Re: Unusual bare-metal scenario - practical?

["Dustin J. Mitchell" <du...@mozilla.com>]

> Hi Dustin, I am far from an expert on all of the baremetal stuff but
> I'll try and take a first stab; and I've cced some folks who should be
> able to help provide better answers.

Thanks!  Apologies for the delay in replying - I was hoping to hear from Frank or others, and in the interim I was getting a simple CS instance set up using KVM, so I could be confident that the non-baremetal stuff was functional.

> I think the documents that you found are largely from a wiki migration
> - I've linked to some of the others below that are a bit more updated.
> 
> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/CLOUDSTACK/Baremetal+KickStart
> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/CLOUDSTACK/Enhanced+Baremetal+support+on+Cisco+UCS
> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/CLOUDSTACK/Plug-ins%2C+Modules%2C+and+Extensions

Thanks!  It took me a lot of staring at the first link to realize that "Use cases" is not use cases at all, but a cleverly disguised set of steps to use baremetal support:

    create a network offering with network service: userdata, sercuritygroup, baremetalpxeservice selected, we assume using external DHCP service in this example.

Using external DHCP appears not to work - when creating the pod later, I see "Service Dhcp is not supported by the network offering [Network Offering [15-Guest-BareMetal]".  Enabling this, with the bare-metal provider, helps.

    create a basic zone with aforementioned network offering.
    create a Pod. The guest ip range adding to Pod must be in the same subnet of host's IPMI ip. Reserved ip range for CloudStack service VM is never used.

This requirement will be problematic.  Is it necessary that it be in the same subnet, or just that it have IP connectivity to that subnet?

    configure hosts and write up information of IPMI ip, IPMI account/password, MAC address of nic which will broadcast DHCP request
    install a CentOS VM to the zone. Install CloudStack baremetal agent in it and run cloud-setup-baremetal, write up information printed out. for each switch in the zone enable DHCP forwarding to this CentOS VM.

This zone doesn't support KVM, so I can't create a VM in it.  Any idea what was intended here?

    add OS installed in step 5 to CloudStack by API addBaremetalPxeKickStartServer
    create a Cluster with hypervisor type "BareMetal"

And I tried to jump ahead to this part, but the cluster I added is now "wedged": just shows the spinner in the UI, and the "settings" tab says "ERROR".

So I'm a bit stuck right now.  Can anyone help?

Dustin

Re: Unusual bare-metal scenario - practical?

[Ahmad Emneina <ae...@gmail.com>]

I'll give this a shot, havent used CloudStack baremetal in quite a while...
see inline.


On Thu, Feb 6, 2014 at 6:20 AM, Dustin J. Mitchell <du...@mozilla.com>wrote:

> > Hi Dustin, I am far from an expert on all of the baremetal stuff but
> > I'll try and take a first stab; and I've cced some folks who should be
> > able to help provide better answers.
>
> Thanks!  Apologies for the delay in replying - I was hoping to hear from
> Frank or others, and in the interim I was getting a simple CS instance set
> up using KVM, so I could be confident that the non-baremetal stuff was
> functional.
>
> > I think the documents that you found are largely from a wiki migration
> > - I've linked to some of the others below that are a bit more updated.
> >
> >
> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/CLOUDSTACK/Baremetal+KickStart
> >
> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/CLOUDSTACK/Enhanced+Baremetal+support+on+Cisco+UCS
> >
> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/CLOUDSTACK/Plug-ins%2C+Modules%2C+and+Extensions
>
> Thanks!  It took me a lot of staring at the first link to realize that
> "Use cases" is not use cases at all, but a cleverly disguised set of steps
> to use baremetal support:
>
>     create a network offering with network service: userdata,
> sercuritygroup, baremetalpxeservice selected, we assume using external DHCP
> service in this example.
>
> Using external DHCP appears not to work - when creating the pod later, I
> see "Service Dhcp is not supported by the network offering [Network
> Offering [15-Guest-BareMetal]".  Enabling this, with the bare-metal
> provider, helps.
>
>     create a basic zone with aforementioned network offering.
>     create a Pod. The guest ip range adding to Pod must be in the same
> subnet of host's IPMI ip. Reserved ip range for CloudStack service VM is
> never used.
>
> This requirement will be problematic.  Is it necessary that it be in the
> same subnet, or just that it have IP connectivity to that subnet?
>

[ae] I dont believe the pxe booted vm's need to reside on the IPMI network,
I'm pretty sure I used another segment. Routability is the only requirement
for IPMI. More on the bare metal agent below.


>
>     configure hosts and write up information of IPMI ip, IPMI
> account/password, MAC address of nic which will broadcast DHCP request
>     install a CentOS VM to the zone. Install CloudStack baremetal agent in
> it and run cloud-setup-baremetal, write up information printed out. for
> each switch in the zone enable DHCP forwarding to this CentOS VM.
>
> This zone doesn't support KVM, so I can't create a VM in it.  Any idea
> what was intended here?
>

[ae] the baremetal agent install will install on any machine type
(virtualized or bare metal), it will install compatible dhcp/dns/tftp
services that cloudstack can communicate with to program... you guessed it
dhcp/dns/pxe entries for your bare metal hosts.


>
>     add OS installed in step 5 to CloudStack by API
> addBaremetalPxeKickStartServer
>     create a Cluster with hypervisor type "BareMetal"
>
> And I tried to jump ahead to this part, but the cluster I added is now
> "wedged": just shows the spinner in the UI, and the "settings" tab says
> "ERROR".
>

I believe you have to add the 'external device' aka bare metal agent aka
step 5, before you can try to add any bare metal resources. Let us know if
that helps move you forward. I know Frank personally and he's been on
vacation for a while, due back any day. I can make sure he gets notified of
you plight.


>
> So I'm a bit stuck right now.  Can anyone help?
>
> Dustin
>