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Monitoring bare-metal events with the Bare Metal Event Relay

Bare Metal Event Relay is a Technology Preview feature only. Technology Preview features are not supported with Red Hat production service level agreements (SLAs) and might not be functionally complete. Red Hat does not recommend using them in production. These features provide early access to upcoming product features, enabling customers to test functionality and provide feedback during the development process.

For more information about the support scope of Red Hat Technology Preview features, see Technology Preview Features Support Scope.

About bare-metal events

The Bare Metal Event Relay Operator is deprecated. The ability to monitor bare-metal hosts by using the Bare Metal Event Relay Operator will be removed in a future OKD release.

Use the Bare Metal Event Relay to subscribe applications that run in your OKD cluster to events that are generated on the underlying bare-metal host. The Redfish service publishes events on a node and transmits them on an advanced message queue to subscribed applications.

Bare-metal events are based on the open Redfish standard that is developed under the guidance of the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF). Redfish provides a secure industry-standard protocol with a REST API. The protocol is used for the management of distributed, converged or software-defined resources and infrastructure.

Hardware-related events published through Redfish includes:

  • Breaches of temperature limits

  • Server status

  • Fan status

Begin using bare-metal events by deploying the Bare Metal Event Relay Operator and subscribing your application to the service. The Bare Metal Event Relay Operator installs and manages the lifecycle of the Redfish bare-metal event service.

The Bare Metal Event Relay works only with Redfish-capable devices on single-node clusters provisioned on bare-metal infrastructure.

How bare-metal events work

The Bare Metal Event Relay enables applications running on bare-metal clusters to respond quickly to Redfish hardware changes and failures such as breaches of temperature thresholds, fan failure, disk loss, power outages, and memory failure. These hardware events are delivered using an HTTP transport or AMQP mechanism. The latency of the messaging service is between 10 to 20 milliseconds.

The Bare Metal Event Relay provides a publish-subscribe service for the hardware events. Applications can use a REST API to subscribe to the events. The Bare Metal Event Relay supports hardware that complies with Redfish OpenAPI v1.8 or later.

Bare Metal Event Relay data flow

The following figure illustrates an example bare-metal events data flow:

Bare-metal events data flow
Figure 1. Bare Metal Event Relay data flow

Operator-managed pod

The Operator uses custom resources to manage the pod containing the Bare Metal Event Relay and its components using the HardwareEvent CR.

Bare Metal Event Relay

At startup, the Bare Metal Event Relay queries the Redfish API and downloads all the message registries, including custom registries. The Bare Metal Event Relay then begins to receive subscribed events from the Redfish hardware.

The Bare Metal Event Relay enables applications running on bare-metal clusters to respond quickly to Redfish hardware changes and failures such as breaches of temperature thresholds, fan failure, disk loss, power outages, and memory failure. The events are reported using the HardwareEvent CR.

Cloud native event

Cloud native events (CNE) is a REST API specification for defining the format of event data.

CNCF CloudEvents

CloudEvents is a vendor-neutral specification developed by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) for defining the format of event data.

HTTP transport or AMQP dispatch router

The HTTP transport or AMQP dispatch router is responsible for the message delivery service between publisher and subscriber.

HTTP transport is the default transport for PTP and bare-metal events. Use HTTP transport instead of AMQP for PTP and bare-metal events where possible. AMQ Interconnect is EOL from 30 June 2024. Extended life cycle support (ELS) for AMQ Interconnect ends 29 November 2029. For more information see, Red Hat AMQ Interconnect support status.

Cloud event proxy sidecar

The cloud event proxy sidecar container image is based on the O-RAN API specification and provides a publish-subscribe event framework for hardware events.

Redfish message parsing service

In addition to handling Redfish events, the Bare Metal Event Relay provides message parsing for events without a Message property. The proxy downloads all the Redfish message registries including vendor specific registries from the hardware when it starts. If an event does not contain a Message property, the proxy uses the Redfish message registries to construct the Message and Resolution properties and add them to the event before passing the event to the cloud events framework. This service allows Redfish events to have smaller message size and lower transmission latency.

Installing the Bare Metal Event Relay using the CLI

As a cluster administrator, you can install the Bare Metal Event Relay Operator by using the CLI.

Prerequisites

  • A cluster that is installed on bare-metal hardware with nodes that have a RedFish-enabled Baseboard Management Controller (BMC).

  • Install the OpenShift CLI (oc).

  • Log in as a user with cluster-admin privileges.

Procedure

  1. Create a namespace for the Bare Metal Event Relay.

    1. Save the following YAML in the bare-metal-events-namespace.yaml file:

      apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
  name: openshift-bare-metal-events
  labels:
    name: openshift-bare-metal-events
    openshift.io/cluster-monitoring: "true"

    2. Create the Namespace CR:

      $ oc create -f bare-metal-events-namespace.yaml

  2. Create an Operator group for the Bare Metal Event Relay Operator.

    1. Save the following YAML in the bare-metal-events-operatorgroup.yaml file:

      apiVersion: operators.coreos.com/v1
kind: OperatorGroup
metadata:
  name: bare-metal-event-relay-group
  namespace: openshift-bare-metal-events
spec:
  targetNamespaces:
  - openshift-bare-metal-events

    2. Create the OperatorGroup CR:

      $ oc create -f bare-metal-events-operatorgroup.yaml

  3. Subscribe to the Bare Metal Event Relay.

    1. Save the following YAML in the bare-metal-events-sub.yaml file:

      apiVersion: operators.coreos.com/v1alpha1
kind: Subscription
metadata:
  name: bare-metal-event-relay-subscription
  namespace: openshift-bare-metal-events
spec:
  channel: "stable"
  name: bare-metal-event-relay
  source: redhat-operators
  sourceNamespace: openshift-marketplace

    2. Create the Subscription CR:

      $ oc create -f bare-metal-events-sub.yaml
Verification

To verify that the Bare Metal Event Relay Operator is installed, run the following command:

$ oc get csv -n openshift-bare-metal-events -o custom-columns=Name:.metadata.name,Phase:.status.phase

Installing the Bare Metal Event Relay using the web console

As a cluster administrator, you can install the Bare Metal Event Relay Operator using the web console.

Prerequisites

  • A cluster that is installed on bare-metal hardware with nodes that have a RedFish-enabled Baseboard Management Controller (BMC).

  • Log in as a user with cluster-admin privileges.

Procedure

  1. Install the Bare Metal Event Relay using the OKD web console:

    1. In the OKD web console, click Operators → OperatorHub.

    2. Choose Bare Metal Event Relay from the list of available Operators, and then click Install.

    3. On the Install Operator page, select or create a Namespace, select openshift-bare-metal-events, and then click Install.

Verification

Optional: You can verify that the Operator installed successfully by performing the following check:

  1. Switch to the Operators → Installed Operators page.

  2. Ensure that Bare Metal Event Relay is listed in the project with a Status of InstallSucceeded.

    During installation an Operator might display a Failed status. If the installation later succeeds with an InstallSucceeded message, you can ignore the Failed message.

If the Operator does not appear as installed, to troubleshoot further:

  • Go to the Operators → Installed Operators page and inspect the Operator Subscriptions and Install Plans tabs for any failure or errors under Status.

  • Go to the Workloads → Pods page and check the logs for pods in the project namespace.

Installing the AMQ messaging bus

To pass Redfish bare-metal event notifications between publisher and subscriber on a node, you can install and configure an AMQ messaging bus to run locally on the node. You do this by installing the AMQ Interconnect Operator for use in the cluster.

HTTP transport is the default transport for PTP and bare-metal events. Use HTTP transport instead of AMQP for PTP and bare-metal events where possible. AMQ Interconnect is EOL from 30 June 2024. Extended life cycle support (ELS) for AMQ Interconnect ends 29 November 2029. For more information see, Red Hat AMQ Interconnect support status.
Prerequisites

  • Install the OKD CLI (oc).

  • Log in as a user with cluster-admin privileges.

Procedure
Verification

  1. Verify that the AMQ Interconnect Operator is available and the required pods are running:

    $ oc get pods -n amq-interconnect
    Example output
    NAME                                    READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
amq-interconnect-645db76c76-k8ghs       1/1     Running   0          23h
interconnect-operator-5cb5fc7cc-4v7qm   1/1     Running   0          23h

  2. Verify that the required bare-metal-event-relay bare-metal event producer pod is running in the openshift-bare-metal-events namespace:

    $ oc get pods -n openshift-bare-metal-events
    Example output
    NAME                                                            READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
hw-event-proxy-operator-controller-manager-74d5649b7c-dzgtl     2/2     Running   0          25s

Subscribing to Redfish BMC bare-metal events for a cluster node

You can subscribe to Redfish BMC events generated on a node in your cluster by creating a BMCEventSubscription custom resource (CR) for the node, creating a HardwareEvent CR for the event, and creating a Secret CR for the BMC.

Subscribing to bare-metal events

You can configure the baseboard management controller (BMC) to send bare-metal events to subscribed applications running in an OKD cluster. Example Redfish bare-metal events include an increase in device temperature, or removal of a device. You subscribe applications to bare-metal events using a REST API.

You can only create a BMCEventSubscription custom resource (CR) for physical hardware that supports Redfish and has a vendor interface set to redfish or idrac-redfish.

Use the BMCEventSubscription CR to subscribe to predefined Redfish events. The Redfish standard does not provide an option to create specific alerts and thresholds. For example, to receive an alert event when an enclosure’s temperature exceeds 40° Celsius, you must manually configure the event according to the vendor’s recommendations.

Perform the following procedure to subscribe to bare-metal events for the node using a BMCEventSubscription CR.

Prerequisites

  • Install the OpenShift CLI (oc).

  • Log in as a user with cluster-admin privileges.

  • Get the user name and password for the BMC.

  • Deploy a bare-metal node with a Redfish-enabled Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) in your cluster, and enable Redfish events on the BMC.

    Enabling Redfish events on specific hardware is outside the scope of this information. For more information about enabling Redfish events for your specific hardware, consult the BMC manufacturer documentation.
Procedure

  1. Confirm that the node hardware has the Redfish EventService enabled by running the following curl command:

    $ curl https://<bmc_ip_address>/redfish/v1/EventService --insecure -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -u "<bmc_username>:<password>"

    where:

    bmc_ip_address

    is the IP address of the BMC where the Redfish events are generated.

    Example output
    {
   "@odata.context": "/redfish/v1/$metadata#EventService.EventService",
   "@odata.id": "/redfish/v1/EventService",
   "@odata.type": "#EventService.v1_0_2.EventService",
   "Actions": {
      "#EventService.SubmitTestEvent": {
         "EventType@Redfish.AllowableValues": ["StatusChange", "ResourceUpdated", "ResourceAdded", "ResourceRemoved", "Alert"],
         "target": "/redfish/v1/EventService/Actions/EventService.SubmitTestEvent"
      }
   },
   "DeliveryRetryAttempts": 3,
   "DeliveryRetryIntervalSeconds": 30,
   "Description": "Event Service represents the properties for the service",
   "EventTypesForSubscription": ["StatusChange", "ResourceUpdated", "ResourceAdded", "ResourceRemoved", "Alert"],
   "EventTypesForSubscription@odata.count": 5,
   "Id": "EventService",
   "Name": "Event Service",
   "ServiceEnabled": true,
   "Status": {
      "Health": "OK",
      "HealthRollup": "OK",
      "State": "Enabled"
   },
   "Subscriptions": {
      "@odata.id": "/redfish/v1/EventService/Subscriptions"
   }
}

  2. Get the Bare Metal Event Relay service route for the cluster by running the following command:

    $ oc get route -n openshift-bare-metal-events
    Example output
    NAME            HOST/PORT   PATH                                                                    SERVICES                 PORT   TERMINATION   WILDCARD
hw-event-proxy              hw-event-proxy-openshift-bare-metal-events.apps.compute-1.example.com   hw-event-proxy-service   9087   edge          None

  3. Create a BMCEventSubscription resource to subscribe to the Redfish events:

    1. Save the following YAML in the bmc_sub.yaml file:

      apiVersion: metal3.io/v1alpha1
kind: BMCEventSubscription
metadata:
  name: sub-01
  namespace: openshift-machine-api
spec:
   hostName: <hostname> (1)
   destination: <proxy_service_url> (2)
   context: ''
      1 Specifies the name or UUID of the worker node where the Redfish events are generated.
      2 Specifies the bare-metal event proxy service, for example, https://hw-event-proxy-openshift-bare-metal-events.apps.compute-1.example.com/webhook.

    2. Create the BMCEventSubscription CR:

      $ oc create -f bmc_sub.yaml

  4. Optional: To delete the BMC event subscription, run the following command:

    $ oc delete -f bmc_sub.yaml

  5. Optional: To manually create a Redfish event subscription without creating a BMCEventSubscription CR, run the following curl command, specifying the BMC username and password.

    $ curl -i -k -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json"  -d '{"Destination": "https://<proxy_service_url>", "Protocol" : "Redfish", "EventTypes": ["Alert"], "Context": "root"}' -u <bmc_username>:<password> 'https://<bmc_ip_address>/redfish/v1/EventService/Subscriptions' –v

    where:

    proxy_service_url

    is the bare-metal event proxy service, for example, https://hw-event-proxy-openshift-bare-metal-events.apps.compute-1.example.com/webhook.

    bmc_ip_address

    is the IP address of the BMC where the Redfish events are generated.

    Example output
    HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Server: AMI MegaRAC Redfish Service
Location: /redfish/v1/EventService/Subscriptions/1
Allow: GET, POST
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
Access-Control-Expose-Headers: X-Auth-Token
Access-Control-Allow-Headers: X-Auth-Token
Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true
Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate
Link: <http://redfish.dmtf.org/schemas/v1/EventDestination.v1_6_0.json>; rel=describedby
Link: <http://redfish.dmtf.org/schemas/v1/EventDestination.v1_6_0.json>
Link: </redfish/v1/EventService/Subscriptions>; path=
ETag: "1651135676"
Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8
OData-Version: 4.0
Content-Length: 614
Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2022 08:47:57 GMT

Querying Redfish bare-metal event subscriptions with curl

Some hardware vendors limit the amount of Redfish hardware event subscriptions. You can query the number of Redfish event subscriptions by using curl.

Prerequisites

  • Get the user name and password for the BMC.

  • Deploy a bare-metal node with a Redfish-enabled Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) in your cluster, and enable Redfish hardware events on the BMC.

Procedure

  1. Check the current subscriptions for the BMC by running the following curl command:

    $ curl --globoff -H "Content-Type: application/json" -k -X GET --user <bmc_username>:<password> https://<bmc_ip_address>/redfish/v1/EventService/Subscriptions

    where:

    bmc_ip_address

    is the IP address of the BMC where the Redfish events are generated.

    Example output
    % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 435 100 435 0 0 399 0 0:00:01 0:00:01 --:--:-- 399
{
  "@odata.context": "/redfish/v1/$metadata#EventDestinationCollection.EventDestinationCollection",
  "@odata.etag": ""
  1651137375 "",
  "@odata.id": "/redfish/v1/EventService/Subscriptions",
  "@odata.type": "#EventDestinationCollection.EventDestinationCollection",
  "Description": "Collection for Event Subscriptions",
  "Members": [
  {
    "@odata.id": "/redfish/v1/EventService/Subscriptions/1"
  }],
  "Members@odata.count": 1,
  "Name": "Event Subscriptions Collection"
}

    In this example, a single subscription is configured: /redfish/v1/EventService/Subscriptions/1.

  2. Optional: To remove the /redfish/v1/EventService/Subscriptions/1 subscription with curl, run the following command, specifying the BMC username and password:

    $ curl --globoff -L -w "%{http_code} %{url_effective}\n" -k -u <bmc_username>:<password >-H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{}' -X DELETE https://<bmc_ip_address>/redfish/v1/EventService/Subscriptions/1

    where:

    bmc_ip_address

    is the IP address of the BMC where the Redfish events are generated.

Creating the bare-metal event and Secret CRs

To start using bare-metal events, create the HardwareEvent custom resource (CR) for the host where the Redfish hardware is present. Hardware events and faults are reported in the hw-event-proxy logs.

Prerequisites

  • You have installed the OKD CLI (oc).

  • You have logged in as a user with cluster-admin privileges.

  • You have installed the Bare Metal Event Relay.

  • You have created a BMCEventSubscription CR for the BMC Redfish hardware.

Procedure

  1. Create the HardwareEvent custom resource (CR):

    Multiple HardwareEvent resources are not permitted.

    1. Save the following YAML in the hw-event.yaml file:

      apiVersion: "event.redhat-cne.org/v1alpha1"
kind: "HardwareEvent"
metadata:
  name: "hardware-event"
spec:
  nodeSelector:
    node-role.kubernetes.io/hw-event: "" (1)
  logLevel: "debug" (2)
  msgParserTimeout: "10" (3)
      1 Required. Use the nodeSelector field to target nodes with the specified label, for example, node-role.kubernetes.io/hw-event: "".

      In OKD 4.13 or later, you do not need to set the spec.transportHost field in the HardwareEvent resource when you use HTTP transport for bare-metal events. Set transportHost only when you use AMQP transport for bare-metal events.
      2 Optional. The default value is debug. Sets the log level in hw-event-proxy logs. The following log levels are available: fatal, error, warning, info, debug, trace.
      3 Optional. Sets the timeout value in milliseconds for the Message Parser. If a message parsing request is not responded to within the timeout duration, the original hardware event message is passed to the cloud native event framework. The default value is 10.

    2. Apply the HardwareEvent CR in the cluster:

      $ oc create -f hardware-event.yaml

  2. Create a BMC username and password Secret CR that enables the hardware events proxy to access the Redfish message registry for the bare-metal host.

    1. Save the following YAML in the hw-event-bmc-secret.yaml file:

      apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: redfish-basic-auth
type: Opaque
stringData: (1)
  username: <bmc_username>
  password: <bmc_password>
  # BMC host DNS or IP address
  hostaddr: <bmc_host_ip_address>
      1 Enter plain text values for the various items under stringData.

    2. Create the Secret CR:

      $ oc create -f hw-event-bmc-secret.yaml
Additional resources

Subscribing applications to bare-metal events REST API reference

Use the bare-metal events REST API to subscribe an application to the bare-metal events that are generated on the parent node.

Subscribe applications to Redfish events by using the resource address /cluster/node/<node_name>/redfish/event, where <node_name> is the cluster node running the application.

Deploy your cloud-event-consumer application container and cloud-event-proxy sidecar container in a separate application pod. The cloud-event-consumer application subscribes to the cloud-event-proxy container in the application pod.

Use the following API endpoints to subscribe the cloud-event-consumer application to Redfish events posted by the cloud-event-proxy container at http://localhost:8089/api/ocloudNotifications/v1/ in the application pod:

  • /api/ocloudNotifications/v1/subscriptions

    • POST: Creates a new subscription

    • GET: Retrieves a list of subscriptions

  • /api/ocloudNotifications/v1/subscriptions/<subscription_id>

    • PUT: Creates a new status ping request for the specified subscription ID

  • /api/ocloudNotifications/v1/health

    • GET: Returns the health status of ocloudNotifications API

9089 is the default port for the cloud-event-consumer container deployed in the application pod. You can configure a different port for your application as required.

api/ocloudNotifications/v1/subscriptions

HTTP method

GET api/ocloudNotifications/v1/subscriptions

Description

Returns a list of subscriptions. If subscriptions exist, a 200 OK status code is returned along with the list of subscriptions.

Example API response
[
 {
  "id": "ca11ab76-86f9-428c-8d3a-666c24e34d32",
  "endpointUri": "http://localhost:9089/api/ocloudNotifications/v1/dummy",
  "uriLocation": "http://localhost:8089/api/ocloudNotifications/v1/subscriptions/ca11ab76-86f9-428c-8d3a-666c24e34d32",
  "resource": "/cluster/node/openshift-worker-0.openshift.example.com/redfish/event"
 }
]

HTTP method

POST api/ocloudNotifications/v1/subscriptions

Description

Creates a new subscription. If a subscription is successfully created, or if it already exists, a 201 Created status code is returned.

Table 1. Query parameters
Parameter Type

subscription

data
Example payload
{
  "uriLocation": "http://localhost:8089/api/ocloudNotifications/v1/subscriptions",
  "resource": "/cluster/node/openshift-worker-0.openshift.example.com/redfish/event"
}

api/ocloudNotifications/v1/subscriptions/<subscription_id>

HTTP method

GET api/ocloudNotifications/v1/subscriptions/<subscription_id>

Description

Returns details for the subscription with ID <subscription_id>

Table 2. Query parameters
Parameter Type

<subscription_id>

string
Example API response
{
  "id":"ca11ab76-86f9-428c-8d3a-666c24e34d32",
  "endpointUri":"http://localhost:9089/api/ocloudNotifications/v1/dummy",
  "uriLocation":"http://localhost:8089/api/ocloudNotifications/v1/subscriptions/ca11ab76-86f9-428c-8d3a-666c24e34d32",
  "resource":"/cluster/node/openshift-worker-0.openshift.example.com/redfish/event"
}

api/ocloudNotifications/v1/health/

HTTP method

GET api/ocloudNotifications/v1/health/

Description

Returns the health status for the ocloudNotifications REST API.

Example API response
OK

Migrating consumer applications to use HTTP transport for PTP or bare-metal events

If you have previously deployed PTP or bare-metal events consumer applications, you need to update the applications to use HTTP message transport.

Prerequisites

  • You have installed the OpenShift CLI (oc).

  • You have logged in as a user with cluster-admin privileges.

  • You have updated the PTP Operator or Bare Metal Event Relay to version 4.13+ which uses HTTP transport by default.

Procedure

  1. Update your events consumer application to use HTTP transport. Set the http-event-publishers variable for the cloud event sidecar deployment.

    For example, in a cluster with PTP events configured, the following YAML snippet illustrates a cloud event sidecar deployment:

    containers:
  - name: cloud-event-sidecar
    image: cloud-event-sidecar
    args:
      - "--metrics-addr=127.0.0.1:9091"
      - "--store-path=/store"
      - "--transport-host=consumer-events-subscription-service.cloud-events.svc.cluster.local:9043"
      - "--http-event-publishers=ptp-event-publisher-service-NODE_NAME.openshift-ptp.svc.cluster.local:9043" (1)
      - "--api-port=8089"
    1 The PTP Operator automatically resolves NODE_NAME to the host that is generating the PTP events. For example, compute-1.example.com.

    In a cluster with bare-metal events configured, set the http-event-publishers field to hw-event-publisher-service.openshift-bare-metal-events.svc.cluster.local:9043 in the cloud event sidecar deployment CR.

  2. Deploy the consumer-events-subscription-service service alongside the events consumer application. For example:

    apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  annotations:
    prometheus.io/scrape: "true"
    service.alpha.openshift.io/serving-cert-secret-name: sidecar-consumer-secret
  name: consumer-events-subscription-service
  namespace: cloud-events
  labels:
    app: consumer-service
spec:
  ports:
    - name: sub-port
      port: 9043
  selector:
    app: consumer
  clusterIP: None
  sessionAffinity: None
  type: ClusterIP