bmcbutler

About

Bmcbutler is a BMC (Baseboard Management Controller) configuration management tool that uses bmclib.

Configuration support

Hardware	User accounts	Syslog	NTP	Ldap	Ldap groups	BIOS	HTTPS Cert
Dell M1000e						-
Dell iDRAC8
Dell iDRAC9
HP c7000						-
HP iLO4
HP iLO5
Supermicro X10

Need help? See kiwiirc link above/find us on the freenode IRC channel ##bmc-toolbox.

Build

go get github.com/bmc-toolbox/bmcbutler

Build with vendored modules (>= go 1.11)

GO111MODULE=on go build -mod vendor -v

Notes on working with go mod

To point to a local copy of bmclib, add to the bottom of the go.mod file

replace github.com/bmc-toolbox/bmclib => ../bmclib

To pick a specific bmclib SHA.

GO111MODULE=on go get github.com/bmc-toolbox/bmclib@2d1bd1cb

To add/update the vendor dir.

GO111MODULE=on go mod vendor

Setup

There’s two parts to setting up configuration for bmcbutler,

• Bmcbutler configuration
• Configuration for BMCs

This document assumes the Bmcbutler configuration directory is ~/.bmcbutler.

Bmcbutler configuration

Setup configuration Bmcbutler requires to run.

# create a configuration directory for ~/.bmcbutler
mkdir ~/.bmcbutler/

Copy the sample config into ~/.bmcbutler/
bmcbutler.yml sample

BMC configuration

Configuration to be applied to BMCs.

# create a directory for BMC config
mkdir ~/.bmcbutler/cfg

add the BMC yaml config definitions in there, for sample config see configuration.yml sample

bmc configuration templating

configuration.yml supports templating, for details see configTemplating

inventory

Bmcbutler was written with the intent of sourcing inventory assets and configuring their bmcs,
a csv inventory example is provided to play with.

inventory.csv sample

The ‘inventory’ parameter points Bmcbutler to the inventory source.

BMC HTTPS cert signing

Bmcbutler can manage certs for BMCs,
It compares the current HTTPS cert Subject attributes of a BMC with the ones declared in its configuration,
if the attributes don’t match, it proceeds to,

1. Generate a CSR on the BMC using the Subject attributes declared in its configuration.
2. Pass the CSR to the signer executable, read the signed cert.
3. Upload the signed cert to the BMC.
4. Reset the BMC if required.

To have this setup,

1. Declare a https_cert configuration section in the BMC config template, see configuration.yml sample
2. Declare a signer executable in the bmcbutler config, see bmcbutler.yml sample

The signer executable is required to accept a CSR through STDIN and spit out the signed cert through STDOUT.
An example signer that uses lemur can be found under helpers

Load credentials from Vault

Credentials to login to BMCs and configure them can be declared in the configuration file,
or can be looked up from Vault.

To setup secrets lookup from Vault,

• enable secretsFromVault: true in bmcbutler.yml
• Use the lookup_secret::Administrator parameter in place of the credential in bmcbutler.yml
• Use the <%= lookup_secret("Administrator") %> YAML templating parameter in place of credentials in configuration.yml sample
• See the sample bmcbutler.yml for options to set the vault token.

Examples

Set credentials in Vault, using --config and command substitution to prevent leaking the vault token
to other processes (command line arguments are visible to all processes).

curl --config <( builtin printf 'header = "X-Vault-Token: %s"' "${VAULT_TOKEN}" ) \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -X POST -d '{"Administrator": "hunter2", "Ops": "foobar"}' https://vault.example.com/v1/secret/baremetal/bmc

Check credentials were set

curl --config <( builtin printf 'header = "X-Vault-Token: %s"' "${VAULT_TOKEN}" ) \
      -X GET https://vault.example.com/v1/secret/baremetal/bmc

bmcbutler.yml - declare Vault config and replace credentials

secretsFromVault: true
vault:
  hostAddress: "http://172.18.0.2:8200"
  tokenFromFile: "samples/vault-token.test"
  secretsPath: /secret/baremetal/bmc
credentials:
  - Administrator: lookup_secret::Administrator
  - Administrator: lookup_secret::Admin2
  - root: lookup_secret::dell_default
  - ADMIN: lookup_secret::sm_default

configuration.yml - declare BMC user account config with lookup_secrets template method.

user:
  - name: Administrator
    # lookup_secret - requires 'secretsFromVault: true' in bmcbutler.yml
    # note - double quotes required
    password: <%= lookup_secret("Administrator") %>
    role: admin
    enable: true
  - name: Ops
    password: <%= lookup_secret("Ops") %>
    role: user
    enable: false

Run

Configure Blades/Chassis/Discretes

#configure all BMCs in inventory, dry run with debug output
bmcbutler configure --all --dryrun --debug
#configure all servers in given locations
bmcbutler configure --servers --locations ams2
#configure all chassis in given locations
bmcbutler configure --chassis --locations ams2,lhr3
#configure all servers in given location, spawning given butlers
bmcbutler configure --servers --locations lhr5 --butlers 200
#configure one or more BMCs identified by IP(s)
bmcbutler configure --ips 192.168.0.1,192.168.0.2,192.168.0.2
#configure one or more BMCs identified by serial(s) and trace log
bmcbutler configure --serials <serial1>,<serial2> --trace
bmcbutler configure --serial <serial1>,<serial2> --debug
bmcbutler configure  --serial <serial> --debug
#Apply specific configuration resource(s) and trace log
bmcbutler configure --ips 192.168.1.4 --resources ntp,syslog,user --trace

Acknowledgment

bmcbutler was originally developed for Booking.com.
With approval from Booking.com, the code and
specification were generalized and published as Open Source on github, for
which the authors would like to express their gratitude.