bifrost/doc/source/howto.rst

How-To

Use the Ironic CLI

If you wish to utilize ironic's CLI in no-auth mode, you must set two environment variables:

• IRONIC_URL - A URL to the ironic API, such as http://localhost:6385/
• OS_AUTH_TOKEN - Any value except empty space, such as 'fake-token', is required to cause the client library to send requests directly to the API.

For your ease of use, env-vars can be sourced to allow the CLI to connect to a local ironic installation operating in noauth mode. Run e.g.:

source env-vars
ironic node-list
+------+------+---------------+-------------+--------------------+-------------+
| UUID | Name | Instance UUID | Power State | Provisioning State | Maintenance |
+------+------+---------------+-------------+--------------------+-------------+
+------+------+---------------+-------------+--------------------+-------------+

which should print an empty table if connection to Ironic works as expected.

Enroll Hardware

The following requirements are installed during the Installation step above:

• openstack-infra/shade library
• openstack-infra/os-client-config

In order to enroll hardware, you will naturally need an inventory of your hardware. When utilizing the dynamic inventory module and accompanying roles the inventory can be supplied in one of three ways, all of which ultimately translate to JSON data that Ansible parses.

The original method is to utilize a CSV file. This format is covered below in the Legacy CSV File Format section. This has a number of limitations, but does allow a user to bulk load hardware from an inventory list with minimal data transformations.

The newer method is to utilize a JSON or YAML document which the inventory parser will convert and provide to Ansible.

In order to use, you will need to define the environment variable BIFROST_INVENTORY_SOURCE to equal a file, which then allows you to execute Ansible utilizing the bifrost_inventory.py file as the data source.

Conversion from CSV to JSON formats

The inventory/bifrost_inventory.py program additionally features a mode that allows a user to convert a CSV file to the JSON data format utilizing a --convertcsv command line setting when directly invoked.

Example:

export BIFROST_INVENTORY_SOURCE=/tmp/baremetal.csv
inventory/bifrost_inventory.py --convertcsv >/tmp/baremetal.json

JSON file format

The JSON format closely resembles the data structure that ironic utilizes internally. The name, driver_info, nics, driver, and properties fields are directly mapped through to ironic. This means that the data contained within can vary from host to host, such as drivers and their parameters thus allowing a mixed hardware environment to be defined in a single file.

Example:

{
    "testvm1": {
      "uuid": "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000001",
      "driver_info": {
        "power": {
          "ssh_port": 22,
          "ssh_username": "ironic",
          "ssh_virt_type": "virsh",
          "ssh_address": "192.168.122.1",
          "ssh_key_filename": "/home/ironic/.ssh/id_rsa"
        }
      },
      "nics": [
        {
          "mac": "52:54:00:f9:32:f6"
        }
      ],
      "driver": "agent_ssh",
      "ansible_ssh_host": "192.168.122.2",
      "ipv4_address": "192.168.122.2",
      "provisioning_ipv4_address": "10.0.0.9",
      "properties": {
        "cpu_arch": "x86_64",
        "ram": "3072",
        "disk_size": "10",
        "cpus": "1"
      },
      "name": "testvm1"
    }
}

The additional power of this format is easy configuration parameter injection, which could potentially allow a user to provision different operating system images onto different hardware chassis by defining the appropriate settings in an instance_info variable.

Examples utilizing JSON and YAML formatting, along host specific variable injection can be found in the playbooks/inventory/ folder.

Legacy CSV file format

The CSV file has the following columns:

0. MAC Address
1. Management username
2. Management password
3. Management Address
4. CPU Count
5. Memory size in MB
6. Disk Storage in GB
7. Flavor (Not Used)
8. Type (Not Used)
9. Host UUID
10. Host or Node name
11. Host IP Address to be set
12. ipmi_target_channel - Requires: ipmi_bridging set to single
13. ipmi_target_address - Requires: ipmi_bridging set to single
14. ipmi_transit_channel - Requires: ipmi_bridging set to dual
15. ipmi_transit_address - Requires: ipmi_bridging set to dual
16. ironic driver
17. Host provisioning IP Address

Example definition:

00:11:22:33:44:55,root,undefined,192.168.122.1,1,8192,512,NA,NA,aaaaaaaa-bbbb-cccc-dddd-eeeeeeeeeeee,hostname_100,192.168.2.100,,,,agent_ipmitool,10.0.0.9

This file format is fairly flexible and can be easily modified although the enrollment and deployment playbooks utilize the model of a host per line model in order to process through the entire list, as well as reference the specific field items.

An example file can be found at: playbooks/inventory/baremetal.csv.example

How this works?

Utilizing the dynamic inventory module, enrollment is as simple as setting the BIFROST_INVENTORY_SOURCE environment variable to your inventory data source, and then executing the enrollment playbook.:

export BIFROST_INVENTORY_SOURCE=/tmp/baremetal.json
ansible-playbook -vvvv -i inventory/bifrost_inventory.py enroll-dynamic.yaml

When ironic is installed on remote server, a regular ansible inventory with a target server should be added to ansible. This can be achieved by specifying a directory with files, each file in that directory will be part of the ansible inventory. Refer to ansible documentation http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/intro_dynamic_inventory.html#using-inventory-directories-and-multiple-inventory-sources

export BIFROST_INVENTORY_SOURCE=/tmp/baremetal.json
rm inventory/*.example
ansible-playbook -vvvv -i inventory/ enroll-dynamic.yaml

Note that enrollment is a one-time operation. The Ansible module does not synchronize data for existing nodes. You should use the ironic CLI to do this manually at the moment.

Additionally, it is important to note that the playbooks for enrollment are split into three separate playbooks based on the ipmi_bridging setting.

Deploy Hardware

How this works?

After the nodes are enrolled, they can be deployed upon. Bifrost is geared to utilize configuration drives to convey basic configuration information to the each host. This configuration information includes an SSH key to allow a user to login to the system.

To utilize the newer dynamic inventory based deployment:

export BIFROST_INVENTORY_SOURCE=/tmp/baremetal.json
ansible-playbook -vvvv -i inventory/bifrost_inventory.py deploy-dynamic.yaml

When ironic is installed on remote server, a regular ansible inventory with a target server should be added to ansible. This can be achieved by specifying a directory with files, each file in that directory will be part of the ansible inventory. Refer to ansible documentation http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/intro_dynamic_inventory.html#using-inventory-directories-and-multiple-inventory-sources

export BIFROST_INVENTORY_SOURCE=/tmp/baremetal.json
rm inventory/*.example
ansible-playbook -vvvv -i inventory/ deploy-dynamic.yaml

Note:

Before running the above command, ensure that the value for `ssh_public_key_path` in
``./playbooks/inventory/group_vars/baremetal`` refers to a valid public key file,
or set the ssh_public_key_path option on the ansible-playbook command line by
setting the variable. Example: "-e ssh_public_key_path=~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub"

If the hosts need to be re-deployed, the dynamic redeploy playbook may be used:

export BIFROST_INVENTORY_SOURCE=/tmp/baremetal.json
ansible-playbook -vvvv -i inventory/bifrost_inventory.py redeploy-dynamic.yaml

This playbook will undeploy the hosts, followed by a deployment, allowing a configurable timeout for the hosts to transition in each step.

Execute local testing

A simple scripts/test-bifrost.sh script can be utilized to install pre-requisite software packages, Ansible, and then execute the test-bifrost-create-vm.yaml and test-bifrost.yaml playbooks in order to provide a single step testing mechanism.

playbooks/test-bifrost-create-vm.yaml creates one or more VMs for testing and saves out a baremetal.json file which is used by playbooks/test-bifrost.yaml to execute the remaining roles. Two additional roles are invoked by this playbook which enables Ansible to connect to the new nodes by adding them to the inventory, and then logging into the remote machine via the user's ssh host key. Once that has successfully occurred, additional roles will unprovision the host(s) and delete them from ironic.

Command:

scripts/test-bifrost.sh

Note:

• Cleaning mode is explicitly disabled in the test-bifrost.yaml playbook due to the fact that is an IO-intensive operation that can take a great deal of time.

Manually test with Virtual Machines

Bifrost supports using virtual machines to emulate the hardware.

It is assumed you have an SSH server running on the host machine. The agent_ssh driver, used by ironic with VM testing, will need to use SSH to control the virtual machines.

An SSH key is generated for the ironic user when testing. The ironic conductor will use this key to connect to the host machine and run virsh commands.

1. Set testing to true in the playbooks/inventory/group_vars/target file.
2. You may need to adjust the value for ssh_public_key_path.
3. Run the install step, as documented above, however adding -e testing=true to the Ansible command line.
4. Execute the ansible-playbook -vvvv -i inventory/target test-bifrost-create-vm.yaml command to create a test virtual machine.
5. Set the environment variable of BIFROST_INVENTORY_SOURCE to the path to the JSON file, which by default has been written to /tmp/baremetal.json.
6. Run the enrollment step, as documented above, using the CSV file you created in the previous step.
7. Run the deployment step, as documented above.

Deployment and configuration of operating systems

By default, Bifrost deploys a configuration drive which includes the user SSH public key, hostname, and the network configuration in the form of network_data.json that can be read/parsed by the glean utility. This allows for the deployment of Ubuntu, CentOS, or Fedora "tenants" on baremetal. This file format is not yet supported by Cloud-Init, however it is on track for inclusion in cloud-init 2.0.

By default, Bifrost utilizes a utility called simple-init which leverages the previously noted glean utility to apply network configuration. This means that by default, root file systems may not be automatically expanded to consume the entire disk, which may, or may not be desirable depending upon operational needs. This is dependent upon what base OS image you utilize, and if the support is included in that image or not. At present, the standard Ubuntu cloud image includes cloud-init which will grow the root partition, however the ubuntu-minimal image does not include cloud-init and thus will not automatically grow the root partition.

Due to the nature of the design, it would be relatively easy for a user to import automatic growth or reconfiguration steps either in the image to be deployed, or in post-deployment steps via custom Ansible playbooks.

Build Custom Ironic Python Agent (IPA) images

Bifrost supports the ability for a user to build a custom IPA ramdisk utilizing the diskimage-builder element "ironic-agent". In order to utilize this feature, the download_ipa setting must be set to false and the create_ipa_image must be set to "true". By default, the install playbook will build a Debian jessie based IPA image, if a pre-existing IPA image is not present on disk. If you wish to explicitly set a specific release to be passed to diskimage-create, then the setting dib_os_release can be set in addition to dib_os_element.

If you wish to include an extra element into the IPA disk image, such as a custom hardware manager, you can pass the variable ipa_extra_dib_elements as a space-separated list of elements. This defaults to an empty string.

Use Bifrost with Keystone

Virtualenv installation support (EXPERIMENTAL)

Bifrost can be used with a python virtual environment. At present, this feature is experimental, so it's disabled by default. If you would like to use a virtual environment, you'll need to modify the install steps slightly. To set up the virtual environment and install ansible into it, run env-setup.sh as follows:

export VENV=/opt/stack/bifrost
./scripts/env-setup.sh

Then run the install playbook with the following arguments:

ansible-playbook -vvvv -i inventory/target install.yaml

This will install ironic and its dependencies into the virtual environment.

Offline Installation