Bug 1317731

Summary: [RFE] IPA needs to support Multipathed SAN LUNs for root disk
Product: Red Hat OpenStack Reporter: Dave Cain <dcain>
Component: openstack-ironic-python-agentAssignee: Dmitry Tantsur <dtantsur>
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX QA Contact: Omri Hochman <ohochman>
Severity: high Docs Contact:
Priority: high    
Version: 8.0 (Liberty)CC: aperotti, bfournie, ctatman, dcain, dcain, jschluet, mburns, morazi, sclewis, scohen, slinaber, sreichar
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: FutureFeature
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Enhancement
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2018-08-15 15:47:17 UTC Type: Bug
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On: 1283436, 1509992    
Bug Blocks: 1273812, 1337637, 1354038, 1511596    
Attachments:
Description Flags
Modifications to support iSCSI backed rootdisk in OSP8 none

Description Dave Cain 2016-03-15 02:30:45 UTC 
1. Description: 
Normally one can provide a block device through either Fibre Channel, iSCSI, or even FCoE to the host as a root volume for the operating system directly.  Booting from SAN through any of these protocols can be done versus having the OS provisioned on local disks installed in the system. This provides significant advantages such as reduced management cost, allowing server profiles to "move" throughout the overall infrastructure (since its disk is hosted on the managed storage device and is stateless), and the ability to employ space efficiency on the volume containing server LUNs.

We need to have this ability with the ironic python agent (IPA), which today does not appear to exist.

2. Details:
a.Bugzilla dependencies (if any): n/a
b.Hardware dependencies (if any): managed storage appliance like NetApp
c.Upstream information
  i. Date it will be upstream: ?
  ii.Version:
d.External links:
http://www.netapp.com/us/media/tr-4036.pdf
http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/unified_computing/ucs/UCS_CVDs/flexpod_openstack_osp6.html

e.Severity (U/H/M/L): Urgent
f.Business Priority: Nice to have

3.Business Justification
a.Why is this needed: This enables stateless computing with customers utilizing managed storage appliance hardware and has been possible with the bash-based deployment disk (pre-IPA) as well as previous versions of RHEL OpenStack (6, based on Juno).
b.What hardware is required (if any): managed storage appliance like NetApp
c.Business impact: RFE
Comment 3 Dmitry Tantsur 2016-04-01 12:03:23 UTC 
Hello!

How precisely did you use it with the old ramdisk? Maybe we can reproduce the same code path with IPA. Could you elaborate on your steps back then?
Comment 4 Dave Cain 2016-04-11 21:47:14 UTC 
Created attachment 1146146 [details]
Modifications to support iSCSI backed rootdisk in OSP8

Attaching a 5 page PDF that shows how to make this possible with the old Bash-based discovery and deployment ramdisk(s).
Comment 5 Dmitry Tantsur 2016-04-19 14:13:09 UTC 
Thanks a lot! I've looked through the document, and we will probably discuss it on the openstack summit soon.

In the meanwhile, what was the problem with the IPA ramdisk? The same steps won't work for it? What's the failure?
Comment 6 Dave Cain 2016-04-22 14:02:21 UTC 
The IPA ramdisk just won't find the remote iSCSI LUN during introspection or deployment, no matter what is passed to it or customized in the image.  I don't recall the specific error message.
Comment 7 Dmitry Tantsur 2016-05-09 12:34:09 UTC 
Hi! It's pity we could not have a proper chat in Austin. However, Ironic is likely to get boot from volume support in Newton timeframe - it's one of our upstream priorities. Could you please figure out if the spec at https://review.openstack.org/294995 covers your needs? If not, how hard would it be to improve it to cover your case?
Comment 10 Dmitry Tantsur 2017-02-09 10:08:46 UTC 
I'm assuming this is about iBFT, not upstream boot-from-volume work.
Comment 11 Bob Fournier 2018-08-15 15:47:17 UTC 
WWN can be used for root hint. Beyond that we don't intend on addressing this issue.