The xCAT REST API works well with Ansible. Most of the things you mentioned are available as endpoints minus the direct manipulation of the osimage contents through the filesystem.
Ryan Bowen | Integration Systems Engineer | SHI International Corp | C: (609)619-2571 | E: ryan_bo...@shi.com From: Kevin Keane <kke...@sandiego.edu> Sent: Monday, November 26, 2018 5:28 PM To: xCAT Users Mailing list <xcat-user@lists.sourceforge.net> Subject: Re: [xcat-user] How to re-discover a node? Thank you, Song! When it comes to Ansible support, I have two specific wish-list items: - document manipulating xCAT exclusively via objects or tables. Right now, administering xCAT is a mix of "add this entry to table XYZ" and "run that utility". That works very well for manual administration, but to Ansibilify, one single consistent interface would work better. For instance, instead of creating an osimage the "official" way via copycds, with Ansible it is much easier to manipulate the osimage object. Similarly, with nodes, mkdef/chdef work better with Ansible than nodeadd/nodeset. Obviously, this doesn't work completely; things like bmcdiscover, makehosts, makedhcp still have to be utilities. - To manipulate objects, have an idempotent utility that provides feedback about whether something was changed, or ideally even what was done. Instead of using mkdef to create an object and chdef to change an already-existing one, have chdef create the object if needed. Use return code for "changes were made" or 1 for "no changes" or stdout to report on whether any changes were made. rmdef should probably still be a separate utility, because it corresponds to the Ansible status "absent". This would allow me to use a simple Ansible command resource and a registered variable to manage Ansible. Hope that helps! _______________________________________________________________________ Kevin Keane | Systems Architect | University of San Diego ITS | kke...@sandiego.edu<mailto:kke...@sandiego.edu> Maher Hall, 192 |5998 Alcalá Park | San Diego, CA 92110-2492 | 619.260.6859 REMEMBER! No one from IT at USD will ever ask to confirm or supply your password. These messages are an attempt to steal your username and password. Please do not reply to, click the links within, or open the attachments of these messages. Delete them! On Thu, Nov 22, 2018 at 2:43 AM Song BJ Yang <yang...@cn.ibm.com<mailto:yang...@cn.ibm.com>> wrote: hi Kevin, So much information! thanks a lot on this. We have done some Ansible support before, but did not get some clear user case, your reply provides us a real user case and scenario on this, I will forward this to our team and have a discussion on this. Once we have a plan on Ansible support, I hope we can get your comments on it. Thanks in advance ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ YANG Song (杨嵩) IBM China System Technology Laboratory Tel: 86-10-82452903 Email: yang...@cn.ibm.com<mailto:yang...@cn.ibm.com> Address: Building 28, ZhongGuanCun Software Park, No.8, Dong Bei Wang West Road, Haidian District Beijing 100193, PRC 北京市海淀区东北旺西路8号中关村软件园28号楼 邮编: 100193 ----- Original message ----- From: Kevin Keane <kke...@sandiego.edu<mailto:kke...@sandiego.edu>> To: xCAT Users Mailing list <xcat-user@lists.sourceforge.net<mailto:xcat-user@lists.sourceforge.net>> Cc: Subject: Re: [xcat-user] How to re-discover a node? Date: Thu, Nov 22, 2018 1:27 AM There really isn't much in terms of workaround with the Dell servers; it basically just works. Of course, there are a few features that are IBM/Lenovo-specific, such as firmware updating, and I believe also some power management. And since I use the Dell cluster specifically for experimentation, I may not run into the same issues you'd run into on a production cluster. Funny you mention Ansible - that's actually what I'm using to configure xCAT on the management node! As a matter of fact, pre-populating the nodes for MTMS is actually done by Ansible. For the most part, it is a good mix, although there are some concepts that don't blend well between xCAT and Ansible. My goal was to use Ansible to fully configure the management node, and then proceed all the way to auto-discovery of compute nodes. It doesn't quite work that way, but I'm pretty close to it. And, yes, I have considered using Ansible instead of xCAT to configure the compute nodes, too - in fact I keep going back and forth about whether it would be a good idea. But in the end, xCAT does give you quite a few features I'd rather not set up manually, such as routing, naming, setting up DHCP server, PXE booting, auto-populating information via the various discover methods. The decision to use xCAT predates me. Our production cluster is Lenovo, and it was originally set up by Lenovo consultants, so xCAT was a natural choice. _______________________________________________________________________ Kevin Keane | Systems Architect | University of San Diego ITS | kke...@sandiego.edu<mailto:kke...@sandiego.edu> Maher Hall, 192 |5998 Alcalá Park | San Diego, CA 92110-2492 | 619.260.6859 REMEMBER! No one from IT at USD will ever ask to confirm or supply your password. These messages are an attempt to steal your username and password. Please do not reply to, click the links within, or open the attachments of these messages. Delete them! On Tue, Nov 20, 2018 at 7:21 PM Song BJ Yang <yang...@cn.ibm.com<mailto:yang...@cn.ibm.com>> wrote: Hi Kevin, Interesting to hear that you are managing Dell servers with xCAT, may I have 2 additional questions on this? 1. is there any gap or manual workaround in your practice to manage Dell R230 servers with xCAT? Since from our perspective, the official verification on managing non-IBM(Lenovo) servers is insufficient in xCAT release cycles. 2. how did your team know xCAT and make your decision to choose xCAT? We also heard that some Admins are using canonical MAAS to manage bare metal servers and using configuration management tools like Ansible, did you try these tools? do you have some insights on xCAT compared with these tools? thanks for your time ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ YANG Song (杨嵩) IBM China System Technology Laboratory Tel: 86-10-82452903 Email: yang...@cn.ibm.com<mailto:yang...@cn.ibm.com> Address: Building 28, ZhongGuanCun Software Park, No.8, Dong Bei Wang West Road, Haidian District Beijing 100193, PRC 北京市海淀区东北旺西路8号中关村软件园28号楼 邮编: 100193 ----- Original message ----- From: Kevin Keane <kke...@sandiego.edu<mailto:kke...@sandiego.edu>> To: xCAT Users Mailing list <xcat-user@lists.sourceforge.net<mailto:xcat-user@lists.sourceforge.net>> Cc: Subject: Re: [xcat-user] How to re-discover a node? Date: Wed, Nov 21, 2018 10:22 AM Right now, I'm managing a "miniature cluster" consisting of three Dell R230 servers. It's strictly a testbed for future deployment on our "real" cluster. That's why I'm experimenting with stuff one shouldn't do on a live system, like deleting nodes... The live cluster is still relatively small (16 nodes), and will be used for quite a few different applications by our chemists, physicists and engineers. _______________________________________________________________________ Kevin Keane | Systems Architect | University of San Diego ITS | kke...@sandiego.edu<mailto:kke...@sandiego.edu> Maher Hall, 192 |5998 Alcalá Park | San Diego, CA 92110-2492 | 619.260.6859 REMEMBER! No one from IT at USD will ever ask to confirm or supply your password. These messages are an attempt to steal your username and password. Please do not reply to, click the links within, or open the attachments of these messages. Delete them! On Tue, Nov 20, 2018 at 5:44 PM Er Tao Zhao <erta...@cn.ibm.com<mailto:erta...@cn.ibm.com>> wrote: Hi, Kevin May I know what kind of server are you managing with xCAT? What about the size of the cluster? What kind of APP will be deployed on the cluster? Thx! Best Regards, ----------------------------------- Zhao Er Tao IBM China System and Technology Laboratory, Beijing Tel:(86-10)82450485 Email: erta...@cn.ibm.com<mailto:erta...@cn.ibm.com> Address: 1/F, 28 Building,ZhongGuanCun Software Park, No.8 DongBeiWang West Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100193, P.R.China ----- Original message ----- From: Kevin Keane <kke...@sandiego.edu<mailto:kke...@sandiego.edu>> To: xCAT Users Mailing list <xcat-user@lists.sourceforge.net<mailto:xcat-user@lists.sourceforge.net>> Cc: Subject: Re: [xcat-user] How to re-discover a node? Date: Wed, Nov 21, 2018 2:05 AM Thank you! It worked! The mac address was missing because I had actually deleted the already-discovered node (which had the MAC address), and then recreated the predefined node with just the basic information. bmcdiscover matched the predefined node, presumably, because the BMC IP address already matched. _______________________________________________________________________ Kevin Keane | Systems Architect | University of San Diego ITS | kke...@sandiego.edu<mailto:kke...@sandiego.edu> Maher Hall, 192 |5998 Alcalá Park | San Diego, CA 92110-2492 | 619.260.6859 REMEMBER! No one from IT at USD will ever ask to confirm or supply your password. These messages are an attempt to steal your username and password. Please do not reply to, click the links within, or open the attachments of these messages. Delete them! On Mon, Nov 19, 2018 at 10:39 PM Er Tao Zhao <erta...@cn.ibm.com<mailto:erta...@cn.ibm.com>> wrote: Hi, Kevin Yes, if a server have been discovered, bmcdiscover will report the node match to a pre-defined node. But for your scenario, the server host MAC address is set to the pre-defined node, if bmcdiscover can match a pre-defined node, how does the Mac address is missing? And you don't need to worry about the bmcdiscover matching, if the Mac address for pre-defined node is missing, you can do: 1. nodeset <predefined_node> offline 2. rpower <predefined_node> boot To restart hardware discovery. Pls let me know if there is any more issues. Thx! Best Regards, ----------------------------------- Zhao Er Tao IBM China System and Technology Laboratory, Beijing Tel:(86-10)82450485 Email: erta...@cn.ibm.com<mailto:erta...@cn.ibm.com> Address: 1/F, 28 Building,ZhongGuanCun Software Park, No.8 DongBeiWang West Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100193, P.R.China ----- Original message ----- From: Kevin Keane <kke...@sandiego.edu<mailto:kke...@sandiego.edu>> To: xCAT Users Mailing list <xcat-user@lists.sourceforge.net<mailto:xcat-user@lists.sourceforge.net>> Cc: Subject: [xcat-user] How to re-discover a node? Date: Tue, Nov 20, 2018 6:45 AM I am using xCAT 2.14.4 on RedHat 7.4. I have BMC discovery working (with the MTMS approach, and using different IP addresses. This works well: - Create the predefined node (I do this before running bmcdiscover) - run bmcdiscover to create tne node-model_type-serial nodes. - power on the nodes - xCAT matches the node-model_type-serial nodes with my predefined nodes. - xCAT populates the mac address and other fields. - on the nodes, the BMC changes to the static IP I want to use. But when I then delete my node object and try to repeat the process, discovery fails: - Create the predefined node. - run bmcdiscover. Bmcdiscover will report that the node already exists. - From here on, I can't figure out how to get the mac address to populate. So how can I re-run discovery to populate the mac address, when the BMC already has its static IP? Thanks! _______________________________________________________________________ Kevin Keane | Systems Architect | University of San Diego ITS | kke...@sandiego.edu<mailto:kke...@sandiego.edu> Maher Hall, 192 |5998 Alcalá Park | San Diego, CA 92110-2492 | 619.260.6859 REMEMBER! No one from IT at USD will ever ask to confirm or supply your password. These messages are an attempt to steal your username and password. Please do not reply to, click the links within, or open the attachments of these messages. 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