Bright:IPMI

Configure an IPMI/BMC network

The first step in setting up a BMC is to add the BMC network as a network object in the cluster management infrastructure. The following settings are recommended as defaults:

Property	Value
Name	mcnet, ilonet, or ipminet
Domain name	bmc.cluster, ilo.cluster, or ipmi.cluster
External network	false
Base address	10.148.0.0
Netmask bits	16
Broadcast address	10.148.255.255

Once the network has been created, all nodes must be assigned a BMC interface on this network. The easiest method of doing this is to create the interface for one node device and then to clone that device several times.

BMC Authentication

The node-installer is responsible for the initialization and configuration of the BMC interface of a device. In addition to a number of network-related settings, the node-installer also configures BMC authentication credentials. By default BMC interfaces are configured with username ADMIN and a random password that is generated during the installation of the head node. The values can be read with the “get” command of cmsh in partition mode.

Changing the BMC authentication credentials is currently only possible through cmsh.

For example, the current values of the BMC username and password for the entire cluster can be obtained and changed as follows:

[bright61]% partition use base
[bright61->partition[base]]% get bmcusername ADMIN
[bright61->partition[base]]% get bmcpassword Za4ohni1ohMa2zew
[bright61->partition[base]]% set bmcusername bmcadmin
[bright61->partition*[base*]]% set bmcpassword
enter new password: ******
retype new password: ******
[bright61->partition*[base*]]% commit
[bright61->partition[base]]%

It is possible to change the authentication credentials cluster-wide or by category. Category settings override cluster-wide settings. The relevant properties are:

Property	Value
BMC User ID	User type. Normally set to 2 for administrator access.
BMC User Name	username
BMC Password	password

The cluster manager stores the configured BMC username and password. These are used:

• to configure the BMC interface from the node-installer
• to authenticate to the BMC interface after it has come up

BMC management operations, such as power cycling nodes and collecting hardware metrics, can then be performed.

Bright fails when IPMI doesnt configure correctly

The installer will crap out if the IPMI modules doesnt configure correctly. Hack to skip below, doesnt address the issue but allows the installer to progress.

# edit the file: 
 /cm/node-installer/scripts/node-installer.conf
# and set: 
setupBmc = false
failOnMissingBmc = false

Interfaces Settings

Interface Name

It is recommended that the network device name of a BMC interface start with ipmi or ilo, according to whether the BMC is running with IPMI or iLO. Numbers are appended to the base name, resulting in, for example: ipmi0.

Obtaining The IP address

BMC interfaces can have their IP addresses configured statically, or obtained from a DHCP server. Only a node with a static BMC IP address has BMC power management done by Bright Cluster Manager. A node with a DHCP-assigned BMC IP address, requires custom BMC power management due to its dynamic nature.