Bare Metal Orchestrator consists of core components and the site components that communicate with the BMC for provisioning the remote infrastructure.
Core components
The core components of the Global Controller node are responsible for managing Bare Metal Orchestrator. The functions of the core components are described below:
- API server—allows all components in the Bare Metal Orchestrator cluster to communicate with one another through the API server.
- Cert-manager controller—issues and manages certificates in Bare Metal Orchestrator.
- CLI—a CLI client to interact with the API server.
- ETCD—a database that stores configuration details. Each component in the cluster uses these configurations. The database is accessible only through the API server.
- Web server—stores the ISO image for operating system deployment and firmware upgrades.
- License Manager—manages Bare Metal Orchestrator licenses.
- Site controller—creates and manages all sites.
- Web user interface—a browser-based application to manage Bare Metal Orchestrator.
- Kafka broker—a messaging broker that receives events from producers and provides events to consumers.
- Kafka service—a service that acts as a Kafka consumer that receives events from the Kafka broker.
- Prometheus—a time-series database that saves generated events.
Common site components
Site components are responsible for connecting to bare metal devices, discovering devices, fetching inventory, and managing devices. Site components that function on both the Global Controller and worker sites are described below:
- Discovery manager—automatically discovers devices that are assigned DHCP IP addresses.
- DHCP relay—forwards DHCP packets to an external DHCP server.
- DHCP server—assigns the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) IP to the discovered devices.
- Event router—allows Bare Metal Orchestrator to publish events to subscribed consumer channel.
- ILO-sku-pack—allows Bare Metal Orchestrator to onboard HPE iLO servers.
- Web server—hosts the images for operating system deployment, operating system updates, and firmware updates.
- Nso-sku-pack—allows Bare Metal Orchestrator to communicate with NSO to onboard and manage Cisco switches.
- Redfish Stock Keeping Units (SKU) pack—is a Remote Procedure Call (RPC) based micro service that allows Bare Metal Orchestrator to manage hardware from different vendors. SKU packs connect with bare metal servers using the Redfish protocol.
- SDN controller—creates, views, and manages Cisco switches in the Network Services Orchestrator (NSO) mode.
- Server controller—creates, views, and manages servers.
- Stack-sku-pack—allows Bare Metal Orchestrator to deploy VMware TCP stack and TKG.
- Supermicro-sku-pack—allows Bare Metal Orchestrator to onboard Supermicro servers.
- Switch controller—creates, views, and manages Dell switches in both Open Network Install Environment (ONIE) and Network Operating System (NOS) modes.
- Switch-sku-pack—allows Bare Metal Orchestrator to connect to the Dell switch using SSH.
- Windriver-sku-pack—allows Bare Metal Orchestrator to manage the Wind River® Cloud Platform stack.
Global Controller site components
These site components only function on the Global Controller:
- API proxy—a local API proxy that allows the Global Controller to communicate with Dell financial services for Utility Configuration Collector (UCC) licensing and billing purposes.
- Hardware controller—manages the hardware profiles, searches for all servers that match the defined specifications, applies the settings to the servers, and updates the status to the API server. This provides a consistent method for provisioning and configuring servers.
- local-registry—local storage for Docker images.
- Load balancer—directs front-end traffic to the three control plane nodes for high availability (HA) redundancy. The load balancer also provides management access for the web user interface, CLI, and API using a virtual IP address (VIP) when Bare Metal Orchestrator HA is configured.
- OpenSearch dashboard—interface used to search site logs that are collected from each site in the Bare Metal Orchestrator cluster.
- PXE-service—allows operating system installation in Bare Metal Orchestrator.
- Stack deployer—deploys stacks such as VMware TCP and Wind River® Cloud Platform to a cluster of selected servers.
- Tenant controller—manages tenants.