Hello!
With MAAS, I find the power operations via IPMITOOL to be quite useful when managing servers, but I keep getting requests from users for access to the IPMI console - in this case Dell iDRAC 8/9 HTML5 consoles.
Would it ever be possible to have console access to the DRAC/ILO/IPMI to see and interact with the server from MAAS? Since the system is already filling in the information and creating the appropriate user anyway. I know there have been issues in the past with proxying IPMI consoles on other platforms (usually gotten around by using a 1:1 NAT or similar) when dealing with web applications.
Ideally you would want MAAS to act as a front-end that proxies back to the IPMI address and pulls up the console, and in the case of DRAC they have a fully operational REDFISH API that can even be used.
Thoughts?
Hello,
While this is a great idea, it is not trivial to implement as the way console is handled differs vendor to vendor and model to model… Some of them are HTML5, some are Java. Even trivial at first thing like pulling out console in a separate window can be difficult to make a generic solution.
Hi Majduk,
I do quite understand the complexity involved with this, but there are other DCIM tools that do do this (though none as easy and straightforward to use like MAAS). I believe they use some sort of VNC connection to the IPMI - at least for Dell iDRAC I know you can utilize VNC to connect.
Not 100% sure this is compatible with the latest iDRAC’s, but there is a Docker app that utilizes the iDRAC API + Java binaries to connect:
https://github.com/ncerny/docker-idrac
https://github.com/DomiStyle/docker-idrac6
Something I am looking to test externally to MAAS, but it’s not a stretch to think that MAAS could spin up a local KVM instance to connect to each DRAC as needed like above.
It’s just a thought.
