ironic/doc/source/admin/fast-track.rst

Fast-Track Deployment

Fast track is a mode of operation where the Bare Metal service keeps a machine powered on with the agent running between provisioning operations. It is first booted during in-band inspection or cleaning (whatever happens first) and is only shut down before rebooting into the final instance. Depending on the configuration, this mode can save several reboots and is particularly useful for scenarios where nodes are enrolled, prepared and provisioned within a short period of time.

Warning

Fast track deployment targets standalone use cases and is only tested with the noop networking. The case where inspection, cleaning and provisioning networks are different is not supported.

Note

Fast track mode is very sensitive to long-running processes on the conductor side that may prevent agent heartbeats from being registered.

For example, converting a large image to the raw format may take long enough to reach the fast track timeout. In this case, you can either use raw images <stream_raw_images> or move the conversion to the agent side with:

[DEFAULT]
force_raw_images = False

Enabling

Fast track is off by default and should be enabled in the configuration:

[deploy]
fast_track = true

Starting with the Yoga release series, it can also be enabled or disabled per node:

baremetal node set <node> --driver-info fast_track=true

Inspection

If using in-band inspection, you need to tell ironic or ironic-inspector not to power off nodes afterwards. Depending on the inspection mode (managed or unmanaged, with ironic-inspector or without), you need to configure two places. In ironic.conf:

[inspector]
power_off = false

And in inspector.conf (if needed):

[processing]
power_off = false

Finally, you need to update the inspection PXE/iPXE configuration <configure-unmanaged-inspection> to include the ipa-api-url kernel parameter, pointing at the ironic endpoint, in addition to the existing ipa-inspection-callback-url.