vbmc4vsphere 0.0.1

Create virtual BMCs for controlling virtual instances via IPMI for vSphere environment

VirtualBMC for vSphere (vbmc4vsphere)

Overview

A virtual BMC for controlling virtual machines using IPMI commands for the vSphere environment.

In other words, the vSphere version of VirtualBMC part of the OpenStack project.

Installation

pip install vbmc4vsphere

Supported IPMI commands

# Power the virtual machine on, off, graceful off and reset
ipmitool -I lanplus -U admin -P password -H 192.168.0.1 -p 6230 power on|off|soft|reset

# Check the power status
ipmitool -I lanplus -U admin -P password -H 192.168.0.1 -p 6230 power status

Not Implemented yet:

• Inject NMI: power diag
• Set the boot device to network, hd or cdrom: chassis bootdev pxe|disk|cdrom
• Get the current boot device: chassis bootparam get 5

Architecture

Quick Start

Install VirtualBMC for vSphere on some linux host, start vbmcd daemon, and then configure through vbmc command.

Installation

pip install vbmc4vsphere

Start Daemon

• Start daemon:

  $ vbmcd
  

  By default, daemon starts in background. You can start it in foreground by --foreground option to get logs.

  $ vbmcd --foreground
  

Configure VirtualBMC

• In order to see all command options supported by the vbmc tool do:

  $ vbmc --help
  

  It’s also possible to list the options from a specific command. For example, in order to know what can be provided as part of the add command do:

  $ vbmc add --help
  

• Adding a new virtual BMC to control VM called lab-vesxi01:

  $ vbmc add lab-vesxi01 --port 6230 --viserver 192.168.0.1 --viserver-username [e-mail] --viserver-password my-secure-password
  

  • Binding a network port number below 1025 is restricted and only users with privilege will be able to start a virtual BMC on those ports.
  • Passing the credential for your vCenter Server is required.
  • By default, IPMI credential is confugired as admin and password. You can specify your own username and password by --username and --password at this time.
• Adding a additional virtual BMC to control VM called lab-vesxi02:

  $ vbmc add lab-vesxi02 --port 6231 --viserver 192.168.0.1 --viserver-username [e-mail] --viserver-password my-secure-password
  

  • Specify a different port for each virtual machine.
• Starting the virtual BMC to control VMs:

  $ vbmc start lab-vesxi01
  $ vbmc start lab-vesxi02
  

• Getting the list of virtual BMCs including their VM name and IPMI network endpoints they are reachable at:

  $ vbmc list
  +-------------+---------+---------+------+
  | VM name     | Status  | Address | Port |
  +-------------+---------+---------+------+
  | lab-vesxi01 | running | ::      | 6230 |
  | lab-vesxi02 | running | ::      | 6231 |
  +-------------+---------+---------+------+
  

• To view configuration information for a specific virtual BMC:

  $ vbmc show lab-vesxi01
  +-------------------+--------------------+
  | Property          | Value              |
  +-------------------+--------------------+
  | active            | False              |
  | address           | ::                 |
  | password          | ***                |
  | port              | 6230               |
  | status            | running            |
  | username          | admin              |
  | viserver          | 192.168.0.1        |
  | viserver_password | ***                |
  | viserver_username | [e-mail] |
  | vm_name           | lab-vesxi01        |
  +-------------------+--------------------+
  

• Stopping the virtual BMC to control VMs:

  $ vbmc stop lab-vesxi01
  $ vbmc stop lab-vesxi02
  

Server Simulation

Once the virtual BMC for a specific VM has been created and started you can then issue IPMI commands against the address and port of that virtual BMC to control the VM.

In this example, if your VirtualBMC host has 192.168.0.100, you can controll:

• lab-vesxi01 througth 192.168.0.100:2360
• lab-vesxi02 througth 192.168.0.100:2361

by using IPMI. For example:

• To power on the virtual machine:

  $ ipmitool -I lanplus -H 192.168.0.100 -p 6230 -U admin -P password chassis power on
  Chassis Power Control: Up/On
  

• To check its power status:

  $ ipmitool -I lanplus -H 192.168.0.100 -p 6230 -U admin -P password chassis power status
  Chassis Power is on
  

• To shutdown the virtual machine:

  $ ipmitool -I lanplus -H 192.168.0.100 -p 6230 -U admin -P password chassis power soft
  Chassis Power Control: Soft
  

Reference resources

This project is started based on the copy of VirtualBMC 2.1.0.dev and customized to support the vSphere environment instead of the OpenStack.

• Original VirtualBMC documentation (for OpenStack): https://docs.openstack.org/virtualbmc/latest
• Its source: https://opendev.org/openstack/virtualbmc