8. How Tos¶

8.1. VMWare Workstation deployment¶

The simulated hardware elements(vNode, vPDU, vSwitch) by InfraSIM can be deployed on VMWare workstation. Please follow below steps to setup InfraSIM in VMWare workstation.

1. Configure the BIOS to enable virtualization.

   

2. Download VMWare Workstation 11.0 from http://www.vmware.com/products/workstation/workstation-evaluation and install it. (The VMWare Workstation is not free)

3. Configure a virtual network in the VMWare Workstation.

   • From the Windows Start menu, open “Virtual Network Editor”.

     

   • Click “Add Network…” to add a new network VMnet2.

     

   • Clear the “Connect a host virtual adapter to this network” check box and un-check the “Use local DHCP service to distribute IP address to VMs”, then set the Subnet IP to “172.31.128.0”, and the subnet mask to “255.255.255.0”.

     

4. Import and configure InfraSIM OVA images.

   • Import the InfraSIM OVA image to the VMWare Workstation by “File -> Open…”, and then select the InfraSIM OVA image.

     

   • After the InfraSIM OVA image imported successfully, open the virtual machine settings to enable the virtualization engine, and change the number of processor and number of cores per processor.

     

   • Change the memory size to 1 GB.

     

   • Click Network Adapter, and connect the network adapter to “VMnet2” which was created in the previous step.

     

8.2. Build vNode and vPDU¶

InfarSIM build runs in a machine with Ubuntu 14.04 operating system.

Note: You can do the build in either physical machine or virtual machine. The build runs faster on a machine with more memory. It takes about 30 minutes on a machine with 2GB memory.

Note: If using virtual machine to do the build, ensure all source code is placed in own file system of that virtual machine. Because infraSIM build includes building Linux kernel and its filesystem out of source code, running build process inside virtual machine and placing source code in share folder in host machine would lead to mapping file related failure.

Before you begin the journey of infraSIM project first time, you should have the Ubuntu 14.04 installed first, and then have the following packages installed:

mkisofs autoconf pkg-config libtool nsis bison flex libncurses5 libncurses5-dev zlib1g-dev libglib2.0-dev libpopt-dev libssl-dev python-dev

Note: If you already cloned idic repository, then you can jump into the idic project and then run:

# sudo make setupenv

8.3. Simulating another server¶

In infraSIM source code repository, there are one generic virtual node type (vnode) and several other server nodes (Dell, Quanta servers) simulation provided for end-user under idic/vcompute/vnode. InfraSIM also provided many utilities, interfaces for developers to build one simulation solution for a physical node that has not been supported by infraSIM This sections walk through all steps required to build one simulation for one specific server node.

1. Create a new directory for your node. If you want to create your own vNode, copy the full directory’s content from idic/vcompute/vnode under idic/vcompute directory:

   $ git clone <idic-repo-url>
   $ cd idic/vcompute
   $ cp -rap vnode <your-vnode-name>
   

2. clone the tools repo for future use:

   $ git clone <idic-repo-url>
   

3. After you create the directory, set your node name in Makefile:

   $ cd <your-vnode-name>
   

4. Edit “Makefile” file, set “TARGETNAME = <your-vnode-name>” to your vnode name

5. Edit ”.config” file, set “CONFIG_HOSTNAME” to your vnode name

6. To simulate a real hardware server, you have to get the server fru’ data:

   $ cd data
   

   Under this directory, you can find “vnode.emu” file. In this file, we keep server fru’ data here, like:

   $ mc_add_fru_data 0x20 0x0 0x100 data \
     0x01 0x00 0x01 0x04 0x0f 0x00 0x00 0xeb \
     0x01 0x03 0x17 0x00 0xcd 0x51 0x54 0x46 \
     0x43 0x4a 0x30 0x35 0x31 0x36 0x30 0x31 \
     ......
   

   You can use ipmitool to get BMC sensor’s data:

   $ ipmitool -U <your-account> -P <your-password> -I lanplus -H <your-BMC-IP> fru read <fru ID> fru.bin
   

   call fru_gen.py script to dump fru.bin to hex format:

   $ cp ../../tools/data_generater/fru_gen.py ./
   $ python fru_gen.py fru.bin
   

   fru_result will be generated, replace original fru data with the expected one in this file.

7. Same as fru, in “vnode.emu” file, we keep server sensors’ data here, like:

   $ sensor_add 0x20 0x0 0x01 0x02 0x01
     main_sdr_add 0x20 \
     0x00 0x00 0x51 0x02 0x2a \
     0x20 0x00 0x01 0x15 0x01 0x67 0x40 0x09 0x6f 0x71 0x00 0x71 0x00 0x71 0x00 0xc0 \
     0x00 0x00 0x01 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0xcf 0x50 0x77 0x72 0x20 0x55 \
     0x6e 0x69 0x74 0x20 0x53 0x74 0x61 0x74 0x75 0x73
   $ sensor_set_value 0x20 0x0 0x01 0x0 0x1
   
   You can use ipmitool to get BMC sensor's data::
   
   $ ipmitool -U <your-account> -P <your-password> -I lanplus -H <your-BMC-IP> sdr dump sensors
   

   The above command will dump your server BMC sensors’ data to the file named: “sensors” Generally, the sensor file contains binary data, we have to convert it to strings:

   $ cp ../../tools/data_generater/sensors_gen.sh ./
   $ ./sensor_gen.sh
   

   After the command, you will get the file named: “all_sdr_sensors”:

   Use "all_sdr_sensors" file content to replace "vnode.emu" file of all "sensor_add" sections
       **Notice: This step is not necessary for your node unless you want to emulate the real BMC sensors' data.**
   

8. SMBIOS data is also needed, which can be got by using the command:

   $ dmidecode --dump-bin <your-vnode-name>_smbios.bin
   

9. Build your vnode with real hardware fru, sensors and smbios data.:

   $ make <your-vnode-name>
   

10. Enjoy your customized node.

8.4. Simulating another vPDU¶

InfraSIM provided ServerTech and Panduit PDU simulation initially. InfraSIM also provided many utilities, interfaces for developers to build simulation solution for other physical PDUs. This sections walk through all steps required to build one simulation for other PDU infraSIM doesn’t support yet.

1. How to retrieve data from physical PDU

   If you want to retrieve PDU MIB data, you should have snmpsim installed on your environment.Then run the following command to produce MIB snapshot for the PDU:

   # snmprec.py --agent-udpv4-endpoint=<PDU IP address>; --start-oid=1.3.6 --output-file=/path/<target snmprec file>; --variation-module=sql --variation-module-options=dbtype:sqlite3,database:/path/<target pdu database file>,dbtable:snmprec
   

   For more details of how to use snmprec.py, please go to section Producing SNMP snapshots at snmpsim home page for more help.

2. How to simulate physical PDU in InfraSIM

   Once you retrieved data from physical PDU, the next step is to add a virtual PDU in InfraSIM for this physical server. The following steps will guide you how to do:

   1. Create a directory named PDU name at idic/vpdu
   2. Create a directory data at idic/vpdu/<PDU name>/data, and copy the data you get from physical server into data directory.
   3. Copy .config and Makefile into idic/vpdu/<PDU name>, and update target name in Makefile and .config
   4. Clone vpduserv, and implement the new pdu logic based on vendor’s PDU spec.

8.5. Write test case¶

This section introduces how to write test case in puffer.

1. Create a test script file

   • Test Case Name

     The name of test case should follow the same format:

     T\d+_[a-z0-9A-Z]+_[a-z0-9A-Z]+
     

     In puffer, test case name should:

     • Start with capital letter T and case id

     • Followed by the field type and short description about this case with underscores in the interval. Field types defined in class CBaseCase.

       Note: The field type for InfraSIM is idic.

     For example, a test case named T123456_idic_CheckPowerStatus:

     • T is short for test
     • 123456 for case id
     • idic for field type
     • check the power status for the short description

   • Test Suite

     You should put your test case scripts into <puffer_directory>/case/<test_suite>. Each folder under <puffer_directory>/case is a test suite. When you give the suite folder to puffer.py as a parameter, puffer will executes all test case scripts which in the folder, including subfolders.

2. Create case runtime data file

   Case Runtime Data is used to maintain some specific data for different test objects. These data generally require the user to add and update manually.

   The format of case runtime data defined in the json file which have same name and folder with case script. Please see the chapter Case Runtime Data .

3. Write test case

   1. Import CBaseCase

      Class CBaseCase defined in <puffer_directory>/case/CBaseCase.py, contains some member functions to help test case running:

      from case.CBaseCase import *
      

   2. Class Declaration

      We declaration each case as subclass of class CBaseCase and the class name is case name. For example, if case name is T123456_idic_CheckPowerStatus, the class name should be same to it.

      A test case maybe looks like:

      from case.CBaseCase import *
      
      class T000000_firmware_shortdescription(CBaseCase):
      
          def __init__(self):
              CBaseCase.__init__(self, self.__class__.__name__)
      
          def config(self):
              CBaseCase.config(self)
      
          def test(self):
              pass
      
          def deconfig(self):
              CBaseCase.deconfig(self)
      

      And then, we need to override methods of class CBaseCase, such as config(), test() and deconfig().

   3. Override config()

      This method configuration system to expected status, configuration runtime HWIMO environment and stack environment.

      The HWIMO configuration will set logger to save session log into log file and configuration SSH agent and stack configuration will build stack object, configuration stack ABS according to dict, build all nodes and power on.

      However, in some case we want to enable some components we need to enable manually in configuration(). For example, if we want to use the ssh inside vbmc, we need enable the bmc_ssh in configuration():

      def config(self):
          CBaseCase.config(self)
          self.enable_bmc_ssh()
      

   4. Override test()

      This method is the main part of the test.

      You can:

      • Use self.stack to get the stack which build in config().
      • Use self.data[] to get case runtime data.
      • Use self.monorail to use Monorail API.
      • Use self.log() to log the information.
      • Use self.result() to save the case result.

      For example:

      def test(self):
          #get racks from stack and get nodes from rack
          for obj_rack in self.stack.get_rack_list():
              for obj_node in obj_rack.get_node_list():
      
                  #log the information
                  self.log('INFO', 'Check node {} of rack {} ...'
                      .format(obj_node.get_name(), obj_rack.get_name()))
      
                  #get and match outlet power
                  for power_unit in obj_node.power:
                      pdu_pwd = power_unit[0].get_outlet_password(power_unit[1])
                      power_unit[0].match_outlet_password(power_unit[1], pdu_pwd)
      
                  #virtual node power control
                  obj_node.power_on()
      
                  #use case runtime data
                  node_name = obj_node.get_name()
                  node_lan_channel = self.data[node_name]
      
                  #send command to virtual bmc through ssh
                  obj_bmc = obj_node.get_bmc()
                  bmc_ssh = obj_bmc.ssh
                  ssh_rsp = bmc_ssh.send_command_wait_string(
                      str_command = 'ipmitool -I lanplus -H localhost -U {} -P {} lan print {} {}'.format(obj_bmc.get_username(), obj_bmc.get_password(), node_lan_channel, chr(13)),
                      wait = '$',
                      int_time_out = 3,
                      b_with_buff = False)
      
                  #send command to virtual bmc through ipmitool
                  ret, ipmi_rsp = obj_node.get_bmc().ipmi.ipmitool_standard_cmd('lan print')
      
                  #if case failed
                  if ret != 0:
                      self.result(FAIL, 'FAIL_INFORMATION')
                  else:
                  #if no issue in this run, case pass.
                      self.log('INFO', 'PASSED.')
      

   5. Override deconfig()

      This method deconfig system to expected status, reset REST and SSH sessions, deconfig stack and log handler:

      def deconfig(self):
          self.log('INFO', 'Deconfig')
          CBaseCase.deconfig(self)