Hi,

We use Netbox for our “proper” DCIM, but giving Ironic knowledge of physical location would be good, especially if that can then be used for placing workloads (eg place all my instances in the same rack/spread my workload over racks).   I guess that goes beyond just Ironic though.

From: Sandmann, Jens <j.sandmann@sap.com>
Date: Friday, 30 January 2026 at 12:10
To: Jakub Jelinek <jakub.jelinek@cern.ch>, Jay Faulkner <jay@gr-oss.io>, OpenStack Discuss <openstack-discuss@lists.openstack.org>
Subject: AW: [ironic] A first-class physical location API?

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Hi,

We are using Netbox for all this information, because we have everything else in there. However, we put the manufacturer, model and serial all in the properties additionally to Netbox. Personally, I'd love to be able to a filter for vendor and model which is a bit cumbersome via properties.
   
Jens

 

 


Von: Jakub Jelinek <jakub.jelinek@cern.ch>
Gesendet: Dienstag, 27. Januar 2026 10:29
An: Jay Faulkner <jay@gr-oss.io>; OpenStack Discuss <openstack-discuss@lists.openstack.org>
Betreff: Re: [ironic] A first-class physical location API?
 
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Hi Jay, and all,

This would actually be really useful for us.
Especially if populated from DCIM as discussed during the PTG.
Other metadata that would be nice to have would be:

Best,
Kuba
From: Jay Faulkner <jay@gr-oss.io>
Sent: 27 January 2026 00:55
To: OpenStack Discuss <openstack-discuss@lists.openstack.org>
Subject: [ironic] A first-class physical location API?
 
Something I've seen come up in a few discussions over the last couple of
cycles is the need for Ironic to contain more useful information about
the physical world. It's made me wonder if there's an opportunity to add
bigger support for physical characteristics/locations?


I'm thinking metadata like:

- Datacenter the server is in

- Computer room (or other DC subdivision)

- Row

- Rack

- Slot #

- Physical cabling (e.g. what switches you might be connected to and how)


Do other folks see this need? I'm trying to tease out if there's
something here or not, so just curious about use cases and what people
think.


-Jay





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