Enabling drivers and hardware types =================================== Introduction ------------ The Bare Metal service delegates actual hardware management to **drivers**. *Drivers*, also called *hardware types*, consist of *hardware interfaces*: sets of functionality dealing with some aspect of bare metal provisioning in a vendor-specific way. There are generic **hardware types** (eg. ``redfish`` and ``ipmi``), and vendor-specific ones (eg. ``ilo`` and ``irmc``). .. note:: Starting with the Rocky release, the terminologies *driver*, *dynamic driver*, and *hardware type* have the same meaning in the scope of Bare Metal service. .. _enable-hardware-types: Enabling hardware types ----------------------- Hardware types are enabled in the configuration file of the **ironic-conductor** service by setting the ``enabled_hardware_types`` configuration option, for example: .. code-block:: ini [DEFAULT] enabled_hardware_types = ipmi,redfish Due to the driver's dynamic nature, they also require configuring enabled hardware interfaces. .. note:: All available hardware types and interfaces are listed in setup.cfg_ file in the source code tree. .. _enable-hardware-interfaces: Enabling hardware interfaces ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ There are several types of hardware interfaces: bios manages configuration of the BIOS settings of a bare metal node. This interface is vendor-specific and can be enabled via the ``enabled_bios_interfaces`` option: .. code-block:: ini [DEFAULT] enabled_hardware_types = enabled_bios_interfaces = See :doc:`/admin/bios` for details. boot manages booting of both the deploy ramdisk and the user instances on the bare metal node. See :doc:`/admin/interfaces/boot` for details. Boot interface implementations are often vendor specific, and can be enabled via the ``enabled_boot_interfaces`` option: .. code-block:: ini [DEFAULT] enabled_hardware_types = ipmi,ilo enabled_boot_interfaces = pxe,ilo-virtual-media Boot interfaces with ``pxe`` in their name require :doc:`configure-pxe`. There are also a few hardware-specific boot interfaces - see :doc:`/admin/drivers` for their required configuration. console manages access to the serial console of a bare metal node. See :doc:`/admin/console` for details. deploy defines how the image gets transferred to the target disk. See :doc:`/admin/interfaces/deploy` for an explanation of the difference between supported deploy interfaces. The deploy interfaces can be enabled as follows: .. code-block:: ini [DEFAULT] enabled_hardware_types = ipmi,redfish enabled_deploy_interfaces = direct,ramdisk .. note:: The ``direct`` deploy interface requires the Object Storage service or an HTTP service inspect implements fetching hardware information from nodes. Can be implemented out-of-band (via contacting the node's BMC) or in-band (via booting a ramdisk on a node). The latter implementation is called ``inspector`` and uses a separate service called :ironic-inspector-doc:`ironic-inspector <>`. Example: .. code-block:: ini [DEFAULT] enabled_hardware_types = ipmi,ilo,irmc enabled_inspect_interfaces = ilo,irmc,inspector See :doc:`/admin/inspection` for more details. management provides additional hardware management actions, like getting or setting boot devices. This interface is usually vendor-specific, and its name often matches the name of the hardware type (with ``ipmitool`` being a notable exception). For example: .. code-block:: ini [DEFAULT] enabled_hardware_types = ipmi,redfish,ilo,irmc enabled_management_interfaces = ipmitool,redfish,ilo,irmc Using ``ipmitool`` requires :doc:`configure-ipmi`. See :doc:`/admin/drivers` for the required configuration of each driver. network connects/disconnects bare metal nodes to/from virtual networks. See :doc:`configure-tenant-networks` for more details. power runs power actions on nodes. Similar to the management interface, it is usually vendor-specific, and its name often matches the name of the hardware type (with ``ipmitool`` being again an exception). For example: .. code-block:: ini [DEFAULT] enabled_hardware_types = ipmi,redfish,ilo,irmc enabled_power_interfaces = ipmitool,redfish,ilo,irmc Using ``ipmitool`` requires :doc:`configure-ipmi`. See :doc:`/admin/drivers` for the required configuration of each driver. raid manages building and tearing down RAID on nodes. Similar to inspection, it can be implemented either out-of-band or in-band (via ``agent`` implementation). See :doc:`/admin/raid` for details. For example: .. code-block:: ini [DEFAULT] enabled_hardware_types = ipmi,redfish,ilo,irmc enabled_raid_interfaces = agent,no-raid storage manages the interaction with a remote storage subsystem, such as the Block Storage service, and helps facilitate booting from a remote volume. This interface ensures that volume target and connector information is updated during the lifetime of a deployed instance. See :doc:`/admin/boot-from-volume` for more details. This interface defaults to a ``noop`` driver as it is considered an "opt-in" interface which requires additional configuration by the operator to be usable. For example: .. code-block:: ini [DEFAULT] enabled_hardware_types = ipmi,irmc enabled_storage_interfaces = cinder,noop vendor is a place for vendor extensions to be exposed in API. See :doc:`/contributor/vendor-passthru` for details. .. code-block:: ini [DEFAULT] enabled_hardware_types = ipmi,redfish,ilo,irmc enabled_vendor_interfaces = ipmitool,no-vendor Here is a complete configuration example, enabling two generic protocols, IPMI and Redfish, with a few additional features: .. code-block:: ini [DEFAULT] enabled_hardware_types = ipmi,redfish enabled_boot_interfaces = pxe enabled_console_interfaces = ipmitool-socat,no-console enabled_deploy_interfaces = direct enabled_inspect_interfaces = inspector enabled_management_interfaces = ipmitool,redfish enabled_network_interfaces = flat,neutron enabled_power_interfaces = ipmitool,redfish enabled_raid_interfaces = agent enabled_storage_interfaces = cinder,noop enabled_vendor_interfaces = ipmitool,no-vendor Note that some interfaces have implementations named ``no-`` where ```` is the interface type. These implementations do nothing and return errors when used from API. Hardware interfaces in multi-conductor environments ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When enabling hardware types and their interfaces, make sure that for every enabled hardware type, the whole set of enabled interfaces matches for all conductors. However, different conductors can have different hardware types enabled. For example, you can have two conductors with the following configuration respectively: .. code-block:: ini [DEFAULT] enabled_hardware_types = ipmi enabled_deploy_interfaces = direct enabled_power_interfaces = ipmitool enabled_management_interfaces = ipmitool .. code-block:: ini [DEFAULT] enabled_hardware_types = redfish enabled_deploy_interfaces = ansible enabled_power_interfaces = redfish enabled_management_interfaces = redfish But you cannot have two conductors with the following configuration respectively: .. code-block:: ini [DEFAULT] enabled_hardware_types = ipmi,redfish enabled_deploy_interfaces = direct enabled_power_interfaces = ipmitool,redfish enabled_management_interfaces = ipmitool,redfish .. code-block:: ini [DEFAULT] enabled_hardware_types = redfish enabled_deploy_interfaces = ansible enabled_power_interfaces = redfish enabled_management_interfaces = redfish This is because the ``redfish`` hardware type will have different enabled *deploy* interfaces on these conductors. It would have been fine, if the second conductor had ``enabled_deploy_interfaces = direct`` instead of ``ansible``. This situation is not detected by the Bare Metal service, but it can cause inconsistent behavior in the API, when node functionality will depend on which conductor it gets assigned to. .. note:: We don't treat this as an error, because such *temporary* inconsistency is inevitable during a rolling upgrade or a configuration update. Configuring interface defaults ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When an operator does not provide an explicit value for one of the interfaces (when creating a node or updating its driver), the default value is calculated as described in :ref:`hardware_interfaces_defaults`. It is also possible to override the defaults for any interfaces by setting one of the options named ``default__interface``, where ```` is the interface name. For example: .. code-block:: ini [DEFAULT] default_deploy_interface = direct default_network_interface = neutron This configuration forces the default *deploy* interface to be ``direct`` and the default *network* interface to be ``neutron`` for all hardware types. The defaults are calculated and set on a node when creating it or updating its hardware type. Thus, changing these configuration options has no effect on existing nodes. .. warning:: The default interface implementation must be configured the same way across all conductors in the cloud, except maybe for a short period of time during an upgrade or configuration update. Otherwise the default implementation will depend on which conductor handles which node, and this mapping is not predictable or even persistent. .. warning:: These options should be used with care. If a hardware type does not support the provided default implementation, its users will have to always provide an explicit value for this interface when creating a node. .. _setup.cfg: https://opendev.org/openstack/ironic/src/branch/master/setup.cfg