Bare Metal Management

ZStack offers the BareMetal Management service that provides your applications with dedicated physical servers, ensuring the high performance and stability of your key applications. After your servers are configured well and the related preparations are completed, you can deploy Bare Metal (BM) chassis in bulk on the UI. After the deployment succeeds, you can use these BM chassis to create BM instances. With preconfigured templates, you can achieve unattended batch installation for BM instance operating systems. In addition, you can configure a business network for BM instances and easily manage the entire lifecycle of these BM instances.

The BareMetal Management service is a separate feature module. To use this service, purchase both the Base License and the Plus License of BareMetal Management. The Plus License cannot be used independently.

Basic Workflow

How does the BareMetal Management service work? A deployment server provides two types of service: DHCP and FTP. Specifically, the deployment server can instruct multiple BM chassis to be started through a PXE NIC, and can allocate dynamic IP addresses with the DHCP service. In addition, BM chassis can download related software packages from the deployment server with the FTP service, of whose packages can be applied to the operating system installation of the BM instance, as shown in BareMetal Management Network Topology.

Figure 1. BareMetal Management Network Topology

Key Features and Benefits

The BareMetal Management service provides the following features and benefits:

Provides applications with dedicated physical servers to ensure the high performance and stability of your key applications.
Deploy deployment servers independently as recommended, which can meet the requirements for the host high availability scenario of multiple management nodes. This also simplifies the network environment and helps to avoid DHCP conflicts. In addition, you can attach an independent deployment server to each BM cluster, which helps to avoid a single point of failure and improve greatly the deployment rate.
Helps create BM chassis in bulk on the UI via either the manual creation or template file import. You can also add IPMI addresses in bulk to deploy efficiently BM clusters, which increases O&M efficiencies.
Helps to quickly generate configuration files by using preconfigured templates to achieve unattended batch installation for BM instance operating systems.
Enables you to customize the installation of your operating system. Supported operating systems: custom operating system of the Cloud and the mainstream Linux distributions (RHEL/CentOS, Debian/Ubuntu, and SUSE/openSUSE).
Supports flat network. Specifically, BM instances and VM instances on the same L2 network can reach each other without routing to each other by gateways.

Typical Usage Scenarios

The BareMetal Management service can be applied to the following typical scenarios:

High-Security and Strict Management Scenario
Financial industry, security industry, and others have rigorous standards for the business compliance and business data security. With the BareMetal Management service, they can ensure their exclusive use of resources, data isolation, strict supervision and control, and effective tracking.
High-Performance Computing Scenario
In high-performance computing scenarios, supercomputing centers, gene sequencing companies, and other entities require high computing performance, high stability, and accurate real-time update for servers. Sometime later, business performances will be affected by the performance loss and hyper-threading brought by visualization. In this regard, to deploy BM cluster to a certain scale, meet the strict requirements for the high performance computing.
Key Database Scenario
In some entities, some key database businesses cannot be deployed on normal VM instances, and must be loaded on the physical servers that can protect their exclusive resources, network isolation, and performances. To meet this requirements, use the BareMetal Management service that provides exclusive, high-performance physical servers for one or more appliances.

Bare Metal Cluster

A Bare Metal cluster provides independent cluster managements for Bare Metal chassis.

To provide PXE services for Bare Metal instances on a Bare Metal cluster, the Bare Metal cluster must attach a deployment server.
One Bare Metal cluster can only attach one deployment server, while one deployment server can attach multiple Bare Metal clusters simultaneously.
To provide network services for Bare Metal instances on a Bare Metal cluster, the Bare Metal cluster must attach L2 networks.
Flat networks are supported. Specifically, both Bare Metal instances and VM instances on the same L2 network can reach each other without routing via a gateway.

You can perform the following operations on a Bare Metal cluster:

Create a Bare Metal cluster.
View the details of the Bare Metal cluster.
Enable or disable the Bare Metal cluster.
Attach or detach an L2 network to the Bare Metal cluster.
Attach or detach a deployment server from the Bare Metal cluster.
Delete the Bare Metal cluster.

Notice

One Bare Metal cluster can only attach one deployment server, while one deployment server can attach multiple Bare Metal clusters simultaneously.
Flat networks are supported. Specifically, BM instances and VM instances on the same L2 network can reach each other without routing to each other by gateways.
Exercise caution. Disabling a Bare Metal cluster will disable all Bare Metal devices on this Bare Metal cluster.
Exercise caution. Detaching a deployment server from a Bare Metal cluster will cause the deploying Bare Metal instances to be expunged. In addition, after these Bare Metal instances are deployed, their consoles cannot be reached.
Exercise caution. Deleting a Bare Metal cluster will delete all Bare Metal devices and Bare Metal instances on the Bare Metal cluster.

Deployment Server

A deployment server, known as PXE server, is an independently specified server used for providing PXE services and console proxy services for Bare Metal chassis.

We recommend that you deploy PXE servers independently, thus satisfying the need of the multi-MN host HA scenario and avoiding a single point of failure (SPOF) to greatly improve deployment efficiencies.
A deployment server must be attached to a BareMetal cluster.
One Bare Metal cluster can only attach one deployment server, while one deployment server can attach multiple Bare Metal clusters simultaneously.
A deployment server must have sufficient storage space to save images used for PXE deployments.
A deployment server must connect to a management network for reaching management nodes.
A deployment server must connect to a deployment network for reaching Bare Metal chassis.
A DHCP listening NIC on a deployment server must connect to a deployment network. In addition, make sure that this deployment network does not contain other DHCP services for avoiding IP conflicts.
A deployment server must install the latest ZStack Custom ISO with the recommended c76 version. Otherwise, this deployment server cannot provide software packages for Bare Metal chassis via the FTP service.

You can perform the following operations on a deployment server:

Create a deployment server.
View the details of the deployment server.
Enable or disable the deployment server.
Reconnect the deployment server.
Attach or detach a Bare Metal cluster from the deployment server.
Delete the deployment server.

Notice

DHCP listening NICs must connect to the deployment network of Bare Metal chassis and have been configured with IP addresses.
A DHCP listening NIC is an independent NIC with an IP address and provides a stable DHCP service.
The deployment network where a DHCP listening NIC resides cannot contain any other DHCP services for avoiding IP conflicts.
A deployment server must have sufficient storage space used for storing images to deploy PXE services.
If a deployment server is disabled, the Bare Metal chassis on the corresponding cluster cannot obtain hardware information and cannot be used to create Bare Metal instances.
One Bare Metal cluster can only attach one deployment server, while one deployment server can attach multiple Bare Metal clusters simultaneously.
Exercise caution. Detaching a Bare Metal cluster from a deployment server will cause the deploying Bare Metal instances to be expunged. In addition, after these Bare Metal instances are deployed, their consoles cannot be reached.
Exercise caution. Deleting a deployment server will cause the deploying Bare Metal instances to be expunged. In addition, after these Bare Metal instances are deployed, their consoles cannot be reached.

Bare Metal Chassis

A Bare Metal chassis can be used to create Bare Metal instances and can be universally identified via a BMC interface and IPMI configurations. With an IPMI network, a management node can control remotely powers of Bare Metal chassis, start networks, and enable disks. An administrator can complete deploying all Bare Metal chassis in bulk on the UI.

A management node must connect to an IPMI network and control remotely Bare Metal chassis via IPMI.
A Bare Metal chassis must contain a BMC interface, and configures an IPMI address, port, user name, and password, to connect to an IPMI network.
A deployment server-enabled NIC on a Bare Metal chassis must connect to a deployment network.
Other NICs of Bare Metal chassis can connect to the corresponding L2 networks as needed.

You can perform the following operations on a Bare Metal chassis:

Add a Bare Metal chassis.
View the details of the Bare Metal chassis.
Enable or disable the Bare Metal chassis.
Power on, power off, or power reset (reboot).
Obtain hardware information.
Open the console.
Delete the Bare Metal chassis.

More Information

A Bare Metal chassis has three types of states or statuses: Provision Status, State, and Power Status.

Provision Status	Remarks
Unknown hardware information	The Bare Metal chassis cannot obtain the hardware information. Note: Possible cause: When the Bare Metal chassis was added, you deselected Reboot Bare Metal Chassis. After completing adding the Bare Metal chassis, its provision status is unknown hardware information. Solution: Manually Power Reset the Bare Metal chassis, or manually Get Hardware Info.
PXE is rebooting	PXE servers instruct the Bare Metal chassis remotely to be enabled and assign IP addresses dynamically from PXE NICs.
Rebooting PXE failed	The Bare Metal chassis fails to be enabled from PXE NICs. Note: To address this problem, note the following: Ensure that deployment servers cannot contain any other DHCP services in a deployment network. Ensure that the NICs where the Bare Metal chassis connects to deployment networks have enabled PXE in BIOS. Note: For a portion of Bare Metal chassis, ensure that this PXE NIC will be firstly booted. Or, ensure that (boot order) all NICs before this PXE NIC disable PXE. Ensure that the boot mode for the Bare Metal chassis is Legacy.
Available	The Bare Metal chassis can be used to create Bare Metal instances, and enables you to install operating systems for the Bare Metal instances in a custom manner.
Provisioned	The Bare Metal chassis has been used to create Bare Metal instances.
Rebooting	The Bare Metal chassis is rebooting.

State	Power Status
Enable Disable	Powered On Rebooting Powered Off