OpenStack Ironic is a component of the OpenStack cloud computing platform that provides bare metal provisioning and management capabilities. It allows users to provision physical machines (also known as bare metal servers) instead of virtual machines, offering better performance and control for specific workloads.
The Ironic API is a RESTful API that serves as the primary interface for interacting with the Ironic service. It enables users to manage and control the lifecycle of bare metal nodes, including provisioning, deployment, and maintenance operations. Here are some key features and concepts related to the Ironic API:
- Node: A node represents a physical machine that can be managed by Ironic. It could be a physical server, blade, or other hardware device capable of running an operating system. Each node has a unique identifier and various properties such as CPU, memory, disk size, and network interfaces.
- Driver: Ironic supports different hardware types through drivers. A driver is responsible for interfacing with the hardware of a specific node, enabling Ironic to manage it. Examples of drivers include IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) for out-of-band management, iSCSI (Internet Small Computer System Interface) for disk imaging, and PXE (Preboot Execution Environment) for network booting.
- Port: A port is a representation of a network interface on a node. It represents the connection between a node and a network, such as Ethernet or VLAN. Ports are associated with nodes and are used to manage network connectivity during provisioning and deployment.
- Resource: In Ironic, a resource is a generic term that encompasses nodes, ports, and other entities managed by the service. The API provides endpoints to create, update, and delete resources, as well as retrieve information about them.
- Provisioning: Provisioning refers to the process of preparing a bare metal node for deployment. It involves tasks such as discovering and enrolling new nodes into Ironic, setting up network and storage configurations, and preparing the node for the desired operating system installation.
- Deployment: Once a node is provisioned, deployment involves installing an operating system or a user-defined image onto the node. Ironic provides mechanisms for deploying images over the network (using protocols like iSCSI) or via physical media (such as USB or DVD).
- Maintenance: Ironic allows users to perform various maintenance operations on nodes, such as power management, BIOS configuration, and hardware diagnostics. These operations can be performed through the API to ensure the health and availability of the bare metal infrastructure.
- Notifications: Ironic can emit notifications about various events and actions through the API. These notifications enable users or external systems to react to changes in the state of nodes, ports, or other resources managed by Ironic.
- Authentication and Authorization: The Ironic API integrates with the Keystone identity service, which provides authentication and authorization capabilities. Users need to authenticate with Keystone and obtain a token to access the Ironic API endpoints.
Overall, the Ironic API provides a comprehensive set of endpoints and operations to manage the provisioning, deployment, and maintenance of bare metal nodes within an OpenStack cloud environment. It offers flexibility, control, and scalability for workloads that require direct access to physical hardware resources.