Host Provisioning (Archived 2024-04-14) #

THIS IS AN OLD GUIDE. PLEASE REFER TO THE NEW GUIDE HERE

The workflow to provision a new host is mostly automated using PXE-booting using MaaS together with cloud init. But there are some steps that are manual.

Installation #

This guide will go through the entire workflow to setup up a brand new host. Keep in mind that credentials to each subsystem used in the guide are assumed to be available.

• Prerequisites

• Access to the GitHub Admin repository
• Name and FQDN
• Password
• Static IP-address
• MaaS Zone (Check the available zones in MaaS)
• CloudStack Zone (Check the available zones in CloudStack, this should match with the MaaS Zone)
• CloudStack Pod (Check the available pods in CloudStack)
• CloudStack Cluster (Clusters are hardware homogeneous, create a new one if there isn’t a match in CloudStack)

Steps #

1. Configure BIOS and find MAC-address
   1. Turn on the machine and enter BIOS
   2. Go to the network cards in the BIOS to find the network card that is used.
   3. Note the MAC-address (take a photo!)
   4. Go to the Boot-order
   5. Set the connected network card to be first in the list
   6. Turn off the machine
2. Generate a cloud-init file
   1. Go to the admin GitHub repository
   2. Go to cloud-init folder
   3. Run generate.py and follow the instructions in the terminal
3. Register the machine in MaaS
   1. Go to MAAS
   2. Go to Machines | Add hadware | Machine
   3. Enter Machine name and Zone
   4. Enter MAC address from BIOS
   5. Select Power type to Manual (this will be edited in the future)
   6. Click Save machine
   7. Refresh the page and ensure that the machine is under the category New
   8. (The following steps are necessary until IPMI is fixed)
   9. Go to the machine in MaaS
   10. Click ‘Take action’ and ‘Abort’ the commissioning
   11. Click ‘Take action’ and ‘Commission’ again, but with “Skip configuring supported BMC controllers…” ticked
   12. Click ‘Start commissioning for machine’
4. Commission the machine
   1. Turn on the machine
   2. Wait for it to boot and ensure that it picks up the boot image from MaaS
   3. Wait for the machine to turn it self off
5. Deploy the machine
   1. Ensure the machine is turned off
   2. Go to the machine in MaaS
   3. Go to the ‘Network Tab’
   4. Tick the connected network card and Click ‘Create bridge’
   5. Enter ‘cloudbr0’ in ‘Bridge name’
   6. Select ‘Subnet’ for the zone, eg. 172.31.0.0/16
   7. Select ‘Static assign’ in ‘IP mode’
   8. Enter the statis IP address of the host in ‘IP address’
   9. Click ‘Save interface’
   10. Click ‘Take action’ and ‘Deploy’
   11. Select the ‘Release’ and tick ‘Cloud-int user-data’
   12. Upload or paste the generated cloud-init file
   13. Click ‘Start deployment for machine’
   14. Turn on the machine and wait for MaaS to finish the deployment
   15. Refresh and wait for machine to be under the category Deployed
6. Verify installation
   1. Go to the dashboard
   2. Go to Infrastructure | Hosts
   3. Verify that the new machine is present. NOTE! It might take some time for it to appear in CloudStack as the machine will reboot a couple of times more before it is completely ready
   4. Go to the status page
   5. Ensure the host status is visible under Server statistics