OpenBMC Driver

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ironic/+bug/1634635

This proposal covers the addition of power and management interfaces for OpenBMC and the addition of driver to the IPA and PXE driver classes.

Note

This specification is no longer viewed as applicable as OpenBMC has support for the Redfish API interface, and as such this is considered a superior standards based interface for use. When this specificaiton was proposed, These the Redfish API had not yet been implemented in OpenBMC.

Problem description

Currently IPMI is not fully supported by OpenBMC. Instead, OpenBMC’s power is controlled through a RESTful interface. As well, the boot device can be retrieved and set through this RESTful interface. While IPMI may be supported by OpenBMC in the future, the recommended way to interact with it will continue to be its REST API.

Servers running OpenBMC will require a new interface implementation to control its power, another to set the boot device, and a hardware type that use has these interfaces supported.

Proposed change

The addition of an OpenBMCPower() module conforming to base.PowerInterface. Login credentials will be specified as openbmc_address, openbmc_username, and openbmc_password in the driver_info property of the node.

The addition of an OpenBMCManagement() module conforming to base.ManagementInterface which also uses the openbmc_address, openbmc_username, and openbmc_password as login credentials.

The module will login to the BMC, issue the proper command, then log out of the BMC.

A hardware type, OpenBMCHardware, will be added. This hardware type will have OpenBMCPower in it’s ‘supported_power_interfaces’ list. This hardware type will also have OpenBMCManagement in it’s ‘supported_management_interfaces’ list.

Alternatives

Wait for IPMI functionality to be fully supported by OpenBMC. This would allow the pxe_ipmitool and agent_ipmitool drivers to work.

The disadvantage here is that it is not the recommended method of interaction with the BMC. As well, it is unknown when IPMI will be fully supported.

Data model impact

None

State Machine Impact

None

REST API impact

None

Client (CLI) impact

None

“ironic” CLI

None

“openstack baremetal” CLI

None

RPC API impact

None

Driver API impact

None

Nova driver impact

None

Ramdisk impact

None

Security impact

None

Other end user impact

None

Scalability impact

None

Performance Impact

None

Other deployer impact

None

Developer impact

None

Implementation

Assignee(s)

Primary assignee:

Michael Turek (mjturek)

Other contributors:

Mark Hamzy (mark-hamzy)

Work Items

  • Implement a new power interface, OpenBMCPower, conforming to base.PowerInterface.

  • Implement a new management interface, OpenBMCManagement, conforming to base.ManagementInterface

  • Add hardware type, OpenBMCHardware, that has these interfaces as supported.

  • Add documentation detailing usage of interfaces and driver.

Dependencies

This feature will only be usable by target hardware that runs OpenBMC.

Testing

The feature will be tested using the KVM on POWER OpenStack CI environment.

The job will run the ironic tempest tests, but no new integration tests will be added. The job will test against real hardware initially.

Unit tests will be added as well.

Upgrades and Backwards Compatibility

None

Documentation Impact

Documentation will be added describing the new interfaces and how to use them.

References