ironic/doc/source/admin/firmware-updates.rst

Firmware update using manual cleaning

The firmware update cleaning step allows one or more firmware updates to be applied to a node. If multiple updates are specified, then they are applied sequentially in the order given. The server is rebooted once per update. If a failure occurs, the cleaning step immediately fails which may result in some updates not being applied. If the node is placed into maintenance mode while a firmware update cleaning step is running that is performing multiple firmware updates, the update in progress will complete, and processing of the remaining updates will pause. When the node is taken out of maintenance mode, processing of the remaining updates will continue.

Note

Only /admin/drivers/redfish supports firmware updates currently.

When updating the BMC firmware, the BMC may become unavailable for a period of time as it resets. In this case, it may be desirable to have the cleaning step wait after the update has been applied before indicating that the update was successful. This allows the BMC time to fully reset before further operations are carried out against it. To cause the cleaning step to wait after applying an update, an optional wait argument may be specified in the firmware image dictionary. The value of this argument indicates the number of seconds to wait following the update. If the wait argument is not specified, then this is equivalent to wait 0, meaning that it will not wait and immediately proceed with the next firmware update if there is one, or complete the cleaning step if not.

How it works

The update_firmware cleaning step accepts JSON in the following format:

[{
    "interface": "management",
    "step": "update_firmware",
    "args": {
        "firmware_images":[
            {
                "url": "<url_to_firmware_image1>",
                "checksum": "<checksum for image, uses SHA1, SHA256, or SHA512>",
                "source": "<optional override source setting for image>",
                "wait": <number_of_seconds_to_wait>
            },
            {
                "url": "<url_to_firmware_image2>"
            },
            ...
        ]
    }
}]

The different attributes of the update_firmware cleaning step are as follows:

Attribute	Description
interface	Interface of the cleaning step. Must be management for firmware update
step	Name of cleaning step. Must be update_firmware for firmware update
args	Keyword-argument entry (<name>: <value>) being passed to cleaning step
args.firmware_images	Ordered list of dictionaries of firmware images to be applied

Each firmware image dictionary, is of the form:

{
  "url": "<URL of firmware image file>",
  "checksum": "<checksum for image, uses SHA1>",
  "source": "<Optional override source setting for image>",
  "wait": <Optional time in seconds to wait after applying update>
}

The url and checksum arguments in the firmware image dictionary are mandatory, while the source and wait arguments are optional.

For url currently http, https, swift and file schemes are supported.

source corresponds to :oslo.configredfish.firmware_source and by setting it here, it is possible to override global setting per firmware image in clean step arguments.

Note

At the present time, targets for the firmware update cannot be specified. In testing, the BMC applied the update to all applicable targets on the node. It is assumed that the BMC knows what components a given firmware image is applicable to.

Applying updates

To perform a firmware update, first download the firmware to a web server, Swift or filesystem that the Ironic conductor or BMC has network access to. This could be the ironic conductor web server or another web server on the BMC network. Using a web browser, curl, or similar tool on a server that has network access to the BMC or Ironic conductor, try downloading the firmware to verify that the URLs are correct and that the web server is configured properly.

Next, construct the JSON for the firmware update cleaning step to be executed. When launching the firmware update, the JSON may be specified on the command line directly or in a file. The following example shows one cleaning step that installs four firmware updates. All except 3rd entry that has explicit source added, uses setting from [redfish]firmware_source to determine if and where to stage the files:

[{
    "interface": "management",
    "step": "update_firmware",
    "args": {
        "firmware_images":[
            {
                "url": "http://192.0.2.10/BMC_4_22_00_00.EXE",
                "checksum": "<sha1-checksum-of-the-file>",
                "wait": 300
            },
            {
                "url": "https://192.0.2.10/NIC_19.0.12_A00.EXE",
                "checksum": "<sha1-checksum-of-the-file>"
            },
            {
                "url": "file:///firmware_images/idrac/9/PERC_WN64_6.65.65.65_A00.EXE",
                "checksum": "<sha1-checksum-of-the-file>",
                "source": "http"
            },
            {
                "url": "swift://firmware_container/BIOS_W8Y0W_WN64_2.1.7.EXE",
                "checksum": "<sha1-checksum-of-the-file>"
            }
        ]
    }
}]

Finally, launch the firmware update cleaning step against the node. The following example assumes the above JSON is in a file named firmware_update.json:

$ baremetal node clean <ironic_node_uuid> --clean-steps firmware_update.json

In the following example, the JSON is specified directly on the command line:

$ baremetal node clean <ironic_node_uuid> --clean-steps \
    '[{"interface": "management", "step": "update_firmware", "args": {"firmware_images":[{"url": "http://192.0.2.10/BMC_4_22_00_00.EXE", "wait": 300}, {"url": "https://192.0.2.10/NIC_19.0.12_A00.EXE"}]}}]'

Note

Firmware updates may take some time to complete. If a firmware update cleaning step consistently times out, then consider performing fewer firmware updates in the cleaning step or increasing clean_callback_timeout in ironic.conf to increase the timeout value.

Warning

Warning: Removing power from a server while it is in the process of updating firmware may result in devices in the server, or the server itself becoming inoperable.