Overview

The bare metal management architecture is described in the diagram below. It consists of two main concepts: out-of-band server management and in-band server boot automation.

Out-of-Band Automation

The out-of-band automation is responsible for the initial provisioning of bare metal servers. Here the main component is the metal-operator, which is responsible for managing the lifecycle of bare metal server. In the out-of-band network, BMCs (Baseboard Management Controllers) are assigned IP addresses (via FeDHCP) and are then reachable via the metal-operator. The metal-operator can then perform actions like discovering and provisioning servers. It is also responsible for the maintenance workflow of bare metal servers.

In-Band Automation

On the in-band network, the boot-operator is responsible for serving server boot images and Ignition files to the bare metal servers. It does so by offering an HTTP server endpoint that serves the boot images and Ignition files and is presented to the bare metal servers via DHCP.