Networking Prerequisites

The bare metal controller must be on a VM or physical server that has connectivity to each bare metal server under management, via:

1. the IPMI 2.0 network interface of each server
2. a dedicated, flat provisioning network that each server is connected to

In addition, each bare metal host along with the controller, must have outbound access to TCP port 443 enabled, so that it can connect to the Platform9 SaaS Management Plane.

IPMI 2.0 Requirement

Each bare metal server under management must support IPMI 2.0. The bare metal controller must be able to access each bare metal server via its IPMI IP address and credentials.

To test that the controller can connect to the bare metal servers via IPMI interface, run the following command on the controller:

ipmitool -I lanplus -H <BMC IP> -L ADMINISTRATOR -U <admin> -P <password> power status

Provisioning Network Requirement Summary

The provisioning network has the following prerequisites:

1. Dedicated: The network is dedicated to the management of the bare metal nodes
2. FLAT: The network must be FLAT
3. IPMI: The bare metal node has IPMI listening on the attached network interface
4. PXE: The bare metal node has PXE Boot enabled on the attached network interface
5. DHCP: DHCP will be provided by the Bare Metal Controller

Provisioning Network Requirement Details

Dedicated

The standard Platform9 Managed Bare Metal architecture relies on a flat network to support both user traffic and bare metal node life cycle traffic. Specifically, Platform9 dedicate this network as the provisioning network and run all actions including bare metal node introspection (node onboarding), cleaning, rescuing and provisioning.

FLAT

The provisioning network must be a FLAT network that is connected into the the physical servers that will be discovered and added as nodes into the bare metal cloud. The provisioning network must have access to the gateway IP of the subnet that the physical servers are attached to and no DHCP servers, the bare metal Controller will take on the DHCP responsibilities. Optional configurations include having Single Access Port Enabled or Trunk VLAN Native (PVID) if the flat network is coexisting on switch infrastructure that will also handle NIC teaming on servers and multiple VLANs for other networks. The provisioning network should operate as a dedicated network within the datacenter as this simplifies the management of the target physical servers and helps improve security.

IPMI

For the provisioning network to function correctly each of the attached bare metal nodes must support IPMI 2.0 and should have a single dedicated network interface card that is attached to the provisioning network and be the dedicated PXE boot enabled NIC. If LACP is enabled (NIC Teaming) the associated networks switching infrastructure must have LACP Fallback enabled. Outside of the requirement that the physical servers have a dedicated network card for PXE Boot and IPMI 2.0 specifications for additional NICs is dependent on the bare metal nodes intended use. For example, if the intended use is to run Platform9 Managed Kubernetes (PMK) or Platform9 Managed Virtualization (PMV) each bare metal node must meet or exceed the required specifications.

PXE/iPXE

The Preboot Execution Environment (PXE) and iPXE are the supported bootloader protocols, by default Platform9 Managed Bare Metal will leverage iPXE. iPXE is the preferred client due to the extended data retrieval protocols including HTTP and iSCSI.

DHCP

DHCP will be provided by networking components running and managed by Platform9 on the Bare Metal Controller.