Hardware interface for BIOS configuration¶

Alternatives¶

• Operator can change the BIOS configuration manually whenever required. But this has to be done for each node which is time-consuming and error-prone.

Data model impact¶

• Unlike the RAID configuration [3], the target BIOS settings will be passed as an argument to cleaning step and not stored in the database.

• The current BIOS config will be cached and will be stored in a separate BIOS table. The following database table and fields will be added:

  • A new table named bios_settings will be added with the following fields:

    • node_id
      • Integer
      • PrimaryKeyConstraint
      • ForeignKeyConstraint(‘nodes.id’)
    • name
      • String
      • PrimaryKeyConstraint
    • value
      • String
    • created_at
      • DateTime
    • updated_at
      • DateTime

    It will store the cached BIOS information that was retrieved from the node and will be updated when the BIOS settings are changed. ‘created_at’ and ‘updated_at’ fields will be updated accordingly when a new record is added or the existing record is updated.

  • node.bios_interface will be added to node table, and it will contain the hardware interface we want to use for BIOS automation.

  • New objects ironic.objects.bios.BIOSSetting and ironic.objects.bios.BIOSSettingList will be added to object model. The BIOSSetting and BIOSSettingList fields in the python object model will be populated on-demand.

State Machine Impact¶

• When going from enroll to manageable, credentials are validated to make sure user has the proper rights to access the BIOS config.

REST API impact¶

Two new cleaning steps are proposed to be implemented on the BIOSInterface:

• bios.factory_reset. It will trigger the BIOS settings factory reset for a given node. For example:

  {
    "target":"clean",
    "clean_steps": [{
      "interface": "bios",
      "step": "factory_reset"
    }]
  }
  

• bios.apply_configuration. It will set the given settings to the BIOS of a given node. For example:

  {
    "target":"clean",
    "clean_steps": [{
      "interface": "bios",
      "step": "apply_configuration",
      "args": {
        "settings": [
          {
            "name": <name>,
            "value": <value>
          },
          {
            "name": <name>,
            "value": <value>
          }
        ]
      }
    }]
  }
  

• A new REST API will be introduced to get the cached BIOS config for a node:

  GET /v1/nodes/<node_ident>/bios
  

  The operation will return the currently cached settings with the following data schema:

  {
    "bios": [
      {
        "links": [
          {
            "href": "http://127.0.0.1:6385/v1/nodes/<node_ident>/bios/<name>",
            "rel": "self"
          },
          {
            "href": "http://127.0.0.1:6385/nodes/<node_ident>/bios/<name>",
            "rel": "bookmark"
          }
        ],
        "name": <name>,
        "value": <value>
      },
      {
        "links": [
          {
            "href": "http://127.0.0.1:6385/v1/nodes/<node_ident>/bios/<name>",
            "rel": "self"
          },
          {
            "href": "http://127.0.0.1:6385/nodes/<node_ident>/bios/<name>",
            "rel": "bookmark"
          }
        ],
        "name": <name>,
        "value": <value>
      }
    ]
  }
  

  The API will return HTTP 400 (Bad Request) if driver doesn’t support BIOS configuration or 404 (Resource Not Found) if node BIOS has not yet been configured. Otherwise it will return HTTP 200 (OK).

• To get a specified BIOS setting for a node:

  GET /v1/nodes/<node_ident>/bios/<setting name>
  

  The operation will return the specified BIOS setting with the following data schema:

  {
    "<setting name>":
      {
        "name": <setting name>,
        "value": <value>
      }
  }
  

Client (CLI) impact¶

RPC API impact¶

None

Driver API impact¶

A new BIOSInterface will be available for the drivers to allow them to implement BIOS configuration. There will be several new methods and cleaning steps in the interface:

• do_factory_reset() - This method is called to reset all the BIOS settings supported by driver to factory default. It will also update the records of bios_settings database table to the known defaults once reset action succeeds. It is up to the vendor to decide the BIOS defaults settings that will be set.

• factory_reset() - This cleaning step will delegate the actual reset work into the abstract method do_factory_reset().

  The operator can choose to call it as part of manual cleaning steps. The corresponding manual cleaning step will be bios.factory_reset.

• do_apply_configuration(configuration={}) - The driver implementation of this method will take the settings from the configuration dictionary and will apply BIOS configuration on the bare metal. The driver is responsible for doing the corresponding validation before applying the settings, and/or manage failures when setting an invalid BIOS config. Implementation of this method needs to rollback previous settings upon first failure. In the case of needing password to update the BIOS config, it will be taken from the driver_info properties. The implementation detail is up to the driver.

• apply_configuration(configuration={}) - This cleaning step will delegate the actual configuration work into the abstract method do_apply_configuration(configuration={}).

  The operator can choose to call it as part of manual cleaning steps. The corresponding manual cleaning step will be bios.apply_configuration.

• cache_bios_settings() - This method will be called to update BIOS configuration in bios_settings database table. It will attempt to get the current BIOS settings and store them in the bios_settings database table. It will also update the timestamp fields of ‘created_at’ and ‘updated_at’ accordingly. The implementation detail is up to the driver, for example, whether to have a sub method shared by do_factory_reset, do_apply_configuration and cache_bios_settings to retrieve and save bios information in bios_settings table.

Nova driver impact¶

None

Ramdisk impact¶

None

Security impact¶

Unprivileged access to the BIOS configuration can expose sensitive BIOS information and configurable BIOS options to attackers, which may lead to disruptive consequence. It’s recommended that this kind of ability is only restricted to administrative roles. Changing BIOS settings requires credentials which will reuse the existing credentials in driver_info instead of creating new fields.

Other end user impact¶

None

Scalability impact¶

None

Performance Impact¶

BIOS configuration may extend the time required for manual cleaning on the nodes.

Other deployer impact¶

• Add new config options:
  • enabled_bios_interfaces: a list of enabled bios interfaces.
  • default_bios_interface: default bios interface to be used.
• Operator can use bios.apply_configuration and bios.factory_reset as manual cleaning tasks for doing BIOS management.

Developer impact¶

Developer may implement the BIOSInterface for respective drivers.

Assignee(s)¶

Primary assignee:

zshi yroblamo

Work Items¶

• Add bios interface field in Node object.
• Create database model & api for nodes bios table and operations.
• Create BIOSInterface which includes the following items:
  • Add new methods in BIOSInterface base driver, such as do_apply_configuration, do_factory_reset and cache_bios_settings.
  • Add new cleaning steps in BIOSInterface base driver, such as apply_configuration, factory_reset.
  • Add caching of BIOS config as part of entering cleaning step in _do_node_clean.
• Create ‘fake’ & ‘no-bios’ implementation derived from BIOSInterface.
• Create REST API endpoints for BIOS configuration.
• Create RPC objects for BIOS configuration.
• Implement OSC baremetal CLI changes.