ironic/doc/source/admin/multitenancy.rst

Multi-tenancy in the Bare Metal service

Overview

It is possible to use dedicated tenant networks for provisioned nodes, which extends the current Bare Metal service capabilities of providing flat networks. This works in conjunction with the Networking service to allow provisioning of nodes in a separate provisioning network. The result of this is that multiple tenants can use nodes in an isolated fashion. However, this configuration does not support trunk ports belonging to multiple networks.

Concepts

Network interfaces

Network interface is one of the driver interfaces that manages network switching for nodes. There are 3 network interfaces available in the Bare Metal service:

• noop interface is used for standalone deployments, and does not perform any network switching;
• flat interface places all provisioned nodes and nodes being deployed into a single layer 2 network, separated from the cleaning network;
• neutron interface provides tenant-defined networking by integrating with the Networking service, while also separating tenant networks from the provisioning and cleaning provider networks.

Local link connection

The Bare Metal service allows local_link_connection information to be associated with Bare Metal ports. This information is provided to the Networking service's ML2 driver when a Virtual Interface (VIF) is attached. The ML2 driver uses the information to plug the specified port to the tenant network.

local_link_connection fields

Field	Description
switch_id	Required. Identifies a switch and can be a MAC address or an OpenFlow-based datapath_id.
port_id	Required. Port ID on the switch, for example, Gig0/1.
switch_info	Optional. Used to distinguish different switch models or other vendor-specific identifier. Some ML2 plugins may require this field.

Physical networks

A Bare Metal port may be associated with a physical network using its physical_network field. The Bare Metal service uses this information when mapping between virtual ports in the Networking service and physical ports and port groups in the Bare Metal service. A port's physical network field is optional, and if not set then any virtual port may be mapped to that port, provided that no free Bare Metal port with a suitable physical network assignment exists.

The physical network of a port group is defined by the physical network of its constituent ports. The Bare Metal service ensures that all ports in a port group have the same value in their physical network field.

When attaching a virtual interface (VIF) to a node, the following ordered criteria are used to select a suitable unattached port or port group:

• Require ports or port groups to not have a physical network or to have a physical network that matches one of the VIF's allowed physical networks.
• Prefer ports and port groups that have a physical network to ports and port groups that do not have a physical network.
• Prefer port groups to ports. Prefer ports with PXE enabled.

Configuring the Bare Metal service

See the Configure tenant networks section in the installation guide for the Bare Metal service.

Configuring nodes

1. Ensure that your python-ironicclient version and requested API version are sufficient for your requirements.

   • Multi-tenancy support was added in API version 1.20, and is supported by python-ironicclient version 1.5.0 or higher.
   • Physical network support for ironic ports was added in API version 1.34, and is supported by python-ironicclient version 1.15.0 or higher.

   The following examples assume you are using python-ironicclient version 1.15.0 or higher. They show the usage of both ironic and openstack baremetal commands.

   If you're going to use ironic command, set the following variable in your shell environment:

   export IRONIC_API_VERSION=<API version>

   If you're using ironic client plugin for openstack client via openstack baremetal commands, export the following variable:

   export OS_BAREMETAL_API_VERSION=<API version>

2. The node's network_interface field should be set to a valid network interface. Valid interfaces are listed in the [DEFAULT]/enabled_network_interfaces configuration option in the ironic-conductor's configuration file. Set it to neutron to use the Networking service's ML2 driver:

   • ironic command:

     ironic node-create --network-interface neutron \
     --driver agent-ipmitool

   • openstack command:

     openstack baremetal node create --network-interface neutron \
     --driver agent-ipmitool

   Note

   If the [DEFAULT]/default_network_interface configuration option is set, the --network-interface option does not need to be specified when creating the node.

3. To update an existing node's network interface to neutron, use the following commands:

   • ironic command:

     ironic node-update $NODE_UUID_OR_NAME add network_interface=neutron

   • openstack command:

     openstack baremetal node set $NODE_UUID_OR_NAME \
     --network-interface neutron

4. Create a port as follows:

   • ironic command:

     ironic port-create -a $HW_MAC_ADDRESS -n $NODE_UUID \
     -l switch_id=$SWITCH_MAC_ADDRESS -l switch_info=$SWITCH_HOSTNAME \
     -l port_id=$SWITCH_PORT --pxe-enabled true --physical-network physnet1

   • openstack command:

     openstack baremetal port create $HW_MAC_ADDRESS --node $NODE_UUID \
     --local-link-connection switch_id=$SWITCH_MAC_ADDRESS \
     --local-link-connection switch_info=$SWITCH_HOSTNAME \
     --local-link-connection port_id=$SWITCH_PORT --pxe-enabled true \
     --physical-network physnet1

5. Check the port configuration:

   • ironic command:

     ironic port-show $PORT_UUID

   • openstack command:

     openstack baremetal port show $PORT_UUID

After these steps, the provisioning of the created node will happen in the provisioning network, and then the node will be moved to the tenant network that was requested.