This document discusses combining the Ironic project, which provides bare-metal provisioning capabilities to OpenStack, with the Redfish standard developed by DMTF for RESTful management of server hardware. It proposes developing a Python Redfish library for Ironic to use, creating a Redfish driver for Ironic, and setting up a test environment using Docker containers to emulate a Redfish-based platform and validate the integration. Combining Ironic and Redfish could provide standard ways to manage hardware lifecycle actions and inventory systems through Redfish's REST API.

1. © Copyright 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice.
Isn’titIronicthataRedfishissoftware
definingyourinfrastructure?
Bruno Cornec, HP EG EMEA Open Source and Linux Strategist

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© Copyright 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. - Licensed under CC-by-SA 3.0
Introducing Myself
●
Software engineering and Unices since 1988
– Mostly Configuration Management Systems (CMS), Build systems, quality tools, on multiple commercial Unix systems
– Discovered Open Source & Linux (OSL) & made first contributions in 1993
– Full time on OSL since 1995, first as HP reseller then @HP
●
Currently:
– OSL Technology Strategist, EMEA EG Innovation Solution Center aka HP/Intel Solution Center, Grenoble
– HP OSL Advocate and Converged Infrastructure Ambassador
– WW Linux Community Lead for the HP Open Source Profession
– Solutions Linux Conference, OpenStack-fr and AFUL board member. Conferences at WW level at LinuxCon, Linux.conf.au
– MondoRescue, Project-Builder.org, UUWL and PUSK Project Lead
– LinuxCOE, mrepo, tellico, rinse, fossology, collectl, ironic contributor
– FOSSBazaar/SPDX and OSL Governance enthusiast
– Mandriva, Mageia, Fedora packager
●
And also:
– Amateur singer (Alto / Tenor) and recorder player since 1976 and Choir director since 1987
– CD collector since 1981 (5000+ and counting) – Concert attendance since 1976
– Amateur photograph since 1976

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© Copyright 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. - Licensed under CC-by-SA 3.0
Operating System (OS)
Container A
Env. A
App. A
Container B
Env. B
App. B
VM B
Env. B
App. B
OS B
VM A
Env. A
App. A
OS A
Hypervisor
HW VirtualizationOS Virtualization
Single Kernel - Enhanced
chroot - Direct access to I/O
devices - Isolation
Flexibility (multi OS)
Requires HW support
Kernel module
Hardware
Operating System (OS)
App. A App. B
OS Resource Control
Single Kernel – Rresources
cont.: shared cpu, memory,
blkio, dedicated cpusets
% CPU
% RAM
% CPU
% RAM
CPU bind CPU bind
Hardware Hardware
performance good best good
Isolation & security normal good best
runtime flexibility best good normal
maintenance best normal normal
HW VirtOS VirtShare Dedicate
cgroups NUMA LXC / Docker
KVM
Various Resources containment architectures

4. 4
© Copyright 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. - Licensed under CC-by-SA 3.0
Operating System (OS)
Container A
Env. A
App. A
Container B
Env. B
App. B
VM B
Env. B
App. B
OS B
VM A
Env. A
App. A
OS A
Hypervisor
HW VirtualizationOS Virtualization
Single Kernel - Enhanced
chroot - Direct access to I/O
devices - Isolation
Flexibility (multi OS)
Requires HW support
Kernel module
Hardware
Operating System (OS)
App. A App. B
OS Resource Control
Single Kernel – Rresources
cont.: shared cpu, memory,
blkio, dedicated cpusets
% CPU
% RAM
% CPU
% RAM
CPU bind CPU bind
Hardware Hardware
performance good best good
Isolation & security normal good best
runtime flexibility best good normal
maintenance best normal normal
HW VirtOS VirtShare Dedicate
cgroups NUMA LXC / Docker
KVM
OpenStack control of compute resources
Ironic Magnum Nova

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© Copyright 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. - Licensed under CC-by-SA 3.0
What is Ironic ?
●
Hope you attended Devananda van der Veen's presentation
– http://sched.co/2qb4
– https://github.com/devananda/talks/blob/master/isnt-it-iron
ic.html
●
Ironic is the OpenStack bare-metal deployment project
– Usable as a Nova driver or Standalone with Kilo
– Provides common API across HW vendors and
physical/virtual resources
– Uses drivers to abstract interactions with HW

6. 6
© Copyright 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. - Licensed under CC-by-SA 3.0
What is Redfish ?
●
A DMTF standardisation effort
– HW Management REST API specification proposal (v0.96.0a) – DSP0266
– JSON and XML (Odata CSDL) based Schemas – DSP8010
– Mockups to be integrated in an existing web server to simulate a Redfish
system– DSP2043
– Available at http://www.dmtf.org/standards/redfish
– Initially promoted by Dell, Emerson, HP and Intel
●
In simpler terms ?
– This is an IPMI replacement
– This is a way to get and set HW configuration items on physical platforms using a
RESTful API
– The future management path of most platform

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© Copyright 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. - Licensed under CC-by-SA 3.0
Why Redfish ?
●
Security
– Uses known and widely used methods (https, RESTful API)
●
Better HW description
– Notions of Chassis (Blades), Multi-Node platforms (such as Moonshot)
●
Supports Manufacturer extensions
– Like SNMP via private extensions described in additional schemas
●
Standard across different manufacturer
– Ease management at scale for heterogeneous environments
– Tool or Tool-less access possibilities

8. 8
© Copyright 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. - Licensed under CC-by-SA 3.0
Why combining Ironic and Redfish ?
●
DMTF should publish Redfish 1.0 in June 2015
– Will increase adoption (already 50%+ of servers)
– Provides iLO type of features in a standard way
●
Ironic is the bare-metal deployment project of OpenStack
– Could benefit from Redfish existing features (virtual media, power management,
PXE boot)
– Could benefit from Redfish future features (HTTP Boot)
●
Ironic can be used standalone
– Ease testing procedure
– Combination used by other tool sets

9. 9
© Copyright 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. - Licensed under CC-by-SA 3.0
How to combine Ironic and Redfish ?
●
First develop a python-redfish module
– Provides all the features needed by Ironic (power management, inventory, ...)
– Use the DMTF mockups to test the features (easy even without HW)
●
Ironic already has drivers for BMCs
– ILO, IPMI
– Create a Redfish driver, using the previous python-redfish module, based on the
iLO one
●
Create a standalone test environment based on Docker
– A Container for running Ironic standalone
– A Container for emulating a Redfish based platform
– A series of test to activate the combination at software level.

10. 10
© Copyright 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. - Licensed under CC-by-SA 3.0
Discussions for the Design Summit
●
Interaction with CMDBs
– Ironic manages a part of inventory
– Using Redfish this could be automated via an ironic-inventory module (e.g.)
●
ironic inventory -d redfish -i redfish_username=admin -i redfish_password=fake
-i redfish_address=10.1.2.3 -n mytest
●
If tuple (?) already exists does a node-update, if not does a node-create and port-
create
– Ironic-inventory could be run by cron to re-check the content on a regular basis
●
ironic inventory –all|-a
●
ironic inventory –uid ironic-node-uuid
– Ironic-inventory could also be used to fill a CMDB with details on a configuration item
and extended to give back all details needed.
– Combined solution with a CMDB such as iTop is an full Open Source SDI one

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© Copyright 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. - Licensed under CC-by-SA 3.0
”Changes are never easy to make.
There is comfort and safety in tradition, but
change must come, no matter how painful or
expensive it may be.”
Bill Hewlett
Bruno.Cornec@hp.com
(Open Source and Linux Technology Architect at the
HP/Intel Solution Center)
http://www.hp.com/linux
http://opensource.hp.com
Thanks goes to:
Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond,
Nat Makarevitch, René Cougnenc, Eric Dumas,
Rémy Card, Bdale Garbee, Bryan Gartner, Craig
Lamparter, Lee Mayes, Gallig Renaud, Andree
Leidenfrost, Phil Robb, Bob Gobeille, Martin
Michlmayr among others, for their work and
devotion to the Open Source Software cause...
and my family for their patience :-)
Contact - Thanks