The Ceph Storage OSDs and journal partitions require GPT disk labels. This means the additional disks on Ceph Storage require conversion to GPT before installing the Ceph OSD services. For this to happen, all metadata must be deleted from the disks; this will allow the director to set GPT labels on them.

You can set the director to delete all disk metadata by default by adding the following setting to your /home/stack/undercloud.conf file:

clean_nodes=true

With this option, the Bare Metal Provisioning service will run an additional step to boot the nodes and clean the disks each time the node is set to available. This adds an additional power cycle after the first introspection and before each deployment. The Bare Metal Provisioning service uses wipefs --force --all to perform the clean.

After setting this option, run the openstack undercloud install command to execute this configuration change.

A node definition template (instackenv.json) is a JSON format file and contains the hardware and power management details for registering nodes. For example:

{
    "nodes":[
        {
            "mac":[
                "b1:b1:b1:b1:b1:b1"
            ],
            "cpu":"4",
            "memory":"6144",
            "disk":"40",
            "arch":"x86_64",
            "pm_type":"ipmi",
            "pm_user":"admin",
            "pm_password":"p@55w0rd!",
            "pm_addr":"192.0.2.205"
        },
        {
            "mac":[
                "b2:b2:b2:b2:b2:b2"
            ],
            "cpu":"4",
            "memory":"6144",
            "disk":"40",
            "arch":"x86_64",
            "pm_type":"ipmi",
            "pm_user":"admin",
            "pm_password":"p@55w0rd!",
            "pm_addr":"192.0.2.206"
        },
        {
            "mac":[
                "b3:b3:b3:b3:b3:b3"
            ],
            "cpu":"4",
            "memory":"6144",
            "disk":"40",
            "arch":"x86_64",
            "pm_type":"ipmi",
            "pm_user":"admin",
            "pm_password":"p@55w0rd!",
            "pm_addr":"192.0.2.207"
        },
        {
            "mac":[
                "c1:c1:c1:c1:c1:c1"
            ],
            "cpu":"4",
            "memory":"6144",
            "disk":"40",
            "arch":"x86_64",
            "pm_type":"ipmi",
            "pm_user":"admin",
            "pm_password":"p@55w0rd!",
            "pm_addr":"192.0.2.208"
        },
        {
            "mac":[
                "c2:c2:c2:c2:c2:c2"
            ],
            "cpu":"4",
            "memory":"6144",
            "disk":"40",
            "arch":"x86_64",
            "pm_type":"ipmi",
            "pm_user":"admin",
            "pm_password":"p@55w0rd!",
            "pm_addr":"192.0.2.209"
        },
        {
            "mac":[
                "c3:c3:c3:c3:c3:c3"
            ],
            "cpu":"4",
            "memory":"6144",
            "disk":"40",
            "arch":"x86_64",
            "pm_type":"ipmi",
            "pm_user":"admin",
            "pm_password":"p@55w0rd!",
            "pm_addr":"192.0.2.210"
        },
        {
            "mac":[
                "d1:d1:d1:d1:d1:d1"
            ],
            "cpu":"4",
            "memory":"6144",
            "disk":"40",
            "arch":"x86_64",
            "pm_type":"ipmi",
            "pm_user":"admin",
            "pm_password":"p@55w0rd!",
            "pm_addr":"192.0.2.211"
        },
        {
            "mac":[
                "d2:d2:d2:d2:d2:d2"
            ],
            "cpu":"4",
            "memory":"6144",
            "disk":"40",
            "arch":"x86_64",
            "pm_type":"ipmi",
            "pm_user":"admin",
            "pm_password":"p@55w0rd!",
            "pm_addr":"192.0.2.212"
        },
        {
            "mac":[
                "d3:d3:d3:d3:d3:d3"
            ],
            "cpu":"4",
            "memory":"6144",
            "disk":"40",
            "arch":"x86_64",
            "pm_type":"ipmi",
            "pm_user":"admin",
            "pm_password":"p@55w0rd!",
            "pm_addr":"192.0.2.213"
        }
    ]
}

After creating the template, save the file to the stack user’s home directory (/home/stack/instackenv.json). Initialize the stack user, then import instackenv.json into the director:

$ source ~/stackrc
$ openstack overcloud node import ~/instackenv.json

This imports the template and registers each node from the template into the director.

Assign the kernel and ramdisk images to each node:

$ openstack overcloud node configure <node>

The nodes are now registered and configured in the director.

After registering each node, you will need to inspect the hardware and tag the node into a specific profile. Profile tags match your nodes to flavors, and in turn the flavors are assigned to a deployment role.

To inspect and tag new nodes, follow these steps:

Most Ceph Storage nodes use multiple disks. This means the director needs to identify the disk to use for the root disk when provisioning a Ceph Storage node.

There are several properties you can use to help the director identify the root disk:

In this example, you specify the drive to deploy the overcloud image using the serial number of the disk to determine the root device.

Check the disk information from each node’s hardware introspection. The following command displays the disk information from a node:

(undercloud) $ openstack baremetal introspection data save 1a4e30da-b6dc-499d-ba87-0bd8a3819bc0 | jq ".inventory.disks"

For example, the data for one node might show three disks:

[
  {
    "size": 299439751168,
    "rotational": true,
    "vendor": "DELL",
    "name": "/dev/sda",
    "wwn_vendor_extension": "0x1ea4dcc412a9632b",
    "wwn_with_extension": "0x61866da04f3807001ea4dcc412a9632b",
    "model": "PERC H330 Mini",
    "wwn": "0x61866da04f380700",
    "serial": "61866da04f3807001ea4dcc412a9632b"
  }
  {
    "size": 299439751168,
    "rotational": true,
    "vendor": "DELL",
    "name": "/dev/sdb",
    "wwn_vendor_extension": "0x1ea4e13c12e36ad6",
    "wwn_with_extension": "0x61866da04f380d001ea4e13c12e36ad6",
    "model": "PERC H330 Mini",
    "wwn": "0x61866da04f380d00",
    "serial": "61866da04f380d001ea4e13c12e36ad6"
  }
  {
    "size": 299439751168,
    "rotational": true,
    "vendor": "DELL",
    "name": "/dev/sdc",
    "wwn_vendor_extension": "0x1ea4e31e121cfb45",
    "wwn_with_extension": "0x61866da04f37fc001ea4e31e121cfb45",
    "model": "PERC H330 Mini",
    "wwn": "0x61866da04f37fc00",
    "serial": "61866da04f37fc001ea4e31e121cfb45"
  }
]

For this example, set the root device to disk 2, which has 61866da04f380d001ea4e13c12e36ad6 as the serial number. This requires a change to the root_device parameter for the node definition:

(undercloud) $ openstack baremetal node set --property root_device='{"serial": "61866da04f380d001ea4e13c12e36ad6"}' 1a4e30da-b6dc-499d-ba87-0bd8a3819bc0

This helps the director identify the specific disk to use as the root disk. When we initiate our Overcloud creation, the director provisions this node and writes the Overcloud image to this disk. The other disks are used for mapping our Ceph Storage nodes.