Bare Metal Overview

When Tenants allocate Bare metal resources, Bridge can provision the servers. Similarly, when the tenants release the bare metal resources, Bridge can deprovision them securely, so that they can be reassigned to other tenants.

Hardware Provisioning

The Hardware provisioning of the underlying compute resources involves multiple steps. This assumes that the provisioning is done directly using Armada Bridge. If other provisioning tools (such as NVIDIA BCM) are used, the following steps will not be needed.

Bare-Metal Provisioning via Redfish:

• Armada Bridge leverages Redfish to communicate with the server's Baseboard Management Controller (BMC), allowing for full control over server hardware.
• Redfish enables tasks like power management, hardware configuration, and eventually operating system (OS) installation on bare-metal servers.

Integration with MaaS (Metal as a Service):

• Internally, Armada Bridge integrates with MaaS for OS provisioning. MaaS is an open-source tool designed for automating the provisioning of physical servers in a datacenter.
• While Redfish handles the hardware provisioning, MaaS takes care of the OS installation, enabling seamless automation of OS deployment on bare-metal machines once they are powered on and initialized.

Custom OS Image Management:

• The Admin (Network Control Panel Admin) is responsible for managing custom operating system images within the Armada Bridge UI. These images can be pre-configured OS environments tailored for specific tenant needs.
• The admin can upload or configure OS images, making them available for tenants to use when provisioning new machines.

Provisioning and De-Provisioning Flows: Both provisioning and de-provisioning flows are supported:

• Provisioning involves installing and configuring the hardware and OS according to tenant specifications.
• De-Provisioning allows the Armada Bridge to securely shut down and wipe the hardware, making it available for future use. This may involve wiping the storage, resetting hardware settings, and returning the server to a "bare" state.

Once the provisioning is done, the tenant users can request bare-metal servers via the Armada Bridge UI, selecting from the custom OS images that the admin has prepared. Once the tenant selects an OS image and initiates the provisioning, Armada Bridge uses Redfish to manage the underlying hardware, while MaaS takes over the OS installation.