Harvester Seeder

The harvester-seeder add-on allows you to perform out-of-band operations on Harvester hosts using the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI).

This add-on can also discover hardware and related events for hosts that support Redfish-based access, and then associate that hardware with the corresponding hosts.

Prerequisites

Ensure that the following requirements are met before enabling the add-on.

  • IPMI access is enabled on the hosts, and your user account has the necessary privileges for performing related operations.

    If you are using ipmitool, you can run ipmitool -I lanplus -H iloOriDracIPAddress -U admin -P admin sel list to verify that both requirements are met.

  • Redfish is enabled.

    You can run curl -vk https://iloOriDracIPAddress/redfish/v1 to verify that Redfish is enabled.

  • Ports 443 and 623 are reachable.

    Some IPMI implementations allow you to access devices using a web interface on port 443. However, IPMI devices are more commonly accessed using a command-line interface on UDP port 623 (IPMI over IP).

  • Alerts are enabled on the hosts.

    Some hardware vendors may require that you enable alerts.

Enable the Add-On and Configure Hosts

  1. On the Harvester UI, go to Advanced > Add-ons.

  2. Select harvester-seeder, and then select ⋮ > Enable.

    After a few seconds, the value of State changes to DeploySuccessful.

    EnableAddon

  3. Go to the Hosts screen.

    You must edit the configuration of each host listed on this screen.

  4. Select a host, and then select ⋮ > Edit Config.

    EditConfig

  5. On the Out-of-Band Access tab, select Enabled, configure the settings, and then select Save.

    The add-on uses the information to connect to your IPMI interface.

    OutOfBandAccess

Power-Related Operations

You can use the Harvester UI to shut down and reboot hosts once the Out-of-Band Access settings are configured. However, you must first enable Maintenance Mode, which automatically migrates all VMs to other nodes. harvester-seeder communicates with the hosts via IPMI when performing the selected operation.

ShutdownReboot

You can also power on VMs while Maintenance Mode is enabled.

PowerOn

Hardware Event Aggregation

If you selected Enabled in the Event section of the Out-of-Band Access settings screen, harvester-seeder leverages Redfish to query the hardware for information about component failures and fan temperatures. The information is converted to Kubernetes events during hardware reconciliation and is subsequently handled by the Kubernetes garbage collection policy. Harvester stores these events for 1 hour by default.

HardwareEvents

Troubleshooting

The Out-of-Band Access settings screen may become unresponsive and display the message Waiting for "inventories.metal.harvesterhci.io" to be ready. You must refresh the page whenever this occurs. For more information, see Issue #4412.

If you encounter persistent issues while using harvester-seeder, submit the following to SUSE Support:

  • Support bundle

  • Output of the command kubectl get machine -n harvester-system -o yaml