmware",
    "args": {
        "firmware_update_mode": "ilo",
        "firmware_images":[
            {
                "url": "file:///firmware_images/ilo/1.5/CP024444.scexe",
                "checksum": "a94e683ea16d9ae44768f0a65942234d",
                "component": "ilo"
            },
            {
                "url": "swift://firmware_container/cpld2.3.rpm",
                "checksum": "<md5-checksum-of-this-file>",
                "component": "cpld"
            },
            {
                "url": "http://my_address:port/firmwares/bios_vLatest.scexe",
                "checksum": "<md5-checksum-of-this-file>",
                "component": "bios"
            },
            {
                "url": "https://my_secure_address_url/firmwares/chassis_vLatest.scexe",
                "checksum": "<md5-checksum-of-this-file>",
                "component": "chassis"
            },
            {
                "url": "file:///home/ubuntu/firmware_images/power_pic/pmc_v3.0.bin",
                "checksum": "<md5-checksum-of-this-file>",
                "component": "power_pic"
            }
        ]
    }
}]

The different attributes of update_firmware clean step are as follows:

Attribute	Description
interface	Interface of clean step, here management
step	Name of clean step, here update_firmware
args	Keyword-argument entry (<name>: <value>) being passed to clean step
args.firmware_update_mode	Mode (or mechanism) of out-of-band firmware update. Supported value is ilo. This is mandatory.
args.firmware_images	Ordered list of dictionaries of images to be flashed. This is mandatory.

Each firmware image block is represented by a dictionary (JSON), in the form:

{
  "url": "<url of firmware image file>",
  "checksum": "<md5 checksum of firmware image file to verify the image>",
  "component": "<device on which firmware image will be flashed>"
}

All the fields in the firmware image block are mandatory.

• The different types of firmware url schemes supported are: file, http, https and swift.

  Note

  This feature assumes that while using file url scheme the file path is on the conductor controlling the node.

  Note

  The swift url scheme assumes the swift account of the service project. The service project (tenant) is a special project created in the Keystone system designed for the use of the core OpenStack services. When Ironic makes use of Swift for storage purpose, the account is generally service and the container is generally ironic and ilo driver uses a container named ironic_ilo_container for their own purpose.

  Note

  While using firmware files with a .rpm extension, make sure the commands rpm2cpio and cpio are present on the conductor, as they are utilized to extract the firmware image from the package.

• The firmware components that can be updated are: ilo, cpld, power_pic, bios and chassis.

• The firmware images will be updated in the order given by the operator. If there is any error during processing of any of the given firmware images provided in the list, none of the firmware updates will occur. The processing error could happen during image download, image checksum verification or image extraction. The logic is to process each of the firmware files and update them on the devices only if all the files are processed successfully. If, during the update (uploading and flashing) process, an update fails, then the remaining updates, if any, in the list will be aborted. But it is recommended to triage and fix the failure and re-attempt the manual clean step update_firmware for the aborted firmware_images.

  The devices for which the firmwares have been updated successfully would start functioning using their newly updated firmware.

• As a troubleshooting guidance on the complete process, check Ironic conductor logs carefully to see if there are any firmware processing or update related errors which may help in root causing or gain an understanding of where things were left off or where things failed. You can then fix or work around and then try again. A common cause of update failure is HPE Secure Digital Signature check failure for the firmware image file.

• To compute md5 checksum for your image file, you can use the following command:

  $ md5sum image.rpm
  66cdb090c80b71daa21a67f06ecd3f33  image.rpm
  

Smart Update Manager (SUM) based firmware update

The firmware update based on SUM is an inband clean/deploy step supported by iLO driver. The firmware update is performed on all or list of user specified firmware components on the node. Refer to SUM User Guide to get more information on SUM based firmware update.

Note

update_firmware_sum clean step requires the agent ramdisk with Proliant Hardware Manager from the proliantutils version 2.5.0 or higher. See DIB support for Proliant Hardware Manager to create the agent ramdisk with Proliant Hardware Manager.

Note

flash_firmware_sum deploy step requires the agent ramdisk with Proliant Hardware Manager from the proliantutils version 2.9.5 or higher. See DIB support for Proliant Hardware Manager to create the agent ramdisk with Proliant Hardware Manager.

The attributes of update_firmware_sum/flash_firmware_sum step are as follows:

Attribute	Description
interface	Interface of the clean step, here management
step	Name of the clean step, here update_firmware_sum
args	Keyword-argument entry (<name>: <value>) being passed to the clean step

The keyword arguments used for the step are as follows:

• url: URL of SPP (Service Pack for Proliant) ISO. It is mandatory. The URL schemes supported are http, https and swift.

• checksum: MD5 checksum of SPP ISO to verify the image. It is mandatory.

• components: List of filenames of the firmware components to be flashed. It is optional. If not provided, the firmware update is performed on all the firmware components.

The step performs an update on all or a list of firmware components and returns the SUM log files. The log files include hpsum_log.txt and hpsum_detail_log.txt which holds the information about firmware components, firmware version for each component and their update status. The log object will be named with the following pattern:

<node>[_<instance-uuid>]_update_firmware_sum_<timestamp yyyy-mm-dd-hh-mm-ss>.tar.gz
or
<node>[_<instance-uuid>]_flash_firmware_sum_<timestamp yyyy-mm-dd-hh-mm-ss>.tar.gz

Refer to Retrieving logs from the deploy ramdisk for more information on enabling and viewing the logs returned from the ramdisk.

An example of update_firmware_sum clean step:

{
    "interface": "management",
    "step": "update_firmware_sum",
    "args":
        {
            "url": "http://my_address:port/SPP.iso",
            "checksum": "abcdefxyz",
            "components": ["CP024356.scexe", "CP008097.exe"]
        }
}

The step fails if there is any error in the processing of step arguments. The processing error could happen during validation of components’ file extension, image download, image checksum verification or image extraction. In case of a failure, check Ironic conductor logs carefully to see if there are any validation or firmware processing related errors which may help in root cause analysis or gaining an understanding of where things were left off or where things failed. You can then fix or work around and then try again.

Warning

This feature is officially supported only with RHEL and SUSE based IPA ramdisk. Refer to SUM for supported OS versions for specific SUM version.

Note

Refer Guidelines for SPP ISO for steps to get SPP (Service Pack for ProLiant) ISO.

Updating security parameters as manual clean step

iLO driver can invoke security parameters update as a manual clean step. Any manual cleaning step can only be initiated when a node is in the manageable state. Once the manual cleaning is finished, the node will be put in the manageable state again. A user can follow steps from Manual cleaning to initiate manual cleaning operation on a node. This feature is only supported for iLO5 based hardware.

An example of a manual clean step with security_parameters_update as the only clean step could be:

"clean_steps": [{
    "interface": "management",
    "step": "security_parameters_update",
    "args": {
        "security_parameters":[
            {
                "param": "password_complexity",
                "enable": "True",
                "ignore": "False"
            },
            {
                "param": "require_login_for_ilo_rbsu",
                "enable": "True",
                "ignore": "False"
            },
            {
                "param": "ipmi_over_lan",
                "enable": "True",
                "ignore": "False"
            },
            {
                "param": "secure_boot",
                "enable": "True",
                "ignore": "False"
            },
            {
                "param": "require_host_authentication",
                "enable": "True",
                "ignore": "False"
            }
        ]
    }
}]

The different attributes of security_parameters_update clean step are as follows:

Attribute	Description
interface	Interface of clean step, here management
step	Name of clean step, here security_parameters_update
args	Keyword-argument entry (<name>: <value>) being passed to clean step
args.security_parameters	Ordered list of dictionaries of security parameters to be updated. This is mandatory.

Each security parameter block is represented by a dictionary (JSON), in the form:

{
  "param": "<security parameter name>",
  "enable": "security parameter to be enabled/disabled",
  "ignore": "security parameter status to be ignored or not"
}

In all of these fields, param field is mandatory. Remaining fields are boolean and are optional. If user doesn’t pass any value then for enable field the default will be True and for ignore field default will be False.

• The Security Parameters which are supported for this clean step are: Password_Complexity, RequiredLoginForiLORBSU, RequireHostAuthentication, IPMI/DCMI_Over_LAN and Secure_Boot.

Update Minimum Password Length security parameter as manual clean step

iLO driver can invoke Minimum Password Length security parameter update as a manual clean step. This feature is only supported for iLO5 based hardware.

An example of a manual clean step with update_minimum_password_length as the only clean step could be:

"clean_steps": [{
    "interface": "management",
    "step": "update_minimum_password_length",
    "args": {
        "password_length": "8",
        "ignore": "False"
    }
}]

Both the arguments password_length and ignore are optional. The accepted values for password_length are 0 to 39. If user doesn’t pass any value, the default value for password_length will be 8 and for ignore the default value be False.

Update Authentication Failure Logging security parameter as manual clean step

iLO driver can invoke Authentication Failure Logging security parameter update as a manual clean step. This feature is only supported for iLO5 based hardware.

An example of a manual clean step with Authentication Failure Logging as the only clean step could be:

"clean_steps": [{
    "interface": "management",
    "step": "update_auth_failure_logging_threshold",
    "args": {
        "logging_threshold": "1",
        "ignore": "False"
    }
}]

Both the arguments logging_threshold and ignore are optional. The accepted values for logging_threshold are 0 to 5. If user doesn’t pass any value, the default value for logging_threshold will be 1 and for ignore the default value be False. If user passes the value of logging_threshold as 0, the Authentication Failure Logging security parameter will be disabled.

RAID Support

The inband RAID functionality is supported by iLO driver. See RAID Configuration for more information. Bare Metal service update node with following information after successful configuration of RAID:

• Node properties/local_gb is set to the size of root volume.

• Node properties/root_device is filled with wwn details of root volume. It is used by iLO driver as root device hint during provisioning.

• The value of raid level of root volume is added as raid_level capability to the node’s capabilities parameter within properties field. The operator can specify the raid_level capability in nova flavor for node to be selected for scheduling:

  nova flavor-key ironic-test set capabilities:raid_level="1+0"
  nova boot --flavor ironic-test --image test-image instance-1
  

DIB support for Proliant Hardware Manager

Install ironic-python-agent-builder following the guide 1

To create an agent ramdisk with Proliant Hardware Manager, use the proliant-tools element in DIB:

ironic-python-agent-builder -o proliant-agent-ramdisk -e proliant-tools fedora

Disk Erase Support

erase_devices is an inband clean step supported by iLO driver. It performs erase on all the disks including the disks visible to OS as well as the raw disks visible to the Smart Storage Administrator (SSA).

This inband clean step requires ssacli utility starting from version 2.60-19.0 to perform the erase on physical disks. See the ssacli documentation for more information on ssacli utility and different erase methods supported by SSA.

The disk erasure via shred is used to erase disks visible to the OS and its implementation is available in Ironic Python Agent. The raw disks connected to the Smart Storage Controller are erased using Sanitize erase which is a ssacli supported erase method. If Sanitize erase is not supported on the Smart Storage Controller the disks are erased using One-pass erase (overwrite with zeros).

This clean step is supported when the agent ramdisk contains the Proliant Hardware Manager from the proliantutils version 2.3.0 or higher. This clean step is performed as part of automated cleaning and it is disabled by default. See In-band vs out-of-band for more information on enabling/disabling a clean step.

Install ironic-python-agent-builder following the guide 1

To create an agent ramdisk with Proliant Hardware Manager, use the proliant-tools element in DIB:

ironic-python-agent-builder -o proliant-agent-ramdisk -e proliant-tools fedora

See the proliant-tools for more information on creating agent ramdisk with proliant-tools element in DIB.

Firmware based UEFI iSCSI boot from volume support

With Gen9 (UEFI firmware version 1.40 or higher) and Gen10 HPE Proliant servers, the driver supports firmware based UEFI boot of an iSCSI cinder volume.

This feature requires the node to be configured to boot in UEFI boot mode, as well as user image should be UEFI bootable image, and PortFast needs to be enabled in switch configuration for immediate spanning tree forwarding state so it wouldn’t take much time setting the iSCSI target as persistent device.

The driver does not support this functionality when in bios boot mode. In case the node is configured with ilo-pxe or ilo-ipxe as boot interface and the boot mode configured on the bare metal is bios, the iscsi boot from volume is performed using iPXE. See Boot From Volume for more details.

To use this feature, configure the boot mode of the bare metal to uefi and configure the corresponding ironic node using the steps given in Boot From Volume. In a cloud environment with nodes configured to boot from bios and uefi boot modes, the virtual media driver only supports uefi boot mode, and that attempting to use iscsi boot at the same time with a bios volume will result in an error.

BIOS configuration support

The ilo and ilo5 hardware types support ilo BIOS interface. The support includes providing manual clean steps apply_configuration and factory_reset to manage supported BIOS settings on the node. See BIOS Configuration for more details and examples.

Note

Prior to the Stein release the user is required to reboot the node manually in order for the settings to take into effect. Starting with the Stein release, iLO drivers reboot the node after running clean steps related to the BIOS configuration. The BIOS settings are cached and the clean step is marked as success only if all the requested settings are applied without any failure. If application of any of the settings fails, the clean step is marked as failed and the settings are not cached.

Configuration

Following are the supported BIOS settings and the corresponding brief description for each of the settings. For a detailed description please refer to HPE Integrated Lights-Out REST API Documentation.

• AdvancedMemProtection: Configure additional memory protection with ECC (Error Checking and Correcting). Allowed values are AdvancedEcc, OnlineSpareAdvancedEcc, MirroredAdvancedEcc.

• AutoPowerOn: Configure the server to automatically power on when AC power is applied to the system. Allowed values are AlwaysPowerOn, AlwaysPowerOff, RestoreLastState.

• BootMode: Select the boot mode of the system. Allowed values are Uefi, LegacyBios

• BootOrderPolicy: Configure how the system attempts to boot devices per the Boot Order when no bootable device is found. Allowed values are RetryIndefinitely, AttemptOnce, ResetAfterFailed.

• CollabPowerControl: Enables the Operating System to request processor frequency changes even if the Power Regulator option on the server configured for Dynamic Power Savings Mode. Allowed values are Enabled, Disabled.

• DynamicPowerCapping: Configure when the System ROM executes power calibration during the boot process. Allowed values are Enabled, Disabled, Auto.

• DynamicPowerResponse: Enable the System BIOS to control processor performance and power states depending on the processor workload. Allowed values are Fast, Slow.

• IntelligentProvisioning: Enable or disable the Intelligent Provisioning functionality. Allowed values are Enabled, Disabled.

• IntelPerfMonitoring: Exposes certain chipset devices that can be used with the Intel Performance Monitoring Toolkit. Allowed values are Enabled, Disabled.

• IntelProcVtd: Hypervisor or operating system supporting this option can use hardware capabilities provided by Intel’s Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O. Allowed values are Enabled, Disabled.

• IntelQpiFreq: Set the QPI Link frequency to a lower speed. Allowed values are Auto, MinQpiSpeed.

• IntelTxt: Option to modify Intel TXT support. Allowed values are Enabled, Disabled.

• PowerProfile: Set the power profile to be used. Allowed values are BalancedPowerPerf, MinPower, MaxPerf, Custom.

• PowerRegulator: Determines how to regulate the power consumption. Allowed values are DynamicPowerSavings, StaticLowPower, StaticHighPerf, OsControl.

• ProcAes: Enable or disable the Advanced Encryption Standard Instruction Set (AES-NI) in the processor. Allowed values are Enabled, Disabled.

• ProcCoreDisable: Disable processor cores using Intel’s Core Multi-Processing (CMP) Technology. Allowed values are Integers ranging from 0 to 24.

• ProcHyperthreading: Enable or disable Intel Hyperthreading. Allowed values are Enabled, Disabled.

• ProcNoExecute: Protect your system against malicious code and viruses. Allowed values are Enabled, Disabled.

• ProcTurbo: Enables the processor to transition to a higher frequency than the processor’s rated speed using Turbo Boost Technology if the processor has available power and is within temperature specifications. Allowed values are Enabled, Disabled.

• ProcVirtualization: Enables or Disables a hypervisor or operating system supporting this option to use hardware capabilities provided by Intel’s Virtualization Technology. Allowed values are Enabled, Disabled.

• SecureBootStatus: The current state of Secure Boot configuration. Allowed values are Enabled, Disabled.

  Note

  This setting is read-only and can’t be modified with apply_configuration clean step.

• Sriov: If enabled, SR-IOV support enables a hypervisor to create virtual instances of a PCI-express device, potentially increasing performance. If enabled, the BIOS allocates additional resources to PCI-express devices. Allowed values are Enabled, Disabled.

• ThermalConfig: select the fan cooling solution for the system. Allowed values are OptimalCooling, IncreasedCooling, MaxCooling

• ThermalShutdown: Control the reaction of the system to caution level thermal events. Allowed values are Enabled, Disabled.

• TpmState: Current TPM device state. Allowed values are NotPresent, PresentDisabled, PresentEnabled.

  Note

  This setting is read-only and can’t be modified with apply_configuration clean step.

• TpmType: Current TPM device type. Allowed values are NoTpm, Tpm12, Tpm20, Tm10.

  Note

  This setting is read-only and can’t be modified with apply_configuration clean step.

• UefiOptimizedBoot: Enables or Disables the System BIOS boot using native UEFI graphics drivers. Allowed values are Enabled, Disabled.

• WorkloadProfile: Change the Workload Profile to accomodate your desired workload. Allowed values are GeneralPowerEfficientCompute, GeneralPeakFrequencyCompute, GeneralThroughputCompute, Virtualization-PowerEfficient, Virtualization-MaxPerformance, LowLatency, MissionCritical, TransactionalApplicationProcessing, HighPerformanceCompute, DecisionSupport, GraphicProcessing, I/OThroughput, Custom

  Note

  This setting is only applicable to ProLiant Gen10 servers with iLO 5 management systems.

Certificate based validation in iLO

The driver supports validation of certificates on the HPE Proliant servers. The path to certificate file needs to be appropriately set in ca_file in the node’s driver_info. To update SSL certificates into iLO, refer to HPE Integrated Lights-Out Security Technology Brief. Use iLO hostname or IP address as a ‘Common Name (CN)’ while generating Certificate Signing Request (CSR). Use the same value as ilo_address while enrolling node to Bare Metal service to avoid SSL certificate validation errors related to hostname mismatch.

Rescue mode support

The hardware type ilo supports rescue functionality. Rescue operation can be used to boot nodes into a rescue ramdisk so that the rescue user can access the node.

Please refer to Rescue Mode for detailed explanation of rescue feature.

Inject NMI support

The management interface ilo supports injection of non-maskable interrupt (NMI) to a bare metal. Following command can be used to inject NMI on a server:

baremetal node inject nmi <node>

Following command can be used to inject NMI via Compute service:

openstack server dump create <server>

Note

This feature is supported on HPE ProLiant Gen9 servers and beyond.

Soft power operation support

The power interface ilo supports soft power off and soft reboot operations on a bare metal. Following commands can be used to perform soft power operations on a server:

baremetal node reboot --soft \
    [--power-timeout <power-timeout>] <node>

baremetal node power off --soft \
    [--power-timeout <power-timeout>] <node>

Note

The configuration [conductor]soft_power_off_timeout is used as a default timeout value when no timeout is provided while invoking hard or soft power operations.

Note

Server POST state is used to track the power status of HPE ProLiant Gen9 servers and beyond.

Out of Band RAID Support

With Gen10 HPE Proliant servers and later the ilo5 hardware type supports firmware based RAID configuration as a clean step. This feature requires the node to be configured to ilo5 hardware type and its raid interface to be ilo5. See RAID Configuration for more information.

After a successful RAID configuration, the Bare Metal service will update the node with the following information:

• Node properties/local_gb is set to the size of root volume.

• Node properties/root_device is filled with wwn details of root volume. It is used by iLO driver as root device hint during provisioning.

Later the value of raid level of root volume can be added in baremetal-with-RAID10 (RAID10 for raid level 10) resource class. And consequently flavor needs to be updated to request the resource class to create the server using selected node:

baremetal node set test_node --resource-class \
baremetal-with-RAID10

openstack flavor set --property \
resources:CUSTOM_BAREMETAL_WITH_RAID10=1 test-flavor

openstack server create --flavor test-flavor --image test-image instance-1

Note

Supported raid levels for ilo5 hardware type are: 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, 60

IPv6 support

With the IPv6 support in proliantutils>=2.8.0, nodes can be enrolled into the baremetal service using the iLO IPv6 addresses.

baremetal node create --driver ilo  --deploy-interface direct \
    --driver-info ilo_address=2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334 \
    --driver-info ilo_username=test-user \
    --driver-info ilo_password=test-password \
    --driver-info deploy_iso=test-iso \
    --driver-info rescue_iso=test-iso

Note

No configuration changes (in e.g. ironic.conf) are required in order to support IPv6.

Out of Band Sanitize Disk Erase Support

With Gen10 HPE Proliant servers and later the ilo5 hardware type supports firmware based sanitize disk erase as a clean step. This feature requires the node to be configured to ilo5 hardware type and its management interface to be ilo5.

The possible erase pattern its supports are:

• For HDD - ‘overwrite’, ‘zero’, ‘crypto’

• For SSD - ‘block’, ‘zero’, ‘crypto’

The default erase pattern are, for HDD, ‘overwrite’ and for SSD, ‘block’.

Note

In average 300GB HDD with default pattern “overwrite” would take approx. 9 hours and 300GB SSD with default pattern “block” would take approx. 30 seconds to complete the erase.

Out of Band One Button Secure Erase Support

With Gen10 HPE Proliant servers which have been updated with SPP version 2019.03.0 or later the ilo5 hardware type supports firmware based one button secure erase as a clean step.

The One Button Secure Erase resets iLO and deletes all licenses stored there, resets BIOS settings, and deletes all Active Health System (AHS) and warranty data stored on the system. It also erases supported non-volatile storage data and deletes any deployment settings profiles. See HPE Gen10 Security Reference Guide for more information.

Below are the steps to perform this clean step:

• Perform the cleaning using ‘one_button_secure_erase’ clean step

baremetal node clean $node_ident --clean-steps\
    '[{"interface": "management", "step": "one_button_secure_erase"}]'

• Once the clean step would triggered and node go to ‘clean wait’ state and ‘maintenance’ flag on node would be set to ‘True’, then delete the node

baremetal node delete $node_ident

Note

• Even after deleting the node, One Button Secure Erase operation would continue on the node.

• This clean step should be kept last if the multiple clean steps are to be executed. No clean step after this step would be executed.

• One Button Secure Erase should be used with extreme caution, and only when a system is being decommissioned. During the erase the iLO network would keep disconnecting and after the erase user will completely lose iLO access along with the credentials of the server, which needs to be regained by the administrator. The process can take up to a day or two to fully erase and reset all user data.

• When you activate One Button Secure Erase, iLO 5 does not allow firmware update or reset operations.

Note

Do not perform any iLO 5 configuration changes until this process is completed.

UEFI-HTTPS Boot support

The UEFI firmware on Gen10 HPE Proliant servers supports booting from secured URLs. With this capability ilo5 hardware with ilo-uefi-https boot interface supports deploy/rescue features in more secured environments.

If swift is used as glance backend and ironic is configured to use swift to store temporary images, it is required that swift is configured on HTTPS so that the tempurl generated is HTTPS URL.

If the webserver is used for hosting the temporary images, then the webserver is required to serve requests on HTTPS.

If the images are hosted on a HTTPS webserver or swift configured with HTTPS with custom certificates, the user is required to export SSL certificates into iLO. Refer to HPE Integrated Lights-Out Security Technology Brief for more information.

The following command can be used to enroll a ProLiant node with ilo5 hardware type and ilo-uefi-https boot interface:

baremetal node create \
    --driver ilo5 \
    --boot-interface ilo-uefi-https \
    --deploy-interface direct \
    --raid-interface ilo5 \
    --rescue-interface agent \
    --driver-info ilo_address=<ilo-ip-address> \
    --driver-info ilo_username=<ilo-username> \
    --driver-info ilo_password=<ilo-password> \
    --driver-info deploy_kernel=<glance-uuid-of-deploy-kernel> \
    --driver-info deploy_ramdisk=<glance-uuid-of-rescue-ramdisk> \
    --driver-info bootloader=<glance-uuid-of-bootloader>

Layer 3 or DHCP-less ramdisk booting

DHCP-less deploy is supported by ilo and ilo5 hardware types. However it would work only with ilo-virtual-media boot interface. See Layer 3 or DHCP-less ramdisk booting for more information.

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ironic-python-agent-builder: https://docs.openstack.org/ironic-python-agent-builder/latest/install/index.html