Add 2026.2 Work Items document
We have work to do, and we should tell people about it :). This is our work items summary from the 2026.2 Hibiscus planning event. Change-Id: I094b94d113943df8e498f8bcb139d611ef88f0c9 Signed-off-by: Jay Faulkner <jay@jvf.cc>
This commit is contained in:
Jay Faulkner
@@ -15,6 +15,7 @@ those discussions:
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:glob:
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:maxdepth: 1
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priorities/2026-2-workitems
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priorities/2026-1-workitems
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priorities/2025-2-workitems
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priorities/2025-1-workitems
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@@ -0,0 +1,333 @@
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.. _2026-2-work-items:
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=========================
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2026.2 Project Work Items
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=========================
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The OpenStack Ironic Project Team Gathering happened in April 2026.
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Ironic developers and operators discussed many different potential features and
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other ongoing work for the 2026.2 (Hibiscus) release. These discussions are
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memorialized in this document, providing a list of the main priorities for
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the next development cycle. For more information please look at the link for
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each topic or contact the Ironic team in #openstack-ironic on OFTC or via
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openstack-discuss mailing list.
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The 2026.1 cycle was ambitious and we landed a large number of impactful
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features. For this reason, the team agreed to commit to overall less feature
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work for 2026.2 to allow contributors to have extra time for triaging and
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fixing incoming issues.
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Ironic contributors are busy; they work spanning multiple open source projects,
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and have varied downstream responsibilities. We cannot guarantee any or all
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planned work will be completed, nor is this a comprehensive list of
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everything Ironic team members may do in the next six months.
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Each item in the table includes:
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- Name of the work item, linked to the description
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- Category can be...
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- Maintenance: work that must be performed to keep Ironic working
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- Bugfix: work to enhance existing code to cover more corner cases and
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resolve bugs
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- Feature: a new Ironic feature that did not previously exist
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- Champions are the people most familiar with the technologies involved,
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and are a good resource if you'd like to implement the work item.
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- Tracking link is a link to the bug (usually) tracking the work.
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.. list-table:: 2026.2 Work Items
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:widths: 50 20 20 10
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:header-rows: 1
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* - Name
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- Category
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- Tracking
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- Champions
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* - `Deferred tasks`_
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- Feature
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- https://review.opendev.org/c/openstack/ironic-specs/+/954612
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- TheJulia, cid
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* - `Nova-Compute startup performance`_
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- Bugfix
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- https://etherpad.opendev.org/p/ironic-nova-compute-startup-2026.2
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- JayF, Clif
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* - `Bulk node operations`_
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- Feature
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- https://review.opendev.org/c/openstack/ironic-specs/+/983183
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- cid, JayF
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* - `Power lockout/tagout`_
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- Feature
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- https://review.opendev.org/c/openstack/ironic-specs/+/974894
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- cid, JayF
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* - `Sushy in-tree and async Redfish`_
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- Maintenance
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- N/A
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- cardoe, dtantsur, iurygregory
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* - `Firmware upgrades improvements`_
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- Bugfix
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- N/A
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- cardoe, iurygregory, janders
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* - `Observability and IPE improvements`_
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- Bugfix
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- https://bugs.launchpad.net/ironic/+bug/2150125
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- dtantsur, iurygregory
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* - `PQC and TLS controls`_
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- Feature
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- N/A
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- TheJulia
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* - `gdisk replacement`_
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- Maintenance
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- N/A
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- rpittau
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* - `GPU information in inspection`_
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- Feature
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- N/A
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- dtantsur, JayF
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* - `OOB inspection while active`_
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- Feature
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- https://bugs.launchpad.net/ironic/+bug/2049913
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- cardoe, dtantsur
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* - `Root disk encryption`_
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- Feature
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- N/A
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- Adam (Metal3)
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* - `VMedia/HTTP boot and port.pxe_enabled cleanup`_
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- Maintenance
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- https://bugs.launchpad.net/ironic/+bug/2043019
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- JayF
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Goals Details
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=============
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Deferred tasks
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--------------
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The goal is to eliminate sleep() calls in conductor threads, which are
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particularly expensive in the post-eventlet world. Deferred tasks will allow
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Ironic to schedule work to be performed later, such as resuming from port
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binding, checking BMC readiness, and handling firmware upgrades.
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While initial milestones will focus on the cases made worse in a post-eventlet
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Ironic, this work is expected to eventually culminate in an operator-visible
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API endpoint to track the status of long-running tasks.
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This work is a prerequisite for bulk node operations and other features that
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require tracking long-running tasks. This is an extensive rework of how Ironic
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manages long-running work, and we expect it to span multiple release cycles.
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Nova-Compute startup performance
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--------------------------------
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Ironic developers are coordinating with Nova developers to improve
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nova-compute startup times in large Ironic installations. This addresses
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real-world pain points where nova-compute can take minutes to start when
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managing hundreds of bare metal nodes.
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These startup time issues are a part of a larger problem of syncing up
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node statuses between Ironic, Nova, and Placement. This project is aimed
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at reducing overall latency when performing these syncs or, when possible,
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removing them altogether.
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The work for this improvement will be split between Ironic and Nova code
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repositories. This work includes:
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- Adding a devstack CI job using fake-hardware to measure startup time.
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- Implementing and backporting transparent performance improvements.
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- Updating reserved flag directly in Placement when nodes transit states.
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Future improvements in this area, not planned for 2026.2, may include Ironic
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taking over publishing and management of Placement API entries for Ironic
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resources.
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Bulk node operations
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--------------------
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For cases where operators need to perform the same action across many nodes,
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we are adding a bulk-actions API endpoint. This will allow applying operations
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at scale on any number of nodes matching filter criteria.
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This feature will be asynchronous and will leverage the deferred tasks
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infrastructure for tracking status and handling failures.
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Given it has a hard dependency on the deferred tasks work, it is a stretch
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goal for the team to make progress on this work item.
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Power lockout/tagout
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--------------------
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A feature to ensure no automated Ironic process or project member can alter
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power state on a given node. This mirrors physical facility lockout/tagout
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practices for safe maintenance in the physical world.
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An initial spec for this exists, but will be revised considerably to turn
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it into a new form of maintenance system, rather than a parallel one relating
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only to power. In 2026.2, we intend on finalizing these plans but may not
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begin implementation.
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Sushy in-tree and async Redfish
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-------------------------------
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Ironic would like to move the Sushy redfish library directly into the
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Ironic repository to reduce maintenance overhead, simplify releases, and
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eliminate API surface management between projects.
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This change is similar to the integration and retirement of ironic-lib last
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year.
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Once migrated in-tree, Ironic developers will explore use of async python
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to improve performance for various redfish driver methods.
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Firmware upgrades improvements
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------------------------------
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Continued work on firmware upgrades reliability and functionality:
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- Implementing PUSH firmware updates (used by Dell and HPE instead of PULL)
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- Addressing NIC update challenges where target properties are unavailable
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- Improving the firmware upgrade state machine visibility
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- DMTF engagement on multi-component update standards
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This work addresses ongoing pain points discovered as more operators adopt
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the firmware upgrade feature.
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Observability and IPE improvements
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-----------------------------------
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Continued improvements to the ironic-prometheus-exporter (IPE) and metrics
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collection. These circle primarily around moving the metrics gathering
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from the external IPE application into Ironic directly.
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This may lead, in the medium-term, to the retirement of IPE in favor of
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direct prometheus polling of Ironic.
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Additionally, we plan to improve server health monitoring, providing
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detail on outstanding faults instead of just reporting an OK/Warning/Critical
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status.
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PQC and TLS controls
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--------------------
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Operators have long asked Ironic to permit them more control over TLS
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versions and ciphers used during provisioning operations. This project
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adds controls for Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) readiness and TLS version
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management, including:
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- Minimum TLS version knob for Redfish BMC connections
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- Cipher selection controls for both global and per-node configuration
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- Improving agent certificate/TLS flow to support configurable algorithms
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This work prepares Ironic for environments requiring PQC-safe ciphers and
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enables operators to enforce modern TLS standards across heterogeneous BMC
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firmware.
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gdisk replacement
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-----------------
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The gdisk/sgdisk tools have been obsoleted (last release 2024) and removed
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from some distributions. This work will replace gdisk usage in IPA with
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alternatives. This is necessary maintenance to keep IPA functional on
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modern distributions.
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GPU information in inspection
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-----------------------------
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Adding basic GPU information to inspection data including vendor, model, and
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other relevant details. This enables operators to track GPU hardware inventory
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and potentially set traits based on GPU capabilities.
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OOB inspection while active
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---------------------------
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Enabling out-of-band (OOB / Redfish) inspection to run while nodes are in
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active state. This allows operators to update inspection data after hardware
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changes without disrupting running workloads.
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The approach under consideration is exposing inspection methods as service
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steps, allowing them to be invoked during servicing workflows. This would
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include a merge mode to avoid overwriting in-band collected data.
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Root disk encryption
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--------------------
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Resurrecting upstream work on root disk encryption. This feature allows
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encrypting the root disk of deployed instances for security compliance.
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This work is being picked up by Metal3 contributors and is tentative for
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this cycle.
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VMedia/HTTP boot and port.pxe_enabled cleanup
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---------------------------------------------
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The pxe_enabled flag on ports is overloaded and causes confusion with HTTP
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boot. For instance, when using virtual media to provision an Ironic instance,
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Ironic attempts to enable all ports marked as pxe_enabled, even though
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``PXE``, the netboot technology, is not in use. When failing on port
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binding failures is enabled, the default, this can lead to erroneous
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failures in some configurations.
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Ironic developers will work to disambiguate this flag and create a method for
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operators to more verbosely indicate which ports are required to be attached
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for which boot interfaces.
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Maintenance Tasks
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=================
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There are some periodic tasks which must be done by project leadership during
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the release cycle. These should be followed up on at every scheduled team
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meeting to ensure they are being followed.
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.. list-table:: 2026.2 Maintenance Tasks
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:widths: 20 30 30 20
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:header-rows: 1
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* - Item
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- Document
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- Cadence
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- Responsible parties
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* - Release bugfix branches
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- https://docs.openstack.org/ironic/latest/contributor/releasing.html#bugfix-branches
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- Two additional releases per cycle, approximately at milestones 1 and 2.
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- DPL Release Liaisons
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* - Retire expired bugfix branches
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- https://docs.openstack.org/ironic/latest/contributor/releasing.html#bugfix-branches
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- Bugfix branches older than 9 months must be retired.
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- DPL Release Liaisons
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* - Bug triage
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- https://docs.openstack.org/ironic/latest/contributor/bug-deputy.html
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- Triage and respond to bugs, ensure periodic CI is happy.
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- Rotating volunteer 'deputy' from meeting
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* - Release Deadlines
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- https://docs.openstack.org/ironic/latest/contributor/releasing.html
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- Ensure we meet various release deadlines and freezes.
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- DPL Release Liaisons
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Release Schedule
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================
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Contributors are reminded of our scheduled releases when they are choosing
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items to work on.
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The dates below are a guide; please view
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https://releases.openstack.org/hibiscus/schedule.html for the full schedule
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relating to the release and
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https://docs.openstack.org/ironic/latest/contributor/releasing.html for Ironic
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specific release information.
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Bugfix Release 1
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----------------
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The first bugfix release is scheduled to happen around the last week of
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May, 2026.
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Bugfix release 2
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----------------
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The second bugfix release is scheduled to happen around the last week of
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July, 2026.
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Deadline Week
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-------------
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There are multiple deadlines/freezes in the final weeks of the release,
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please refer to the release schedule for exact dates.
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Final 2026.2 (Integrated) Release
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---------------------------------
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The final releases for Ironic projects in 2026.2 must be cut before
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September 30, 2026.
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