Ironic - Bare Metal provisioning¶

Overview¶

Ironic is the OpenStack service for handling bare metal, i.e., the physical machines. It can work standalone as well as with other OpenStack services (notably, Neutron and Nova).

Pre-deployment Configuration¶

Enable Ironic in /etc/kolla/globals.yml:

enable_ironic: "yes"

In the same file, define a network interface as the default NIC for dnsmasq and define a network to be used for the Ironic cleaning network:

ironic_dnsmasq_interface: "eth1"
ironic_cleaning_network: "public1"

Finally, define at least one DHCP range for Ironic inspector:

ironic_dnsmasq_dhcp_ranges:
  - range: "192.168.5.100,192.168.5.110"

Another example of a single range with a router (multiple routers are possible by separating addresses with commas):

ironic_dnsmasq_dhcp_ranges:
  - range: "192.168.5.100,192.168.5.110"
    routers: "192.168.5.1"

To support DHCP relay, it is also possible to define a netmask in the range. It is advisable to also provide a router to allow the traffic to reach the Ironic server.

ironic_dnsmasq_dhcp_ranges:
  - range: "192.168.5.100,192.168.5.110,255.255.255.0"
    routers: "192.168.5.1"

Multiple ranges are possible, they can be either for directly-connected interfaces or relays (if with netmask):

ironic_dnsmasq_dhcp_ranges:
  - range: "192.168.5.100,192.168.5.110"
  - range: "192.168.6.100,192.168.6.110,255.255.255.0"
    routers: "192.168.6.1"

The default lease time for each range can be configured globally via ironic_dnsmasq_dhcp_default_lease_time variable or per range via lease_time parameter.

In the same file, specify the PXE bootloader file for Ironic Inspector. The file is relative to the /var/lib/ironic/tftpboot directory. The default is pxelinux.0, and should be correct for x86 systems. Other platforms may require a differentvalue, for example aarch64 on Debian requires debian-installer/arm64/bootnetaa64.efi.

ironic_dnsmasq_boot_file: pxelinux.0

Ironic inspector also requires a deploy kernel and ramdisk to be placed in /etc/kolla/config/ironic/. The following example uses coreos which is commonly used in Ironic deployments, though any compatible kernel/ramdisk may be used:

$ curl https://tarballs.opendev.org/openstack/ironic-python-agent/dib/files/ipa-centos9-stable-zed.kernel \
  -o /etc/kolla/config/ironic/ironic-agent.kernel

$ curl https://tarballs.opendev.org/openstack/ironic-python-agent/dib/files/ipa-centos9-stable-zed.initramfs \
  -o /etc/kolla/config/ironic/ironic-agent.initramfs

You may optionally pass extra kernel parameters to the inspection kernel using:

ironic_inspector_kernel_cmdline_extras: ['ipa-lldp-timeout=90.0', 'ipa-collect-lldp=1']

in /etc/kolla/globals.yml.

Configure conductor’s HTTP server port (optional)¶

The port used for conductor’s HTTP server is controlled via ironic_http_port in /etc/kolla/globals.yml:

ironic_http_port: "8089"

Revert to plain PXE (not recommended)¶

Starting with Yoga, Ironic has changed the default PXE from plain PXE to iPXE. Kolla Ansible follows this upstream decision by choosing iPXE as the default for Ironic Inspector but allows users to revert to the previous default of plain PXE by setting the following in /etc/kolla/globals.yml:

ironic_dnsmasq_serve_ipxe: "no"

To revert Ironic to previous default as well, set pxe as default_boot_interface in /etc/kolla/config/ironic.conf:

[DEFAULT]
default_boot_interface = pxe

Attach ironic to external keystone (optional)¶

In multi-regional deployment keystone could be installed in one region (let’s say region 1) and ironic - in another region (let’s say region 2). In this case we don’t install keystone together with ironic in region 2, but have to configure ironic to connect to existing keystone in region 1. To deploy ironic in this way we have to set variable enable_keystone to "no".

enable_keystone: "no"

It will prevent keystone from being installed in region 2.

To add keystone-related sections in ironic.conf, it is also needed to set variable ironic_enable_keystone_integration to "yes"

ironic_enable_keystone_integration: "yes"

Deployment¶

Run the deploy as usual:

$ kolla-ansible deploy

Post-deployment configuration¶

The Ironic documentation describes how to create the deploy kernel and ramdisk and register them with Glance. In this example we’re reusing the same images that were fetched for the Inspector:

openstack image create --disk-format aki --container-format aki --public \
  --file /etc/kolla/config/ironic/ironic-agent.kernel deploy-vmlinuz

openstack image create --disk-format ari --container-format ari --public \
  --file /etc/kolla/config/ironic/ironic-agent.initramfs deploy-initrd

The Ironic documentation describes how to create Nova flavors for bare metal. For example:

openstack flavor create my-baremetal-flavor \
  --ram 512 --disk 1 --vcpus 1 \
  --property resources:CUSTOM_BAREMETAL_RESOURCE_CLASS=1 \
  --property resources:VCPU=0 \
  --property resources:MEMORY_MB=0 \
  --property resources:DISK_GB=0

The Ironic documentation describes how to enroll baremetal nodes and ports. In the following example ensure to substitute correct values for the kernel, ramdisk, and MAC address for your baremetal node.

openstack baremetal node create --driver ipmi --name baremetal-node \
  --driver-info ipmi_port=6230 --driver-info ipmi_username=admin \
  --driver-info ipmi_password=password \
  --driver-info ipmi_address=192.168.5.1 \
  --resource-class baremetal-resource-class --property cpus=1 \
  --property memory_mb=512 --property local_gb=1 \
  --property cpu_arch=x86_64 \
  --driver-info deploy_kernel=15f3c95f-d778-43ad-8e3e-9357be09ca3d \
  --driver-info deploy_ramdisk=9b1e1ced-d84d-440a-b681-39c216f24121

openstack baremetal port create 52:54:00:ff:15:55 \
  --node 57aa574a-5fea-4468-afcf-e2551d464412 \
  --physical-network physnet1

Make the baremetal node available to nova:

openstack baremetal node manage 57aa574a-5fea-4468-afcf-e2551d464412
openstack baremetal node provide 57aa574a-5fea-4468-afcf-e2551d464412

It may take some time for the node to become available for scheduling in nova. Use the following commands to wait for the resources to become available:

openstack hypervisor stats show
openstack hypervisor show 57aa574a-5fea-4468-afcf-e2551d464412

Booting the baremetal¶

Assuming you have followed the examples above and created the demo resources as shown in the Quick Start, you can now use the following example command to boot the baremetal instance:

openstack server create --image cirros --flavor my-baremetal-flavor \
  --key-name mykey --network public1 demo1

In other cases you will need to adapt the command to match your environment.

Notes¶

Debugging DHCP¶

The following tcpdump command can be useful when debugging why dhcp requests may not be hitting various pieces of the process:

tcpdump -i <interface> port 67 or port 68 or port 69 -e -n

Configuring the Web Console¶

Configuration based off upstream Node web console.

Serial speed must be the same as the serial configuration in the BIOS settings. Default value: 115200bps, 8bit, non-parity.If you have different serial speed.

Set ironic_console_serial_speed in /etc/kolla/globals.yml:

ironic_console_serial_speed: 9600n8

Deploying using virtual baremetal (vbmc + libvirt)¶

See https://brk3.github.io/post/kolla-ironic-libvirt/

Ironic - Bare Metal provisioning