iLO drivers¶
Overview¶
iLO drivers enable to take advantage of features of iLO management engine in HP Proliant servers. iLO drivers are targeted for HP Proliant Gen 8 systems and above which have iLO 4 management engine. [1]
For more detailed and up-to-date information (like tested platforms, known issues, etc), please check the iLO driver wiki page [6].
Currently there are 3 iLO drivers:
iscsi_ilo
agent_ilo
pxe_ilo
.
The iscsi_ilo
and agent_ilo
drivers provide security enhanced
PXE-less deployment by using iLO virtual media to boot up the baremetal node.
These drivers send management info through management channel and separates
it from data channel which is used for deployment. iscsi_ilo
driver uses
deployment ramdisk built from diskimage-builder
, deploys from Ironic
conductor node and always does net-boot. agent_ilo
driver uses deployment
ramdisk built from IPA, deploys from baremetal node and always does local boot.
pxe_ilo
driver uses PXE/iSCSI for deployment (just like normal PXE driver),
but support automatic setting of requested boot mode from nova. This driver
doesn’t require iLO Advanced license.
Prerequisites¶
proliantutils
is a python package which contains a set of modules for managing HP Proliant hardware.Install
proliantutils
[2] module on the Ironic conductor node. Minimum version required is 2.1.0.:$ pip install "proliantutils>=2.1.0"
ipmitool
command must be present on the service node(s) whereironic-conductor
is running. On most distros, this is provided as part of theipmitool
package. Source code is available at http://ipmitool.sourceforge.net/.
Drivers¶
iscsi_ilo driver¶
Overview¶
iscsi_ilo
driver was introduced as an alternative to pxe_ipmitool
and pxe_ipminative
drivers for HP Proliant servers. iscsi_ilo
uses
virtual media feature in iLO to boot up the baremetal node instead of using
PXE or iPXE.
Target Users¶
- Users who do not want to use PXE/TFTP protocol on their data centres.
- Current PXE driver passes authentication token in clear-text over
tftp to the baremetal node.
iscsi_ilo
driver enhances the security by passing keystone authtoken and management info over encrypted management network. This driver may be used by users who have concerns on PXE drivers security issues and want to have a security enhanced PXE-less deployment mechanism.
Tested Platforms¶
This driver should work on HP Proliant Gen8 Servers and above with iLO 4. It has been tested with the following servers:
- ProLiant DL380e Gen8
- ProLiant DL580 Gen8 UEFI
- ProLiant DL180 Gen9 UEFI
- ProLiant DL380 Gen9 UEFI
- ProLiant DL580 Gen9 UEFI
For more up-to-date information on server platform support info, refer iLO driver wiki [6].
Features¶
- PXE-less deploy with Virtual Media.
- Automatic detection of current boot mode.
- Automatic setting of the required boot mode if UEFI boot mode is requested by the nova flavor’s extra spec.
- Always boot from network using Virtual Media.
- UEFI Boot Support
- UEFI Secure Boot Support
- Passing authentication token via secure, encrypted management network (Virtual Media). Provisioning is done using iSCSI over data network (like PXE driver), so this driver has the benefit of security enhancement with the same performance. Hence it segregates management info from data channel.
- Support for Out-Of-Band cleaning operations.
- Remote Console
- HW Sensors
- Works well for machines with resource constraints (lesser amount of memory).
Requirements¶
- iLO 4 Advanced License needs to be installed on iLO to enable Virtual Media feature.
- Swift Object Storage Service - iLO driver uses Swift to store temporary FAT images as well as boot ISO images.
- Glance Image Service with Swift configured as its backend - When using
iscsi_ilo
driver, the image containing the deploy ramdisk is retrieved from Swift directly by the iLO.
Deploy Process¶
- Admin configures the Proliant baremetal node for iscsi_ilo driver. The
Ironic node configured will have the
ilo_deploy_iso
property in itsdriver_info
. This will contain the Glance UUID of the ISO deploy ramdisk image. - Ironic gets a request to deploy a Glance image on the baremetal node.
iscsi_ilo
driver powers off the baremetal node.- The driver generates a swift-temp-url for the deploy ramdisk image and attaches it as Virtual Media CDROM on the iLO.
- The driver creates a small FAT32 image containing parameters to the deploy ramdisk. This image is uploaded to Swift and its swift-temp-url is attached as Virtual Media Floppy on the iLO.
- The driver sets the node to boot one-time from CDROM.
- The driver powers on the baremetal node.
- The deploy kernel/ramdisk is booted on the baremetal node. The ramdisk exposes the local disk over iSCSI and requests Ironic conductor to complete the deployment.
- The driver on the Ironic conductor writes the glance image to the baremetal node’s disk.
- The driver bundles the boot kernel/ramdisk for the Glance deploy image into an ISO and then uploads it to Swift. This ISO image will be used for booting the deployed instance.
- The driver reboots the node.
- On the first and subsequent reboots
iscsi_ilo
driver attaches this boot ISO image in Swift as Virtual Media CDROM and then sets iLO to boot from it.
Configuring and Enabling the driver¶
Prepare an ISO deploy ramdisk image from
diskimage-builder
[3]. This can be done by adding theiso
element to theramdisk-image-create
command. This command creates the deploy kernel/ramdisk as well as a bootable ISO image containing the deploy kernel and ramdisk.The below command creates files named
deploy-ramdisk.kernel
,deploy-ramdisk.initramfs
anddeploy-ramdisk.iso
in the current working directory.:cd <path-to-diskimage-builder> ./bin/ramdisk-image-create -o deploy-ramdisk ubuntu deploy-ironic iso
Upload this image to Glance.:
glance image-create --name deploy-ramdisk.iso --disk-format iso --container-format bare < deploy-ramdisk.iso
Configure Glance image service with its storage backend as Swift. See [4] for configuration instructions.
Set a temp-url key for Glance user in Swift. For example, if you have configured Glance with user
glance-swift
and tenant asservice
, then run the below command:swift --os-username=service:glance-swift post -m temp-url-key:mysecretkeyforglance
Fill the required parameters in the
[glance]
section in/etc/ironic/ironic.conf
. Normally you would be required to fill in the following details.:[glance] swift_temp_url_key=mysecretkeyforglance swift_endpoint_url=http://10.10.1.10:8080 swift_api_version=v1 swift_account=AUTH_51ea2fb400c34c9eb005ca945c0dc9e1 swift_container=glance
The details can be retrieved by running the below command::
$ swift --os-username=service:glance-swift stat -v | grep -i url StorageURL: http://10.10.1.10:8080/v1/AUTH_51ea2fb400c34c9eb005ca945c0dc9e1 Meta Temp-Url-Key: mysecretkeyforglance
Swift must be accessible with the same admin credentials configured in Ironic. For example, if Ironic is configured with the below credentials in
/etc/ironic/ironic.conf
.:[keystone_authtoken] admin_password = password admin_user = ironic admin_tenant_name = service
Ensure
auth_version
inkeystone_authtoken
to 2.Then, the below command should work.:
$ swift --os-username ironic --os-password password --os-tenant-name service --auth-version 2 stat Account: AUTH_22af34365a104e4689c46400297f00cb Containers: 2 Objects: 18 Bytes: 1728346241 Objects in policy "policy-0": 18 Bytes in policy "policy-0": 1728346241 Meta Temp-Url-Key: mysecretkeyforglance X-Timestamp: 1409763763.84427 X-Trans-Id: tx51de96a28f27401eb2833-005433924b Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Accept-Ranges: bytes
Add
iscsi_ilo
to the list ofenabled_drivers
in/etc/ironic/ironic.conf
. For example::enabled_drivers = fake,pxe_ssh,pxe_ipmitool,iscsi_ilo
Restart the Ironic conductor service.:
$ service ironic-conductor restart
Registering Proliant node in Ironic¶
Nodes configured for iLO driver should have the driver
property set to
iscsi_ilo
. The following configuration values are also required in
driver_info
:
ilo_address
: IP address or hostname of the iLO.ilo_username
: Username for the iLO with administrator privileges.ilo_password
: Password for the above iLO user.ilo_deploy_iso
: The Glance UUID of the deploy ramdisk ISO image.client_port
: (optional) Port to be used for iLO operations if you are using a custom port on the iLO. Default port used is 443.client_timeout
: (optional) Timeout for iLO operations. Default timeout is 60 seconds.console_port
: (optional) Node’s UDP port for console access. Any unused port on the Ironic conductor node may be used.
For example, you could run a similar command like below to enroll the Proliant node:
ironic node-create -d iscsi_ilo -i ilo_address=<ilo-ip-address> -i ilo_username=<ilo-username> -i ilo_password=<ilo-password> -i ilo_deploy_iso=<glance-uuid-of-deploy-iso>
Boot modes¶
Refer to Boot mode support section for more information.
UEFI Secure Boot¶
Refer to UEFI Secure Boot support section for more information.
Node cleaning¶
Refer to ilo_node_cleaning for more information.
agent_ilo driver¶
Overview¶
agent_ilo
driver was introduced as an alternative to agent_ipmitool
and agent_ipminative
drivers for HP Proliant servers. agent_ilo
driver
uses virtual media feature in HP Proliant baremetal servers to boot up the
Ironic Python Agent (IPA) on the baremetal node instead of using PXE. For
more information on IPA, refer
https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Ironic-python-agent.
Target Users¶
- Users who do not want to use PXE/TFTP protocol on their data centres.
Tested Platforms¶
This driver should work on HP Proliant Gen8 Servers and above with iLO 4. It has been tested with the following servers:
- ProLiant DL380e Gen8
- ProLiant DL380 Gen9 UEFI
- ProLiant DL580 Gen9 UEFI
This driver supports only Gen 8 Class 0 systems (BIOS only). For more up-to-date information, check the iLO driver wiki [6].
Features¶
- PXE-less deploy with Virtual Media using Ironic Python Agent.
- Support for out-of-band cleaning operations.
- Remote Console
- HW Sensors
- IPA runs on the baremetal node and pulls the image directly from Swift.
- IPA deployed instances always boots from local disk.
- Segregates management info from data channel.
- UEFI Boot Support
- UEFI Secure Boot Support
- Support to use default in-band cleaning operations supported by Ironic Python Agent. For more details, see In-Band vs Out-of-Band.
Requirements¶
- iLO 4 Advanced License needs to be installed on iLO to enable Virtual Media feature.
- Swift Object Storage Service - iLO driver uses Swift to store temporary FAT images as well as boot ISO images.
- Glance Image Service with Swift configured as its backend - When using
agent_ilo
driver, the image containing the agent is retrieved from Swift directly by the iLO.
Deploy Process¶
- Admin configures the Proliant baremetal node for
agent_ilo
driver. The Ironic node configured will have theilo_deploy_iso
property in itsdriver_info
. This will contain the Glance UUID of the ISO deploy agent image containing the agent. - Ironic gets a request to deploy a Glance image on the baremetal node.
- Driver powers off the baremetal node.
- Driver generates a swift-temp-url for the deploy agent image and attaches it as Virtual Media CDROM on the iLO.
- Driver creates a small FAT32 image containing parameters to the agent ramdisk. This image is uploaded to Swift and its swift-temp-url is attached as Virtual Media Floppy on the iLO.
- Driver sets the node to boot one-time from CDROM.
- Driver powers on the baremetal node.
- The deploy kernel/ramdisk containing the agent is booted on the baremetal node. The agent ramdisk talks to the Ironic conductor, downloads the image directly from Swift and writes the node’s disk.
- Driver sets the node to permanently boot from disk and then reboots the node.
Configuring and Enabling the driver¶
Prepare an ISO deploy Ironic Python Agent image containing the agent [5]. This can be done by using the iso-image-create script found within the agent. The below set of commands will create a file
ipa-ramdisk.iso
in the below directoryUPLOAD
:$ cd <directory-containing-ironic-python-agent> $ cd ./imagebuild/coreos $ make iso $ cd UPLOAD $ ls $ coreos_production_pxe_image-oem.cpio.gz coreos_production_pxe.vmlinuz ipa-coreos.iso
Upload the IPA ramdisk image to Glance.:
glance image-create --name ipa-ramdisk.iso --disk-format iso --container-format bare < ipa-coreos.iso
Configure Glance image service with its storage backend as Swift. See [4] for configuration instructions.
Set a temp-url key for Glance user in Swift. For example, if you have configured Glance with user
glance-swift
and tenant asservice
, then run the below command:swift --os-username=service:glance-swift post -m temp-url-key:mysecretkeyforglance
Fill the required parameters in the
[glance]
section in/etc/ironic/ironic.conf
. Normally you would be required to fill in the following details.:[glance] swift_temp_url_key=mysecretkeyforglance swift_endpoint_url=http://10.10.1.10:8080 swift_api_version=v1 swift_account=AUTH_51ea2fb400c34c9eb005ca945c0dc9e1 swift_container=glance
The details can be retrieved by running the below command::
$ swift --os-username=service:glance-swift stat -v | grep -i url StorageURL: http://10.10.1.10:8080/v1/AUTH_51ea2fb400c34c9eb005ca945c0dc9e1 Meta Temp-Url-Key: mysecretkeyforglance
Swift must be accessible with the same admin credentials configured in Ironic. For example, if Ironic is configured with the below credentials in
/etc/ironic/ironic.conf
.:[keystone_authtoken] admin_password = password admin_user = ironic admin_tenant_name = service
Ensure
auth_version
inkeystone_authtoken
to 2.Then, the below command should work.:
$ swift --os-username ironic --os-password password --os-tenant-name service --auth-version 2 stat Account: AUTH_22af34365a104e4689c46400297f00cb Containers: 2 Objects: 18 Bytes: 1728346241 Objects in policy "policy-0": 18 Bytes in policy "policy-0": 1728346241 Meta Temp-Url-Key: mysecretkeyforglance X-Timestamp: 1409763763.84427 X-Trans-Id: tx51de96a28f27401eb2833-005433924b Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Accept-Ranges: bytes
Add
agent_ilo
to the list ofenabled_drivers
in/etc/ironic/ironic.conf
. For example::enabled_drivers = fake,pxe_ssh,pxe_ipmitool,agent_ilo
Restart the Ironic conductor service.:
$ service ironic-conductor restart
Registering Proliant node in Ironic¶
Nodes configured for iLO driver should have the driver
property set to
agent_ilo
. The following configuration values are also required in
driver_info
:
ilo_address
: IP address or hostname of the iLO.ilo_username
: Username for the iLO with administrator privileges.ilo_password
: Password for the above iLO user.ilo_deploy_iso
: The Glance UUID of the deploy agent ISO image containingthe agent.
client_port
: (optional) Port to be used for iLO operations if you are using a custom port on the iLO. Default port used is 443.client_timeout
: (optional) Timeout for iLO operations. Default timeout is 60 seconds.console_port
: (optional) Node’s UDP port for console access. Any unused port on the Ironic conductor node may be used.
For example, you could run a similar command like below to enroll the Proliant node:
ironic node-create -d agent_ilo -i ilo_address=<ilo-ip-address> -i ilo_username=<ilo-username> -i ilo_password=<ilo-password> -i ilo_deploy_iso=<glance-uuid-of-deploy-iso>
Boot modes¶
Refer to Boot mode support section for more information.
UEFI Secure Boot¶
Refer to UEFI Secure Boot support section for more information.
Node Cleaning¶
Refer to ilo_node_cleaning for more information.
pxe_ilo driver¶
Overview¶
pxe_ilo
driver uses PXE/iSCSI (just like pxe_ipmitool
driver) to
deploy the image and uses iLO to do all management operations on the baremetal
node(instead of using IPMI).
Target Users¶
- Users who want to use PXE/iSCSI for deployment in their environment or who don’t have Advanced License in their iLO.
- Users who don’t want to configure boot mode manually on the baremetal node.
Tested Platforms¶
This driver should work on HP Proliant Gen8 Servers and above with iLO 4. It has been tested with the following servers:
- ProLiant DL380e Gen8
- ProLiant DL380e Gen8
- ProLiant DL580 Gen8 (BIOS/UEFI)
The driver doesn’t work on BIOS mode on DL580 Gen8 and Gen9 systems due to an issue in the firmware. For information on this, refer iLO driver wiki [6].
For more up-to-date information, check the iLO driver wiki [6].
Features¶
- Automatic detection of current boot mode.
- Automatic setting of the required boot mode if UEFI boot mode is requested by the nova flavor’s extra spec.
- Support for Out-Of-Band cleaning operations.
Requirements¶
None.
Configuring and Enabling the driver¶
Prepare an ISO deploy ramdisk image from
diskimage-builder
[3].The below command creates a file named
deploy-ramdisk.kernel
anddeploy-ramdisk.initramfs
in the current working directory:cd <path-to-diskimage-builder> ./bin/ramdisk-image-create -o deploy-ramdisk ubuntu deploy-ironic
Upload this image to Glance.:
glance image-create --name deploy-ramdisk.kernel --disk-format aki --container-format aki < deploy-ramdisk.kernel glance image-create --name deploy-ramdisk.initramfs --disk-format ari --container-format ari < deploy-ramdisk.initramfs
Add
pxe_ilo
to the list ofenabled_drivers
in/etc/ironic/ironic.conf
. For example::enabled_drivers = fake,pxe_ssh,pxe_ipmitool,pxe_ilo
Restart the Ironic conductor service.:
service ironic-conductor restart
Registering Proliant node in Ironic¶
Nodes configured for iLO driver should have the driver
property set to
pxe_ilo
. The following configuration values are also required in
driver_info
:
ilo_address
: IP address or hostname of the iLO.ilo_username
: Username for the iLO with administrator privileges.ilo_password
: Password for the above iLO user.pxe_deploy_kernel
: The Glance UUID of the deployment kernel.pxe_deploy_ramdisk
: The Glance UUID of the deployment ramdisk.client_port
: (optional) Port to be used for iLO operations if you are using a custom port on the iLO. Default port used is 443.client_timeout
: (optional) Timeout for iLO operations. Default timeout is 60 seconds.console_port
: (optional) Node’s UDP port for console access. Any unused port on the Ironic conductor node may be used.
For example, you could run a similar command like below to enroll the Proliant node:
ironic node-create -d pxe_ilo ilo_address=<ilo-ip-address> -i ilo_username=<ilo-username> -i ilo_password=<ilo-password> -i pxe_deploy_kernel=<glance-uuid-of-pxe-deploy-kernel> pxe_deploy_ramdisk=<glance-uuid-of-deploy-ramdisk>
Boot modes¶
Refer to Boot mode support section for more information.
Node Cleaning¶
Refer to ilo_node_cleaning for more information.
Functionalities across drivers¶
Boot mode support¶
The following drivers support automatic detection and setting of boot mode (Legacy BIOS or UEFI).
pxe_ilo
iscsi_ilo
agent_ilo
The boot modes can be configured in Ironic in the following way:
When boot mode capability is not configured, these drivers preserve the current boot mode of the baremetal Proliant server. If operator/user doesn’t care about boot modes for servers, then the boot mode capability need not be configured.
Only one boot mode (either
uefi
orbios
) can be configured for the node.If the operator wants a node to boot always in
uefi
mode orbios
mode, then they may usecapabilities
parameter withinproperties
field of an Ironic node.To configure a node in
uefi
mode, then setcapabilities
as below:ironic node-update <node-uuid> add properties/capabilities='boot_mode:uefi'
Nodes having
boot_mode
set touefi
may be requested by adding anextra_spec
to the Nova flavor:nova flavor-key ironic-test-3 set capabilities:boot_mode="uefi" nova boot --flavor ironic-test-3 --image test-image instance-1
If
capabilities
is used inextra_spec
as above, Nova scheduler (ComputeCapabilitiesFilter
) will match only Ironic nodes which have theboot_mode
set appropriately inproperties/capabilities
. It will filter out rest of the nodes.The above facility for matching in Nova can be used in heterogeneous environments where there is a mix of
uefi
andbios
machines, and operator wants to provide a choice to the user regarding boot modes. If the flavor doesn’t containboot_mode
then Nova scheduler will not consider boot mode as a placement criteria, hence user may get either a BIOS or UEFI machine that matches with user specified flavors.
Currently for UEFI boot mode, automatic creation of boot ISO doesn’t
work. The boot ISO for the deploy image needs to be built separately and the
deploy image’s boot_iso
property in Glance should contain the Glance UUID
of the boot ISO. For building boot ISO, add iso
element to the
diskimage-builder command to build the image. For example:
disk-image-create ubuntu baremetal iso
UEFI Secure Boot support¶
The following drivers support UEFI secure boot deploy:
iscsi_ilo
agent_ilo
The UEFI secure boot mode can be configured in Ironic by adding
secure_boot
parameter in the capabilities
parameter within
properties
field of an Ironic node.
secure_boot
is a boolean parameter and takes value as true
or
false
.
To enable secure_boot
on a node add it to capabilities
as below:
ironic node-update <node-uuid> add properties/capabilities='secure_boot:true'
Nodes having secure_boot
set to true
may be requested by adding an
extra_spec
to the Nova flavor:
nova flavor-key ironic-test-3 set capabilities:secure_boot="true"
nova boot --flavor ironic-test-3 --image test-image instance-1
If capabilities
is used in extra_spec
as above, Nova scheduler
(ComputeCapabilitiesFilter
) will match only Ironic nodes which have
the secure_boot
set appropriately in properties/capabilities
. It will
filter out rest of the nodes.
The above facility for matching in Nova can be used in heterogeneous
environments where there is a mix of machines supporting and not supporting
UEFI secure boot, and operator wants to provide a choice to the user
regarding secure boot. If the flavor doesn’t contain secure_boot
then
Nova scheduler will not consider secure boot mode as a placement criteria,
hence user may get a secure boot capable machine that matches with user
specified flavors but deployment would not use its secure boot capability.
Secure boot deploy would happen only when it is explicitly specified through
flavor.
Ensure the public key of the signed image is loaded into baremetal to deploy
signed images.
For HP Proliant Gen9 servers, one can enroll public key using iLO System
Utilities UI. Please refer to section Accessing Secure Boot options
in
HP UEFI System Utilities User Guide. [7]
One can also refer to white paper on Secure Boot for Linux on HP Proliant
servers for additional details. [8]
Node Cleaning¶
The following iLO drivers support node cleaning -
pxe_ilo
iscsi_ilo
agent_ilo
Supported Cleaning Operations¶
The cleaning operations supported are:
- -
reset_ilo
: Resets the iLO. By default, enabled with priority 1.
- -
reset_bios_to_default
: Resets BIOS Settings to default. By default, enabled with priority 10. This clean step is supported only on Gen9 and above servers.
- -
reset_secure_boot_keys_to_default
: Resets secure boot keys to manufacturer’s defaults. This step is supported only on Gen9 and above servers. By default, enabled with priority 20 .
- -
reset_ilo_credential
: Resets the iLO password, if ‘ilo_change_password’ is specified as part of node’s driver_info. By default, enabled with priority 30.
- -
clear_secure_boot_keys
: Clears all secure boot keys. This step is supported only on Gen9 and above servers. By default, this step is disabled.
- -
For in-band cleaning operations supported by
agent_ilo
driver, see In-Band vs Out-of-Band.All the cleaning steps have an explicit configuration option for priority. In order to disable or change the priority of the clean steps, respective configuration option for priority should be updated in ironic.conf.
Updating clean step priority to 0, will disable that particular clean step and will not run during cleaning.
Configuration Options for the clean steps are listed under [ilo] section in ironic.conf
- clean_priority_reset_ilo=1 - clean_priority_reset_bios_to_default=10 - clean_priority_reset_secure_boot_keys_to_default=20 - clean_priority_clear_secure_boot_keys=0 - clean_priority_reset_ilo_credential=30 - clean_priority_erase_devices=10
For more information on node cleaning, see [9].
References¶
[1] | HP iLO 4 User Guide - http://h20628.www2.hp.com/km-ext/kmcsdirect/emr_na-c03334051-11.pdf |
[2] | Proliantutils module - https://pypi.python.org/pypi/proliantutils |
[3] | (1, 2) DiskImage-Builder - https://github.com/openstack/diskimage-builder |
[4] | (1, 2) http://docs.openstack.org/developer/glance/configuring.html#configuring-the-swift-storage-backend |
[5] | Ironic Python Agent - https://github.com/openstack/ironic-python-agent |
[6] | (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Ironic/Drivers/iLODrivers |
[7] | HP UEFI System Utilities User Guide - http://www.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c04398276.pdf |
[8] | Secure Boot for Linux on HP Proliant servers http://h20195.www2.hp.com/V2/getpdf.aspx/4AA5-4496ENW.pdf |
[9] | http://docs.openstack.org/developer/ironic/deploy/cleaning.html |