Building machines with MAAS, then moving them out of MAAS scope

We are building machines (virtual and physical) with MAAS, and while they are within the MAAS subnets they work fine.

Our problem is that we are only using MAAS to deploy the OS, and them moving the machines to other subnets across the enterprise, out of MAAS management. When that happens, their network configuration is having problems (they don’t get an IP, or they get an IP, but the gateway doesn’t change, for example). What needs to happen to machines built with MAAS, so that operate normally standalone? Is there a “MAAS cleanup” checklist somewhere? TIA!

Hey there @fastidious
A similar question has been asked previously: How to detach an installed machine from MAAS (offline use), with similar lack of expected results.
MAAS Isn’t designed with this use case in mind unfortunately, we assume infrastructure provisioned with MAAS remains within MAAS.

Is there any specific reason that a machine has to be detached from MAAS? I would definitely reccomend investigating whether it is possible to maintain MAAS Management while still achieving whatever infrastructure topology you’re aiming for.

Hiya @lloydwaltersj! I apologise for missing that thread. I promise I searched; my search foo is just often bad.

The reason why machines need to be detached from MAAS is their different network locations. We are a big enterprise (university), and machines built with MAAS will have to be moved to many different subnets not under MAAS management. Often physical ports (on technician benches) are configured to be on the MAAS subnet for building purposes and, upon built, machines are then moved to their final destinations.

No worries, took me a little while to find it myself!

After discussing internally, we concluded that reassigning MAAS-deployed machines to new subnets isn’t a use case we currently support, nor is it one we’re currently investigating.

We’ve had a few users request it, so we can see there’s at least some desire for the feature. If anyone in the community can make it work, we’d happily learn from them.

There is a potential workaround, but it’s unsupported and potentially arduous:

Manually disconnect the machines from MAAS after deploying them, and configure the networking separately afterwards as per requirement. In essesnce, using MAAS for initial provisioning and sanity testing. Rebuild the machines with standard installers once they’ve been released and configured.

My apologies for not having anything more concrete, but if you get anywhere with this we’d be happy to hear more! Getting extra information on real world implementations is always a great help for improving MAAS.

I would definitely reccomend checking if the wider community has done anything similar to this, or has any better ideas than already put forward.

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