Workflow ======== Usual hardware introspection flow is as follows: * Operator enrolls nodes into Ironic_ e.g. via ironic CLI command. Power management credentials should be provided to Ironic at this step. * Nodes are put in the correct state for introspection as described in :ref:`node_states`. * Operator sends nodes on introspection using **ironic-inspector** API or CLI (see :ref:`usage`). * On receiving node UUID **ironic-inspector**: * validates node power credentials, current power and provisioning states, * allows firewall access to PXE boot service for the nodes, * issues reboot command for the nodes, so that they boot the ramdisk. * The ramdisk collects the required information and posts it back to **ironic-inspector**. * On receiving data from the ramdisk, **ironic-inspector**: * validates received data, * finds the node in Ironic database using it's BMC address (MAC address in case of SSH driver), * fills missing node properties with received data and creates missing ports. .. note:: **ironic-inspector** is responsible to create Ironic ports for some or all NIC's found on the node. **ironic-inspector** is also capable of deleting ports that should not be present. There are two important configuration options that affect this behavior: ``add_ports`` and ``keep_ports`` (please refer to ``example.conf`` for detailed explanation). Default values as of **ironic-inspector** 1.1.0 are ``add_ports=pxe``, ``keep_ports=all``, which means that only one port will be added, which is associated with NIC the ramdisk PXE booted from. No ports will be deleted. This setting ensures that deploying on introspected nodes will succeed despite `Ironic bug 1405131 `_. Ironic inspection feature by default requires different settings: ``add_ports=all``, ``keep_ports=present``, which means that ports will be created for all detected NIC's, and all other ports will be deleted. Refer to the `Ironic inspection documentation`_ for details. * Separate API (see :ref:`usage` and :ref:`api`) can be used to query introspection results for a given node. * Nodes are put in the correct state for deploying as described in :ref:`node_states`. Starting DHCP server and configuring PXE boot environment is not part of this package and should be done separately. .. _Ironic inspection documentation: http://docs.openstack.org/developer/ironic/deploy/install-guide.html#hardware-inspection .. _Ironic: https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Ironic