/ipmi-emulator

Emulator for the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) on KVM

ipmi-emulator

Emulator for the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) on KVM

Background
The Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI), is a standard interface for Independant Lights Out (ILO) and the Dell Remote Access Controllers (DRAC). Although newer APIs extist for controlling physical servers out-of-band, this remains the current market leader. For those interested in the latest standard, you can read about the DMTF's RedFish standard here: https://www.dmtf.org/standards/redfish

Purpose
Those interested in exploring the ipmi API and interface, but without access to an ILO / DRAC, or other out-of-band management device, this is for you! I found myself interested in testing a scaled down version of OpenStack Ironic (called BiFrost), but I did not want to interrupt current DHCP settings.

Design
The script interacts directly with KVM. Reboot machines, change boot order, PXE boot and view console logs.

Dependencies

  • qemu-kvm
  • OpenIPMI
  • OpenIPMI-tools

  1. Install qemu-kvm. Proper versioning is critical, as we need the QEMU -> IPMI libraries. git clone https://github.com/cminyard/qemu/tree/stable-2.2-ipmi ./configure; make && make install

  2. Download OpenIPMI libraries: http://sourceforge.net/projects/openipmi/ Follow the documented process in 'lanserv/README.vm' ./configure --prefix=/opt/openipmi/usr --sysconfdir=/opt/openipmi/etc
    --with-perlinstall=/opt/openipmi/usr/lib/perl
    --with-pythoninstall=/opt/openipmi/usr/lib/python make && make install

  • If you received the following errors while compiling: '/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lOpenIPMIutils' . export CC="gcc -lrt" and reconfigure
  1. Configure the IPMI simulator:
  • qemu-img create -f qcow2 -o size=1G /opt/KVM/disk1.qcow2
  • download test kernel: http://download.cirros-cloud.net/0.3.4/cirros-0.3.4-i386-kernel
  • edit /opt/openipmi/etc/ipmi/lan.conf
  • modify 'startcmd' to use the qemu compiled
  • /usr/local/bin/qemu-system-x86_64 --enable-kvm -drive file=/opt/KVM/Test4sda -nographic -net nic,model=e1000,macaddr=52:54:00:12:34:59 -net user,hostfwd=tcp::5556-10.0.2.15:22 -chardev socket,id=ipmi0,host=localhost,port=9011,reconnect=10 -device isa-ipmi,chardev=ipmi0,interface=bt,irq=5 -serial mon:tcp::9012,server,telnet,nowait
  • /usr/local/bin/qemu-system-x86_64 --enable-kvm -drive file=/opt/KVM/disk1.qcow2,format=qcow2 -nographic -net nic,model=e1000,macaddr=52:54:00:12:34:59 -net user,hostfwd=tcp::5555-10.0.2.15:22 -chardev socket,id=ipmi0,host=localhost,port=9002,reconnect=10 -device isa-ipmi,chardev=ipmi0,interface=bt,irq=5 -serial mon:tcp::9003,server,telnet,nowait -kernel /opt/cirros-0.3.4-i386-kernel --append 'root=/dev/hda console=ttyS0,115200'
  • Serial console is configured to /dev/ttyUSB0 in the lan.conf file, Find if your serial console is configured as such (or) change.
  • sol "/dev/ttyS0" 38400 history=4000 historyfru=10

  1. Run IPMI-Emulator /opt/openipmi/usr/bin/ipmi-emulator.py

  2. Connect to the simulator using ipmitool as below: ipmitool -I lanplus -H localhost -p 9011 -U cirros power status