Boot Interface in Ironic

https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ironic/+spec/new-boot-interface

This spec talks about refactoring the boot logic out of the current Ironic “deploy” drivers into a new boot interface.

Problem description

Current we have a DeployInterface in Ironic. All the current implementations of this interface are responsible for two things:

  • Booting the bare metal node - both deploy ramdisk and the deployed instance.

  • Actual deployment of an image on a bare metal node.

These are two separate functions and therefore should be abstracted separately. This makes it easy to mix and match various boot mechanisms (like PXE, iPXE, virtual media) with various deploy mechanisms (iscsi deploy, agent deploy and various other deploy mechanisms which may be possible like deploying with torrent, multicast, etc in which discussions have been initiated) without duplicating code.

Proposed change

  • A new BootInterface needs to be added. The interface will recommend the following methods for the implementor:

    @six.add_metaclass(abc.ABCMeta)
class BootInterface(object):
  """Interface for inspection-related actions."""

  @abc.abstractmethod
  def get_properties(self):
      """Return the properties of the interface.

      :returns: dictionary of <property name>:<property description>
     """

  @abc.abstractmethod
  def validate(self, task):
      """Validate the driver-specific info for booting.

      This method validates the driver-specific info for booting a ramdisk
      and an instance on the node.  If invalid, raises an exception;
      otherwise returns None.

      :param task: a task from TaskManager.
      :raises: InvalidParameterValue
      :raises: MissingParameterValue
      """

  @abc.abstractmethod
  def prepare_ramdisk(self, task, ramdisk_params):
      """Prepares the boot of Ironic ramdisk.

      This method prepares the boot of the deploy ramdisk after reading
      relevant information from the node's database.

      :param task: a task from TaskManager.
      :param ramdisk_params: the options to be passed to the ironic ramdisk.
          Different interfaces might want to boot the ramdisk in different
          ways by passing parameters to them.  For example,
          * When DIB ramdisk is booted to deploy a node, it takes the
            parameters iscsi_target_iqn, deployment_id, ironic_api_url, etc.
          * When Agent ramdisk is booted to deploy a node, it takes the
            parameters ipa-driver-name, ipa-api-url, root_device, etc.
          Other interfaces can make use of ramdisk_params to pass such
          information.  Different implementations of boot interface will
          have different ways of passing parameters to the ramdisk.
      """

  @abc.abstractmethod
  def clean_up_ramdisk(self, task):
      """Tears down the boot of Ironic ramdisk.

      This method tears down the boot of the deploy ramdisk after reading
      relevant information from the node's database.

      :param task: a task from TaskManager.
      """

  @abc.abstractmethod
  def prepare_instance(self, task):
      """Prepares the boot of instance.

      This method prepares the boot of the instance after reading
      relevant information from the node's database.

      :param task: a task from TaskManager.
      """

  @abc.abstractmethod
  def clean_up_instance(self, task):
      """Tears down the boot of instance.

      This method tears down the boot of the instance after reading
      relevant information from the node's database.

      :param task: a task from TaskManager.
      """

  • The following new implementations of BootInterface will be created.

    • pxe.PXEBoot - Booting a bare metal node using PXE

    • ipxe.IPXEBoot - Booting a bare metal node using iPXE

    • ilo.boot.IloVirtualMediaBoot - Booting a bare metal node using iLO Virtual Media.

    Note

    Even though IPXEBoot and PXEBoot are in same deploy driver currently, the steps for preparing a bare metal to boot from PXE and iPXE are different (even though they share some common code). We will refactor both of them as separate boot interfaces. The Kilo behaviour of using only either of PXE or iPXE at same time will be retained - drivers will instantiate pxe.PXEBoot or ipxe.IPXEBoot depending on CONF.pxe.ipxe_enabled.

  • The code for the above implementations of BootInterface will be taken from pxe.PXEDeploy, agent.AgentDeploy, ilo.IloVirtualMediaIscsiDeploy and ilo.IloVirtualMediaAgentDeploy. These implementations of DeployInterface will be freed of any logic dealing with booting of bare metal node.

  • pxe.PXEDeploy will be refactored into pxe.PXEBoot and iscsi_deploy.ISCSIDeploy.

  • Each driver will mention what is the BootInterface implementation that it wishes to instantiate. For example, the pxe_ipmitool driver will look like the following:

    class PXEAndIPMIToolDriver(base.BaseDriver):
  """PXE + IPMITool driver"""

  def __init__(self):
    self.power = ipmitool.IPMIPower()
    self.console = ipmitool.IPMIShellinaboxConsole()
    self.boot = pxe.PXEBoot()
    self.deploy = iscsi_deploy.ISCSIDeploy()
    self.management = ipmitool.IPMIManagement()
    self.vendor = pxe.VendorPassthru()
    self.inspect = discoverd.DiscoverdInspect.create_if_enabled(
        'PXEAndIPMIToolDriver')

Note

It might make sense to rename the drivers to include the boot interface as well as deploy interface after this is implemented. As such, this requires a better thought out process to rename the drivers, address issues of backward compatibility, etc. Hence it is out of scope of this spec. That can be addressed later after this is implemented.

Alternatives

We can continue to keep the boot and deploy logic together but this will lead to code duplications and unnecessary refactorings when additional deploy mechanisms and boot mechanisms are added in the future.

Data model impact

None.

State Machine Impact

None.

REST API impact

None.

RPC API impact

None.

Client (CLI) impact

None.

Driver API impact

This adds the a new BootInterface (as described above) which driver writers may use with the deploy drivers. BootInterface is not a mandatory interface.

Nova driver impact

None.

Security impact

None.

Other end user impact

None.

Scalability impact

None.

Performance Impact

None.

Other deployer impact

None.

Developer impact

New driver developers adding new deploy mechanisms in Ironic will be encouraged to separate boot and deploy logic so that it can reused easily.

Implementation

Assignee(s)

rameshg87

Work Items

  • Add new boot interface

  • Create pxe.PXEBoot, ipxe.IPXEBoot and refactor pxe.PXEDeploy into iscsi_deploy.ISCSIDeploy to make use of these boot interfaces.

  • Refactor agent.AgentDeploy to use new pxe.PXEBoot and ipxe.IPXEBoot (Yes, we are adding iPXE support for agent deploy).

  • Create ilo.boot.IloVirtualMediaBoot, and refactor IloVirtualMediaIscsiDriver, IloVirtualMediaAgentDriver to make use of the new boot interface.

Dependencies

None.

Testing

Unit tests will be updated for the new interfaces. Since this change doesn’t add any new functionality, the current upstream CI testing should be enough.

Upgrades and Backwards Compatibility

This doesn’t break out-of-tree deploy drivers. Still it will be possible to implement deploy drivers for provisioning bare metal nodes without a boot interface- i.e without separate boot and deploy interfaces. This is because the conductor will still be using all the published interfaces of DeployInterface for deploying a bare metal node.

This change proposes the addition of new optional boot interface which can be used as a helper for DeployInterface and refactors all upstream deploy drivers to follow this logic.

Documentation Impact

Changes to the existing interface will be documented. Also, new developer documentation will be updated to encourage splitting deploy logic into separate boot and deploy interfaces.

References

Not according to this spec, but a POC how it will look like: * https://review.openstack.org/#/c/166512/ * https://review.openstack.org/#/c/166513/ * https://review.openstack.org/#/c/166521/