Open Stack

On Thu, Dec 20, 2018 at 8:09 AM Jay Pipes <jaypipes at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 12/20/2018 07:12 AM, Curtis wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I've been looking through the docs I can find related to the edge
> > working group, and I'm wondering if there has been any
> > discussion/documentation of a Zero Touch Provisioning use case. I can't
> > seem to find anything, but I may not be looking in the right place. Just
> > wanted to double check and see what the current state is, if any.
>
> I take it that by "zero touch *provisioning*" (emphasis added to
> differentiate from zero *configuration* networking, you are referring to
> the ability for a new server to be rack-and-stacked in a site, powered
> on, and immediately register itself with either a local inventory
> management system or a remote one?
>

In this case, yes that is what I'm talking about, just the provisioning
aspect, and mostly related to the "edge" which in my case I usually
consider to be one or two physical servers (but that's just one use case).

I'm a relatively new member of the StarlingX TSC and there is some
discussion about deployment models, of which ZTP would presumably be a
part, so I wanted to check in with the edge working group to see what's
been going on in that area if anything.


>
> In either case, the issue I foresee is that the firmware (or initial
> boot/ramdisk that comes from the factory or supply chain team) will need
> to have some program installed in it that sends out a request looking
> for some known/assumed inventory management service [1]. The thing that
> *responds* to such a request would, of course, need to be already
> installed and available either on a switch or a pre-installed machine
> pingable on the out-of-band network and already configured by the team
> that handles hardware inventory.
>
> I can see some vendors working on their own custom low-touch
> provisioning software -- and this software would likely end up depending
> on their own proprietary (or subscription-based) server software ala Red
> Hat's Satellite software [2]). But getting all the vendors to come
> together on a unified low-touch provisioning system? Chances are pretty
> slim, IMHO.
>

Well, perhaps ONIE [1] is the best example. Switches that can run multiple
network OSes have pretty much standardized on it. But I don't know if ONIE
is the right example here, though it very well might be.


>
> Still, it's an interesting problem domain and I'd be interested in
> sharing thoughts and discussing it with others. Here at
> "Yahoo!/Oath/Verizon Media Group/Whatever we'll be called next month" we
> have custom software (and a bit of custom hardware!) that handles base
> hardware provisioning and I'm definitely interested in seeing if other
> shops that handle hundreds of thousands of baremetal machines are
> looking to collaborate in this area ("edge" or otherwise!).
>
> Best,
> -jay
>
> [1] this could be done via some custom DHCPDISCOVER/DHCPREQUEST bits I
> suppose -- which would require a DHCP client in the firmware/bootdisk --
> but more likely would depend on the IPMI/BMC system in use for the
> hardware. As soon as IPMI/BMC comes into play, the extreme differences
> in OEM vendor support will rule out a generic workable solution here as
> many in the Ironic community will likely attest to [3]. If you can rely
> on a homogeneous set of hardware at edge sites, you might be able to put
> something together that just suits your company's need, however.
>
> [2] https://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/management/satellite
>
> [3] https://github.com/openstack/ironic/tree/master/ironic/drivers
>
>
[1]: https://opencomputeproject.github.io/onie/

-- 
Blog: serverascode.com
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