Bare Metal Provisioning

Overview

Polystack Bare Metal provisioning treats physical servers as first-class cloud resources. Administrators enroll nodes by registering their management interface credentials, then users can provision bare metal instances through the same workflow as virtual machines.

Administrator Access Required — This operation requires the admin role. Contact your Polystack administrator if you do not have sufficient permissions.

Prerequisites

Administrator access to the Polystack Dashboard (admin view)
Bare metal service (Ironic) enabled on the platform
IPMI access to the physical servers
Deploy kernel and ramdisk images uploaded to the image service

View Bare Metal Nodes

Dashboard
CLI

Navigate to Compute > Bare Metal Nodes in the admin sidebar. This page is only visible when the Ironic endpoint is enabled.

Column	Description
Node ID/Name	Node identifier (clickable to view details)
Ironic Instance Name	Name of the instance provisioned on this node
Power State	Power on, power off, or unknown
Provision State	Available, active, deploying, etc.
Maintained	Whether the node is in maintenance mode (with reason tooltip)
Number of Ports	Network ports registered for this node
Driver	Management driver (e.g., `ipmi`)
Created At	Registration timestamp

Filter by Name, Power State, or Provision State.

Source credentials

source openrc.sh

openstack baremetal node list

openstack baremetal node show <NODE_ID>

Register a Bare Metal Node

The Dashboard provides a 3-step wizard for node registration.

Dashboard
CLI

Open the Create Node wizard

Navigate to Compute > Bare Metal Nodes. Click Create Node.

Step 1 — Node Info

Field	Type	Required	Description
Name	Text	No	Optional node name
Driver	Dropdown	Yes	Management driver (`ipmi`)
Properties	Key-value pairs	Yes	Must include: `cpus`, `memory_mb`, `local_gb`, `cpu_arch`
Extra	Key-value pairs	No	Additional metadata
Standard Traits	Multi-select	No	Standard resource traits
Custom Traits	Dynamic list	No	Custom traits (must match `CUSTOM_[A-Z0-9_]{1,248}`)
Resource Class	Text	No	Node resource class

Required property keys (cpus, memory_mb, local_gb, cpu_arch) can be auto-detected using the Inspect action after registration.

Step 2 — Drive Info (Interfaces)

Configure hardware interfaces:

Field	Default	Options
Boot Interface	pxe	pxe, ipxe, fake
Console Interface	no-console	no-console
Network Interface	noop	flat, noop
RAID Interface	no-raid	no-raid, agent
Storage Interface	noop	noop
Vendor Interface	ipmitool	ipmitool

Step 3 — Driver Info (IPMI Credentials)

Field	Type	Required	Description
Deploy Kernel	Image select	Yes	Kernel image (AKI format)
Deploy Ramdisk	Image select	Yes	Ramdisk image (ARI format)
IPMI Address	IP input	Yes	BMC/IPMI management IP
IPMI Port	Number	No	IPMI port (max: 65535)
IPMI Username	Text	Yes	BMC login username
IPMI Password	Text	Yes	BMC login password

Advanced IPMI options (click “More” to expand):

Field	Default	Options
IPMI Bridge	no	no
IPMI Privilege Level	ADMINISTRATOR	ADMINISTRATOR, USER
IPMI Protocol Version	2.0	1.5, 2.0

Create the node

Click Confirm. The node appears in the list with provision state Enroll.

Node appears in Bare Metal Nodes list. Use Inspect to auto-detect hardware properties.

openstack baremetal node create \
  --driver ipmi \
  --name my-bare-metal \
  --property cpus=32 \
  --property memory_mb=131072 \
  --property local_gb=1000 \
  --property cpu_arch=x86_64 \
  --driver-info ipmi_address=192.168.1.100 \
  --driver-info ipmi_username=admin \
  --driver-info ipmi_password=password \
  --driver-info deploy_kernel=<KERNEL_IMAGE_ID> \
  --driver-info deploy_ramdisk=<RAMDISK_IMAGE_ID>

Node Management Actions

Dashboard
CLI

The following actions are available from the node row’s More dropdown:

Action	Description
Edit	Update node properties, interfaces, and IPMI credentials
Power On	Power on the physical server
Power Off	Power off the physical server
Inspect	Auto-detect hardware properties from the BMC
Set Maintenance	Put the node in maintenance mode
Clear Maintenance	Remove the node from maintenance mode
Set Boot Device	Configure the next boot device
Create Port	Register a network port for the node
Create Port Group	Create a port group (bonded interfaces)
Delete	Remove the node from the platform

The first row action is Manage State for provisioning lifecycle transitions.

openstack baremetal node power on <NODE_ID>

openstack baremetal node power off <NODE_ID>

openstack baremetal node inspect <NODE_ID>

openstack baremetal node maintenance set <NODE_ID> --reason "Hardware upgrade"

openstack baremetal node maintenance unset <NODE_ID>

Node Detail

Dashboard
CLI

Click a node name to open the detail page. Three tabs are available:Base Info tab:

Base Info: Chassis ID, Resource Class, Maintenance status and reason
Driver: All driver info key-value pairs (IPMI credentials masked)
Boot Device: Current boot device and persistence setting
Properties: All node properties
Traits: Standard and custom traits
Interface Validation: Table showing each interface’s validation status

Ports tab — Network ports registered for this node (with CRUD actions)Port Groups tab — Bonded port groups (with CRUD actions)

openstack baremetal node show <NODE_ID>

openstack baremetal port list --node <NODE_ID>

openstack baremetal node validate <NODE_ID>

Next Steps

Launch an Instance

Provision bare metal instances through the instance create wizard

Flavors

Create bare metal flavors with resource class matching

Compute Hosts

Monitor bare metal hypervisor resources

Troubleshooting

Resolve bare metal provisioning failures

Core Services

Other Services

Overview

View Bare Metal Nodes

Register a Bare Metal Node

Open the Create Node wizard

Step 1 — Node Info

Step 2 — Drive Info (Interfaces)

Step 3 — Driver Info (IPMI Credentials)

Create the node

Node Management Actions

Node Detail

Next Steps

Launch an Instance

Flavors

Compute Hosts

Troubleshooting

​Overview

​View Bare Metal Nodes

​Register a Bare Metal Node

Open the Create Node wizard

Step 1 — Node Info

Step 2 — Drive Info (Interfaces)

Step 3 — Driver Info (IPMI Credentials)

Create the node

​Node Management Actions

​Node Detail

​Next Steps

Launch an Instance

Flavors

Compute Hosts

Troubleshooting

Overview

View Bare Metal Nodes

Register a Bare Metal Node

Node Management Actions

Node Detail

Next Steps