CIMC drivers

Overview

The CIMC drivers are targeted for standalone Cisco UCS C series servers. These drivers enable you to take advantage of CIMC by using the python SDK.

pxe_iscsi_cimc driver uses PXE boot + iSCSI deploy (just like pxe_ipmitool driver) to deploy the image and uses CIMC to do all management operations on the baremetal node (instead of using IPMI).

pxe_agent_cimc driver uses PXE boot + Agent deploy (just like agent_ipmitool and agent_ipminative drivers.) to deploy the image and uses CIMC to do all management operations on the baremetal node (instead of using IPMI). Unlike with iSCSI deploy in Agent deploy, the ramdisk is responsible for writing the image to the disk, instead of the conductor.

The CIMC drivers can use the Ironic Inspector service for in-band inspection of equipment. For more information see the Ironic Inspector documentation.

Prerequisites

  • ImcSdk is a python SDK for the CIMC HTTP/HTTPS XML API used to control CIMC.

Install the ImcSdk module

Note

Install the ImcSdk module on the Ironic conductor node. Required version is 0.7.2.

  1. Install it:

    $ pip install "ImcSdk>=0.7.2"

Tested Platforms

This driver works with UCS C-Series servers and has been tested with:

  • UCS C240M3S

Configuring and Enabling the driver

  1. Add pxe_iscsi_cimc and/or pxe_agent_cimc to the list of enabled_drivers in /etc/ironic/ironic.conf. For example:

    enabled_drivers = pxe_ipmitool,pxe_iscsi_cimc,pxe_agent_cimc

  2. Restart the Ironic conductor service:

    For Ubuntu/Debian systems:

    $ sudo service ironic-conductor restart

    or for RHEL/CentOS/Fedora:

    $ sudo systemctl restart openstack-ironic-conductor

Registering CIMC Managed UCS node in Ironic

Nodes configured for CIMC driver should have the driver property set to pxe_iscsi_cimc or pxe_agent_cimc. The following configuration values are also required in driver_info:

  • cimc_address: IP address or hostname for CIMC
  • cimc_username: CIMC login user name
  • cimc_password: CIMC login password for the above CIMC user.
  • deploy_kernel: Identifier for the deployment kernel e.g. a Glance UUID
  • deploy_ramdisk: Identifier for the deployment ramdisk e.g. a Glance UUID

The following sequence of commands can be used to enroll a UCS Standalone node.

Create Node:

ironic node-create -d <pxe_iscsi_cimc OR pxe_agent_cimc> -i cimc_address=<CIMC hostname OR ip-address> -i cimc_username=<cimc_username> -i cimc_password=<cimc_password> -i deploy_kernel=<glance_uuid_of_deploy_kernel> -i deploy_ramdisk=<glance_uuid_of_deploy_ramdisk> -p cpus=<number_of_cpus> -p memory_mb=<memory_size_in_MB> -p local_gb=<local_disk_size_in_GB> -p cpu_arch=<cpu_arch>

The above command ‘ironic node-create’ will return UUID of the node, which is the value of $NODE in the following command.

Associate port with the node created:

ironic port-create -n $NODE -a <MAC_address_of_Ucs_server's_NIC>

For more information about enrolling nodes see Enrolling a node in the install guide.