An overview of MAAS, a flexible bare-metal provisioning system that manages DHCP, DNS and PXE services, drives chassis and BMCs, and deploys of CentOS, RHEL, Ubuntu, Windows and more. Presented at the latest OCP Tech Day on August 30th 2016.

1. Building physical clouds
Christian "kiko" Reis
David Duffey
Luke Williams
OCP Tech Day
August 30th, Menlo Park, CA

2. Preamble
How VMware
killed hardware

3. Time from
request to prompt

4. VM Metal
Request
Procure
Rack
Firmware
Configure
Install OS
Launch
Credentials
Automation

5. VM Metal
Request
Procure
Rack
Firmware
Configure
Install OS
Launch
Credentials
Automation
4 minutes 4 months

6. Cloud
>>> from boto import ec2
>>> c = ec2.connect('us-west-2')
>>> r = c.run_instances(
min_count=3,
aws_image_id,
instance_type='c1.xlarge')
Metal
Request
Procure
Rack
Firmware
Configure
Install OS
Launch
Credentials
Automation

7. Cloud
>>> from boto import ec2
>>> c = ec2.connect('us-west-2')
>>> r = c.run_instances(
min_count=3,
aws_image_id,
instance_type='c1.xlarge')
Metal
Request
Procure
Rack
Firmware
Configure
Install OS
Launch
Credentials
Automation
2 API Calls 20 Phone Calls

8. Why can't I have
a cloud experience
with bare metal?

9. MAAS
An open source API
for hardware operations

10. MAAS

11. PXE DHCP tftp iSCSI IPMI AMT iLO DRAC UCSM Redfish
MAAS

12. PXE DHCP tftp iSCSI IPMI AMT iLO DRAC UCSM Redfish
MAAS
DNS HTTP REST SSH

13. PXE DHCP tftp iSCSI IPMI AMT iLO DRAC UCSM Redfish
MAAS
DNS HTTP REST SSH

14. $ maas login devcluster http://maas.dev/MAAS/api/2.0
$ maas devcluster node start distro_series="centos7"

16. Machines
Servers
Devices
Switches*
Networks
L2
L3
Zones
Users
SSH
Powerman
API keys
Data model

17. New
Ready
Deployed
1
3
2
Release
Machine States

18. 1
3
2
One-time BMC credential setup
Hardware probe & preparation
Install OS & user credentials
Wipe disk and return to pool
New
Ready
Deployed

19. 1
1
3
2
What MAAS does for you
● Boots into ephemeral
environment
● Sets up credentials for
IPMI in-band
● Creates random
machine ID
● Machine is ready for
remote control
PXE Boot
Example:
IPMI
Automatic
Enlistment

20. HDD
8 minutes
SSD
3 minutes
Deployments are fast

21. Deployments are fast
Validated in the field

22. MAAS 2.0 Highlights
High
availability
Scale-out
architecture
Flexible
network ranges
Custom DHCP
configuration
Full DNS
management
Service
Tracking

23. MAAS Feature Overview
User Interfaces
● Web (native)
● REST API
● CLI
● Python library
Operating Systems
● CentOS 6, 7
● RHEL 6,7
● Ubuntu
● Windows
2003, 2010
● Windows Nano*
● Custom*
BMC protocols
● IPMI
● AMT
● Redfish(soon)
Chassis support
● Cisco UCS
● Microsoft OCS
● Seamicro 15K
● HP Moonshot
VM Controllers
● virsh for KVM &
PowerKVM
● vSphere
Disk layout options
● Partitioned
● Raw
● RAID
● LVM
● bcache
NIC config options
● Raw
● Tagged VLAN
● Bonded
● Bridged(soon)
Other
● SSH & Powerman
credential setup
● Auto-enlistment
via initial PXE-boot
● Node hardware
inventory & auto-
tagging
● Customization of
commissioning and
installation
● Dynamic allocation
based on machine
parameters

24. OCP Hardware Tested w/ Ubuntu
Freedom, Windmill, Winterfell
Roadrunner, Decathlete, Leopard,
Yosemite, Honey Badger, Panther, Knox
Microsoft Open Cloud Server (OCS)
Edgecore Networks AS5712-54X, AS 7712-32X,
Faceboook Wedge 40, Wedge 100

25. Open Compute
MAAS & Juju Deployments

26. See it live
MAAS Ubuntu
Core
Juju

27. maas.io
Christian Reis
kiko@canonical.com
David Duffey
david.duffey@canonical.com
Luke Williams
luke.williams@canonical.com