Create virtual BMCs for controlling virtual instances via IPMI for vSphere environment
Project description
VirtualBMC for vSphere (vbmc4vsphere)
Overview
A virtual BMC for controlling virtual machines using IPMI commands for the VMware vSphere environment.
In other words, this is the VMware vSphere version of VirtualBMC part of the OpenStack project.
This can be used as a BMC of Nested-ESXi, therefore you can make the vSphere DPM work in your nested environment for testing purpose.
See:
- 📖The guide to use with Nested-ESXi and vCenter Server.
- 📖The guide to use with Nested-KVM and oVirt.
- 📖The guide to use with OpenShift Baremetal IPI.
Disclaimer
- For testing purposes only. Not for production use.
- The vCenter Server credentials including password are stored in plain text.
- The vSphere DPM can be enabled with VirtualBMC for vSphere, but be careful with the recommendations presented in the vSphere DPM in nested environments may not be accurate or meet expectations. See the wiki page for detail.
Installation
pip install vbmc4vsphere
If you want to run VirtualBMC for vSphere in Docker container, see the guide on wiki page.
Supported IPMI commands
# Power the virtual machine on, off, graceful off, reset, and NMI. Note that NMI is currently experimental
ipmitool -I lanplus -U admin -P password -H 192.168.0.1 -p 6230 power on|off|soft|reset|diag
# Check the power status
ipmitool -I lanplus -U admin -P password -H 192.168.0.1 -p 6230 power status
# Set the boot device to network, dick or cdrom
ipmitool -I lanplus -U admin -P password -H 192.168.0.1 -p 6230 chassis bootdev pxe|disk|cdrom
# Get the current boot device
ipmitool -I lanplus -U admin -P password -H 192.168.0.1 -p 6230 chassis bootparam get 5
# Get the channel info. Note that its output is always a dummy, not actual information.
ipmitool -I lanplus -U admin -P password -H 192.168.0.1 -p 6230 channel info
# Get the network info. Note that its output is always a dummy, not actual information.
ipmitool -I lanplus -U admin -P password -H 192.168.0.1 -p 6230 lan print 1
- Experimental support:
power diag
- The command returns a response immediately, but the virtual machine receives NMI 60 seconds later. This depends on the behavior of
debug-hung-vm
on the ESXi.
- The command returns a response immediately, but the virtual machine receives NMI 60 seconds later. This depends on the behavior of
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 theadd
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 vbmc@vsphere.local --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
andpassword
. 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 vbmc@vsphere.local --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 | vbmc@vsphere.local | | vm_name | lab-vesxi01 | +-------------------+--------------------+
- Stopping the virtual BMC:
$ 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 control:
lab-vesxi01
througth192.168.0.100:6230
lab-vesxi02
througth192.168.0.100:6231
by using IPMI. For example:
- To power on the virtual machine
lab-vesxi01
:$ 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
lab-vesxi01
:$ ipmitool -I lanplus -H 192.168.0.100 -p 6230 -U admin -P password chassis power soft Chassis Power Control: Soft
- To reset the
lab-vesxi02
:$ ipmitool -I lanplus -H 192.168.0.100 -p 6231 -U admin -P password chassis power reset Chassis Power Control: Reset
Tips
Optional configuration file
Both vbmcd
and vbmc
can make use of an optional configuration file, which is looked for in the following locations (in this order):
VIRTUALBMC_CONFIG
environment variable pointing to a file$HOME/.vbmc/virtualbmc.conf
file/etc/virtualbmc/virtualbmc.conf
file
If no configuration file has been found, the internal defaults apply.
The configuration files are not created automatically unless you create them manually. And even if you don't create a configuration file, it won't matter in most cases.
Below is a sample of virtialbmc.conf
.
[default]
#show_passwords = false
config_dir = /home/vbmc/.vbmc
#pid_file = /home/vbmc/.vbmc/master.pid
#server_port = 50891
#server_response_timeout = 5000
#server_spawn_wait = 3000
[log]
# logfile = /home/vbmc/.vbmc/log/vbmc.log
debug = true
[ipmi]
session_timeout = 10
Manage stored data manually
Once you invoke vbmc add
command, everything that you specified will be stored as config
file per virtual machine under $HOME/.vbmc/
by default. This path can be changed by config_dir
in your virtialbmc.conf
described above.
Please note everything including password stored in plain text in the config
file.
$ cat ~/.vbmc/lab-vesxi01/config
[VirtualBMC]
username = admin
password = password
address = ::
port = 6230
vm_name = lab-vesxi01
viserver = 192.168.0.1
viserver_username = vbmc@vsphere.local
viserver_password = my-secure-password
active = True
Use with Nested-ESXi and vCenter Server
In the vCenter Server, by using VirtualBMC for vSphere (0.0.3
or later), you can enable the vSphere DPM: Distributed Power Management feature for Nested-ESXi host that is running in your VMware vSphere environment.
So you can achieve:
- Power-On the virtual ESXi in the same way as for physical ESXi.
- Automated power on/off control of ESXi hosts based on the load of the host cluster by vCenter Server.
See 📖the guide on GitHub Wiki page to use with Nested-ESXi and vCenter Server.
Use with Nested-KVM and oVirt
In the oVirt, by using VirtualBMC for vSphere, you can enable the Power Management feature for Nested-KVM that is running in your vSphere environment.
See 📖the guide on GitHub Wiki page to use with Nested-KVM and oVirt.
Use with OpenShift Baremetal IPI
With VirtualBMC for vSphere, you can control your virtual machines in the same way as a physical server. This means that tasks that require a physical BMC can be done in a virtual environment.
One such example is the provisioning of a physical server.
Here's how to automatically provision OpenShift to a physical server, called Baremetal IPI, using a virtual machine in vSphere environment with VirtualBMC for vSphere.
See 📖the guide to GitHub Wiki page to use with OpenShift Baremetal IPI.
Reference resources
This project is started based on the copy of VirtualBMC 2.1.0.dev and customized to support the VMware vSphere environment instead of the OpenStack.
- Original VirtualBMC documentation (for OpenStack): https://docs.openstack.org/virtualbmc/latest
- Its source: https://opendev.org/openstack/virtualbmc
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