Ironic cycle highlights for 2023.2

Ironic cycle highlights for 2023.2. We did a lot!

Change-Id: Icbd5a6e8d58928cd21b09e1eb2aa61a8c5ae03d4

deliverables/bobcat/ironic.yaml

@@ -20,3 +20,44 @@ branches:
     location: 22.0.0
   - name: bugfix/22.1
     location: 22.1.0
+cycle-highlights:
+  - Ironic now has support for complex parent-child device topologies. This
+    feature, primarily targeted at orchestration of DPUs, allows nodes to have
+    parent/child relationships. This allows for more complex logic to be
+    coordinated between a node and its children. When a node with children runs
+    a step-based action, those steps can include actions to be run on the child
+    node. See `parent node documentation <https://docs.openstack.org/ironic/latest/admin/cleaning.html#parent-nodes>`_
+    for more information.
+  - Ironic now has basic support for servicing nodes. Servicing allows
+    operators to use steps, like you would for cleaning, to perform service
+    on deployed nodes in ``ACTIVE`` state. Previously, Ironic would not
+    perform operations on active nodes. See
+    `Node servicing documentation <https://docs.openstack.org/ironic/latest/admin/servicing>`_
+    for more information.
+  - Ironic has promoted support for firmware upgrading and information to a
+    new interface and API named ``FirmwareInterface``. This includes new API
+    support, at ``/v1/nodes/{node_ident}/firmware`` for getting firmware
+    information. In addition, operators can use the csteps provided by the new
+    ``FirmwareInterface`` their firmware upgrade process for step-based
+    automations, such as deployment, cleaning, or servicing. While the structure
+    and API is in place for firmware management, our first driver, for redfish
+    hardware, is coming next release.
+  - Additional steps for servicing, cleaning, and deployment have been added.
+    The first new step, ``wait``, waits for a specified amount of time or
+    until the next heartbeat. The second new step, ``hold``, stops evaluation
+    of steps until the ``unhold`` verb is submitted to the provision state API
+    for that node. When a node is held, it will be parked a new "hold"
+    provision_state, either ``clean hold``, ``deploy hold`` or
+    ``service hold``. Additionally, Ironic has added support for power control
+    via steps named, ``power_on``, ``power_off``, and ``reboot``; deployers who
+    already have custom steps with these names must rename them. These new steps
+    are useful for integrating with external systems that need to perform
+    actions on a node or for orchestrating complex workflows involving child
+    nodes.
+  - Ironic conductor services now honor the value of
+    ``[DEFAULT]/graceful_shutdown_timeout``, waiting that number of seconds
+    to complete operations before forcing them to abort. 
+  - Operators are now able to disable MD5 use to verify images in Ironic by
+    setting  ``[agent]/allow_md5_checksum`` to false. This option defaults
+    to ``true`` to preserve existing behavior in this release; but we expect
+    to disable MD5 support by default in a future release.