This document discusses using Ironic to deploy Windows on bare metal servers. Ironic is OpenStack's bare metal provisioning service that allows physical servers to be provisioned like virtual machines. The document outlines how Ironic handles disk-based Windows images differently than partition-based Linux images. It also describes the deployment process for Windows, which involves PXE booting to instruct the server to boot from its local disk where the Windows image has been written, unlike Linux which uses PXE to provide the kernel and ramdisk for deployment. The document lists several areas of work around improving Windows support in Ironic and related projects like TripleO.

1. Windows Deployment on Bare-metal
using Ironic
Sirushti Murugesan (sirus@hp.com) (@sirushti)
Om Kumar (om.kumar@hp.com)
Srinivasa Acharya ( rsacharya@hp.com )

2. Ironic – Baremetal provisioning Service
• Ironic is the evolution of the bare-metal provisioning driver that was
first added in the OpenStack Grizzly release.
• By providing a new set of APIs, Ironic could make physical servers as
easy to provision as virtual machines.
• Ironic with TripleO and Heat is working on to deploy OpenStack cloud
using OpenStack itself.

3. Ironic Overview

4. Windows provisioning and Disk based image
support
• Image decides different code path in Ironic on how to write image to
the disk.
• No kernel and ramdisk means Image is disk based Image ( Windows )
• Linux image currently is partition based image and comes with
additional PXE Kernel and Ramdisk images
• Image created through TripleO Disk Image Builder
• Windows boot process can be either thru PXE or HDD
• PXE profile defaults to HDD
• If no PXE, by default boot order, boots from HDD.

5. 4. Using Image property, check
if image is
Disk(Windows)/Partition(Linux)
Image.
Glance Service
• Linux (Partition Images)
• Windows (Disk Images)
1. Create
Instance
Ironic Deployment Steps
For Windows:
label boot
com32 chan.c32
append hd0
Sample PXE Config
For Linux:
label boot
kernel /tftpboot/342fbb7f-1ad6-439a-9a4c-b38f71cabfe3/kernel
append initrd=/tftpboot/342fbb7f-1ad6-439a-9a4c-b38f71cabfe3/ramdisk root=UUID=74251bb8-3a28-4a46-9a78-064497b26b9d ro nofb vga=normal
For Windows:
label boot
com32 chan.c32
append hd0
For Linux:
label boot
kernel /tftpboot/342fbb7f-1ad6-439a-9a4c-b38f71cabfe3/kernel
append initrd=/tftpboot/342fbb7f-1ad6-439a-9a4c-b38f71cabfe3/ramdisk root=UUID=74251bb8-3a28-4a46-9a78-064497b26b9d ro nofb vga=normal
Controller
Bare-metal Nodes
. . . . . . .
Disk Image is a complete disk image including MBR, Boot loaders and all partitions on
the disk. This format can be used for Windows as well as Linux.
Partition Image is just a file system image of OS critical FileSystem (root fs) partition.
This format is in use only for Linux Baremetal Images.
For Linux
1. iSCSI Mount,
2. Create Partition
3. dd root partition
image
4. dd Complete Signal
For Windows
1. iSCSI Mount,
2. dd disk image
3. dd Complete Signal
For Linux
1. Reboot
2. PXE provides kernel and
ramdisk from TFTP.
3. Boot Process continues.
For Windows
1. Reboot
2. PXE instructs to Boot from
localdisk.
3. Boot from Local disk starts
Baremetal Host

6. Area of work for Juno
• Ironic
• Upstream Windows support in Ironic
• Blueprint: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ironic/+spec/windows-disk-image-support
• Code: https://review.openstack.org/#/c/73054 ( Review )
• Involve in Other areas in Ironic
• UEFI, Boot from Volume, Firmware Update, h/w Discovery, Vendor CI ( Moonshot )
• Ironic Documentation
• https://review.openstack.org/#/c/83343/ ( Done )
• TripleO
• Localboot element for Linux Disk Image Builder
• https://review.openstack.org/#/c/79289/ ( Review)
• Support boot from local disk(HDD) in case PXE fails
• Windows Disk Image Builder
• New Project in TripleO
• Blueprint: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/tripleo/+spec/build-windows-images
• Code: POC in progress. Code submission Soon.
• Hyper-V Compute provisioning in TripleO, Other windows workloads in Juno :
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/tripleo/+spec/extensible-windows-images

7. Questions?