Out-of-band RAID configuration for Gen10 and above HPE Proliant Servers¶

Problem description¶

In the current scenario where RAID configuration on HPE Proliant servers is done only via inband cleaning, Ilo5 based HPE Proliant Gen10 servers provide support to perform out-of-band RAID configuration which was not there in Gen9 and below servers. However, the raid creation or deletion will take into effect only when the system reaches POST stage. Hence, creation or deletion of RAID needs to be accompanied by a reboot.

Proposed change¶

This spec proposes to implement out-of-band RAID configuration as described by the parent spec [1]. This will require the implementation of a new hardware type Ilo5Hardware and a new raid interface for ilo as IloRAID.

OOB RAID configuration will be a four step process. 1. delete_configuration - delete the current raid config from the system. 2. read_configuration - get the updated raid config from system and update the node properties accordingly. 3. create_configuration - create the raid config which set by the user in target_raid_config of node properties. 4. read_configuration - get the updated raid config from system and update the node properties accordingly.

List of changes required:

• The following would be the composition of Ilo5Hardware:
  • This hardware type would be supported on ilo5 based HPE Proliant servers.
  • Ilo5Hardware will inherit all interfaces of parent class IloHardware.
  • Ilo5Hardware will support the new RAID interface IloRAID.
• The following would be the composition of IloRAID:
  • IloRAID will inherit RAIDInterface of base class.
  • delete_configuration - This will delete the RAID configuration on the bare metal node.
    • Since a reboot is required for changes to get reflected, this function will be decorated with additional argument reboot_required with value set to True.
    • It will create an IloClient object from proliantutils library to do operations on the iLO. This will make call to delete_raid_configuration of proliantutils library to delete the logical drives on the system.
  • create_configuration - This will create the RAID configuration on the bare metal node.
    • Since a reboot is required for changes to get reflected, this function will be decorated with additional argument reboot_required with value set to True.
    • It will create an IloClient object from proliantutils library to do operations on the iLO. This will make call to create_raid_configuration of proliantutils library to place a request to firmware to create the logical drives on the system.
  • read_configuration - This will read the RAID configuration on the bare metal node.
    • It will create an IloClient object from proliantutils library to do operations on the iLO. This will make call to read_raid_configuration of proliantutils library to get the logical drives on the system. Hence, it will update the node properties with the actual RAID configuration when called after create_configuration and to None when called after delete_configuration.
• The following would be the updates required in cleaning architecture in ironic to support post reboot operation if required any clean step.
  • Addition a new boolean positional argument reboot_required to clean_step function of BaseInterface. Default is set to False for this parameter. NOTE: The same approach is being used in inband cleaning for steps that require reboot.
  • Update ironic/conductor/manager.py:_do_next_clean_step() for each step to call prepare_cleaning() if reboot_required is set to True and result of the last command interface.execute_clean-step() is not clean wait.

Implementation¶

Dependencies¶

Support for OOB RAID in proliantutils is under development and is yet to be released.

Testing¶

Unit test cases will be added. Will be tested in 3rd party CI setup.

Upgrades and Backwards Compatibility¶

None

Documentation Impact¶

Need to update iLO driver documentation for new hardware type and RAID interface.

References¶

[1] Ironic generic raid spec: https://review.openstack.org/173214