Port groups support

The Bare Metal service supports static configuration of port groups
(bonds) in the instances via configdrive. See kernel
documentation on bonding to see why it may be useful and how it is
setup in linux. The sections below describe how to make use of them in
the Bare Metal service.

Switch-side configuration

If port groups are desired in the ironic deployment, they need to be
configured on the switches. It needs to be done manually, and the mode
and properties configured on the switch have to correspond to the mode
and properties that will be configured on the ironic side, as bonding
mode and properties may be named differently on your switch, or have
possible values different from the ones described in kernel
documentation on bonding. Please refer to your switch configuration
documentation for more details.

Provisioning and cleaning cannot make use of port groups if they need
to boot the deployment ramdisk via (i)PXE. If your switches or desired
port group configuration do not support port group fallback, which will
allow port group members to be used by themselves, you need to set port
group’s standalone_ports_supported value to be
False in ironic, as it is True by default.

Physical networks

If any port in a port group has a physical network, then all ports in
that port group must have the same physical network.

In order to change the physical network of the ports in a port group,
all ports must first be removed from the port group, before changing
their physical networks (to the same value), then adding them back to
the port group.

See physical networks <multitenancy-physnets> for
further information on using physical networks in the Bare Metal
service.

Port groups
configuration in the Bare Metal service

Port group configuration is supported in ironic API microversions
1.26, the CLI commands below specify it for completeness.

1. When creating a port group, the node to which it belongs must be
   specified, along with, optionally, its name, address, mode, properties,
   and if it supports fallback to standalone ports:

   baremetal port group create \
   --node $NODE_UUID --name test --address fa:ab:25:48:fd:ba --mode 802.3ad \
   --property miimon=100 --property xmit_hash_policy="layer2+3" \
   --support-standalone-ports

   A port group can also be updated with
   baremetal port group set command, see its help for more
   details.

   If an address is not specified, the port group address on the
   deployed instance will be the same as the address of the neutron port
   that is attached to the port group. If the neutron port is not attached,
   the port group will not be configured.

   Note

   In standalone mode, port groups have to be configured manually. It
   can be done either statically inside the image, or by generating the
   configdrive and adding it to the node’s instance_info. For
   more information on how to configure bonding via configdrive, refer to
   cloud-init
   documentation and code.
   cloud-init version 0.7.7 or later is required for bonding configuration
   to work.

   The following is a simple sample for configuring bonding via
   configdrive:

   When booting an instance, it needs to add user-data file for
   configuring bonding via --user-data option. For
   example:

   {
     "networks": [
       {
         "type": "physical",
         "name": "eth0",
         "mac_address": "fa:ab:25:48:fd:ba"
       },
       {
         "type": "physical",
         "name": "eth1",
         "mac_address": "fa:ab:25:48:fd:ab"
       },
       {
         "type": "bond",
         "name": "bond0",
         "bond_interfaces": [
           "eth0", "eth1"
           ],
           "mode": "active-backup"
       }
     ]
   }

   If the port group’s address is not explicitly set in standalone mode,
   it will be set automatically by the process described in kernel
   documentation on bonding.

   During interface attachment, port groups have higher priority than
   ports, so they will be used first. (It is not yet possible to specify
   which one is desired, a port group or a port, in an interface attachment
   request). Port groups that don’t have any ports will be ignored.

   The mode and properties values are described in the kernel
   documentation on bonding. The default port group mode is
   active-backup, and this default can be changed by setting
   the [DEFAULT]default_portgroup_mode configuration option in
   the ironic API service configuration file.

2. Associate ports with the created port group.

   It can be done on port creation:

   baremetal port create \
   --node $NODE_UUID --address fa:ab:25:48:fd:ba --port-group test

   Or by updating an existing port:

   baremetal port set $PORT_UUID --port-group $PORT_GROUP_UUID

   When updating a port, the node associated with the port has to be in
   enroll, manageable, or inspecting
   states. A port group can have the same or different address as
   individual ports.

3. Boot an instance (or node directly, in case of using standalone
   ironic) providing an image that has cloud-init version 0.7.7 or later
   and supports bonding.

When the deployment is done, you can check that the port group is set
up properly by running the following command in the instance:

cat /proc/net/bonding/bondX

where X is a number autogenerated by cloud-init for each
configured port group, in no particular order. It starts with 0 and
increments by 1 for every configured port group.

Link aggregation/teaming on
windows

Portgroups are supported for Windows Server images, which can created
by building_image_windows instruction.

You can customise an instance after it is launched along with script
file in Configuration of Instance and
selected Configuration Drive option. Then ironic virt
driver will generate network metadata and add all the additional
information, such as bond mode, transmit hash policy, MII link
monitoring interval, and of which links the bond consists. The
information in InstanceMetadata will be used afterwards to generate the
config drive.