Greetings all,

I am looking for a solution to use IPMI (BMC) in with LibVirt (Virt-Manager). Actually there is a Customer behind this request as well.

Trying to be short: We are looking for a Solution in OpenStack Environment. Customer wants to have the entire environment running in Virt-Manager (probably for a P.O.C or tests purposes). So here is what he is trying to do: http://red.ht/1HfNn9r

This template you can find in the Red Hat's OpenStack Install Guide. So far so good. But OpenStack works with High Availability and in some moment of the procedure you have to create an IPMI (BMC) interface in order to Fence the HA Nodes and Controllers.

(Just for curiosity in this first moment customer is setting the Nodes - Hypervisors - as Nested KVM - so he can use the VM as an Hypervisor as well).

That said the 3 VMs which are the controller, and also the 2 nodes, should have an IPMI Interface. Is it possible to have it in KVM? I mean, seems that in SeaBIOS we already have this support: http://www.seabios.org/pipermail/seabios/2012-August/004405.html

Also I found a Red Hat BugZilla regarding this request: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=815136 . but it seems to be "abandoned"  since the beginning.

So the point is:

- Is it possible to have a NIC or a Device emulating an IPMI (BMC) interface?

- If yes, how can we export it to the VM?

Maybe we can do a pass-trough if the hardware is available. But Lets think in a Notebook or a Desktop, for instance (we are working with a POC, remember?) and maybe the IPMI Interface could not be available or oesn't exist.

I thought if it was possible to have some kind of IPMI NIC emulated and also an "brdge" and then an additional virtual network for this bridge. Am I going to far? ;-)

Anderson Kaiser (RHCE, RHCVA)
Team Lead - Red Hat Global Support Services Latin America
Red Hat Inc,.
akaiser@redhat.com
Ph: +55 11 3529-6000
Red Hat Support: 0800-602-5222