not_ipmi_to_metal

not_ipmi_to_metal is an emulated IPMI server / endpoint and BMC that receives native IPMIv2.0 lanplus formatted requests and proxies the intended action against the Equinix Metal API, functionally allowing for the control of an Equinix Metal instance via tools like ipmitool and ironic.

The intent of the utility is to provide a de-coupling between software stacks that are IPMI control dependant, allowing those software stacks to control Equinix Metal instance's without software re-writes.

It is not intended to be a fully featured IPMI endpoint/ BMC / Lifecycle Controller, and is singularly focused on chassis bootdev and chassis power contexts.

$ python not_ipmi_to_metal/not_ipmi_to_metal.py --help
usage: not_ipmi_to_metal [-h] [--port PORT] [--user IPMIUSER] [--password IPMIPASS] [--metaltoken METALTOKEN]
                         [--metaluuid METALUUID]

Pretend to be a Metal instances BMC and proxy IPMI commands to the Metal API. Note some variables can be set by ENV

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit 
  --port PORT           (UDP) port to listen on (default: 623)
  --user IPMIUSER       IPMI username to expect (default: admin)
  --password IPMIPASS   IPMI password to expect (default: password)
  --metaltoken METALTOKEN
                        Equinix Metal Read / Write API Token, will get from ENV METAL_AUTH_TOKEN if unset (default:
                        None)
  --metaluuid METALUUID
                        UUID of the Equinix Metal instance, will get from METAL_INSTANCE_UUID if unset (default: None)

2022-04-15 18:04:50,204 - not_ipmi_to_metal - INFO - not_metal_to_ipmi service for instance UUID: 87b9b0ac-dd7e-4a9d-b156-6736d57d6364 starting on port 623
2022-04-15 18:05:01,065 - not_ipmi_to_metal - INFO - IPMI BMC Power_On request.
2022-04-15 18:05:02,297 - not_ipmi_to_metal - INFO - IPMI BMC Power_On request.
2022-04-15 18:05:24,771 - not_ipmi_to_metal - INFO - IPMI BMC Power_Off request.

Credits and references

• The first incarnation of this utility lifted heavily from shapeblue/ipmisim
• The current incarnation of this utility lifts heavily from open/stack/virtualvbmc
• The real heavy lifting of this utility comes from the pyghmi project
• This utility levarages the Equinix Metal Python Library
• The Equinix Metal API is well documented here

Installation

This project assumes a current python3 install and works inside of a virtualenv, the Python that comes packaged with Ubuntu 22.04 or CentOS 8 or newer should work fine.

not_ipmi_to_metal is intended to be deployed as a application container, and should be deployeable via docker, podman or containerd

not_ipmi_to_metal is available as a hosted container via Docker Hub

More detailed installation steps detailed here

Maintained Statement + Getting help and support

not_ipmi_to_metal is a community maintained and developed project. The current owners are actively invested in maintaining the project in line with basic, reasonable expectations. Given that ipmi itself is a relatively static specification and ecosystem, no active development should be expected outside of break / fix style corrections.

not_ipmi_to_metal is entirely self-supported from an end operator perspective, and no active support is provided by Equinix or any other party.

Versioning

Versioning is elementary. Current version is maintained in the version file at the root of this repository, where Docker tags will reference that version.

Diagram

TODO

• Equinix Metal packet-python usage should be classed or libbed
  • More pythonic
  • try / except to better handle API failures in context
• Expose a more elegant custom handler like we had here
• Add tests, they should include building ipmitool from upstream source as that is what pushed this to base of pyghmi instead of ipmisim