BMC Power Types

In order for MAAS to fully manage a node it must be able to power cycle it. This is done via a communication channel with the BMC card of the node's underlying system. A newly added node is therefore incomplete until its power type has been configured.

To configure a node's power type, begin by clicking on the node from the 'Machines' page of the web UI followed by its 'Configuration' tab. Scroll down for Power configuration. If the power type is undefined the following will be displayed:

power types undefined

Choose a type in the dropdown menu that corresponds to the node's underlying machine's BMC card.

power types selection

Fill in the resulting form. The information requested will depend upon the power type chosen.

Click 'Save changes' to finish. Once that's done, a power check will be performed on the node. This is a good indication of whether MAAS can communicate properly with the node. A successful power check will quickly result in a power status of "Power off". A failed one will show:

power types power error

If you get such an error double-check your entered values by editing the power type. Also consider another power type altogether. Another cause may be at the networking level; traffic may be getting filtered between the rack controller and the BMC card.

Example: Virsh (KVM) power type

Consider a node backed by KVM. Below, a 'Power type' of Virsh has been selected and the 'Power address' of qemu+ssh://ubuntu@192.168.1.2/system has been entered (replace values as appropriate). Finally, and out of necessity for virsh, the value of 'Power ID' is the KVM domain (guest) name, here node2.

power types example: virsh

Note: The node's hostname according to MAAS is a randomly chosen string (here dear.ant). This would normally be edited to reflect the hostname of the underlying machine.

See MAAS CLI for an example of how to edit a power type with the CLI.

See Add nodes for help in setting up MAAS and KVM to work together.

Multiple Virsh machines running on the same host are managed and composed using Pods.

BMC driver support

MAAS supports many types of BMC hardware yet not all the drivers have the same capabilities. See the below table for a feature comparison of the BMC drivers currently supported by MAAS.

Power Driver (X=supported) PXE Next Boot Power Querying Chassis/Pod Configuration Enhanced UI Error Reporting BMC Enlistment
American Power Conversion (APC) - PDU
Cisco UCS Manager X X X
Digital Loggers, Inc. - PDU
Facebook's Wedge *
HP Moonshot - iLO Chassis Manager X X X
HP Moonshot - iLO4 (IPMI) X X X
IBM Hardware Management Console (HMC) X X
IPMI X X X X
Intel AMT X X X
Manual
Microsoft OCS - Chassis Manager X X X
OpenStack Nova X
Rack Scale Design X X X
SeaMicro 15000 X X X
Sentry Switch CDU - PDU
VMWare X X X
Virsh (virtual systems) X X X

* The 'Facebook's Wedge' OpenBMC power driver is considered experimental at this time.

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