External inspection

Similar to the status annotation, external inspection makes it possible to skip the inspection step. The difference is that the status annotation can only be used on the very first reconcile and allows setting all the fields under status. In contrast, external inspection limits the changes so that only HardwareDetails can be modified, and it can be used at any time when inspection is disabled (with the inspect.metal3.io: disabled annotation) or when there is no existing HardwareDetails data.

External inspection is controlled through an annotation on the BareMetalHost. The annotation key is inspect.metal3.io/hardwaredetails and the value is a JSON representation of the BareMetalHosts status.hardware field.

Here is an example with a BMH that has inspection disabled and is using the external inspection feature to add the HardwareDetails.

apiVersion: metal3.io/v1alpha1
kind: BareMetalHost
metadata:
  name: node-0
  namespace: metal3
  annotations:
    inspect.metal3.io: disabled
    inspect.metal3.io/hardwaredetails: |
      {"systemVendor":{"manufacturer":"QEMU", "productName":"Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009)","serialNumber":""}, "firmware":{"bios":{"date":"","vendor":"","version":""}},"ramMebibytes":4096, "nics":[{"name":"eth0","model":"0x1af4 0x0001","mac":"00:b7:8b:bb:3d:f6", "ip":"172.22.0.64","speedGbps":0,"vlanId":0,"pxe":true}], "storage":[{"name":"/dev/sda","rotational":true,"sizeBytes":53687091200, "vendor":"QEMU", "model":"QEMU HARDDISK","serialNumber":"drive-scsi0-0-0-0", "hctl":"6:0:0:0"}],"cpu":{"arch":"x86_64", "model":"Intel Xeon E3-12xx v2 (IvyBridge)","clockMegahertz":2494.224, "flags":["foo"],"count":4},"hostname":"hwdAnnotation-0"}
spec:
  ...

Why is this needed?

• It allows avoiding an extra reboot for live-images that include their own inspection tooling.
• It provides an arguably safer alternative to the status annotation in some cases.

Caveats:

• If both baremetalhost.metal3.io/status and inspect.metal3.io/hardwaredetails are specified on BareMetalHost creation, inspect.metal3.io/hardwaredetails will take precedence and overwrite any hardware data specified via baremetalhost.metal3.io/status.
• If the BareMetalHost is in the Available state the controller will not attempt to match profiles based on the annotation.