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IPMI Guide

This guide covers using IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) with KubeVirtBMC for out-of-band management of virtual machines.

Overview

IPMI is a standardized UDP-based protocol for chassis control. KubeVirtBMC implements IPMI chassis commands for power management and boot device configuration.

Service Endpoint: 

<vm-name>-virtbmc.<namespace>.svc.cluster.local:623

NOTE: IPMI Security and Future Plans

IPMI support in KubeVirtBMC currently only supports IPMI v1, which is rarely used nowadays. The underlying IPMI library dependency is unmaintained, raising security concerns.

Authentication Limitation: Since IPMI is a UDP-based protocol without a backend server for authentication, any username and password combination will be accepted. Credentials are validated at the protocol level by the IPMI library, but there is no server-side authentication mechanism. This is a fundamental limitation of the IPMI protocol implementation in KubeVirtBMC.

Future Plans: We are planning to add a toggle in the VirtualMachineBMC CRD to disable IPMI functionality by default.

Recommendation: For production use, we recommend using the Redfish API which provides better security, proper authentication, and modern RESTful access.

Accessing IPMI

Since IPMI uses UDP and requires cluster network access, run an IPMI client pod:

kubectl run -it --rm ipmitool \
    --image=mikeynap/ipmitool \
    --restart=Never \
    --command -- /bin/sh

Inside the pod, use the service DNS name:

ipmitool -I lan -U admin -P password -H <serviceName>.<serviceNamespace>.svc.cluster.local power <command>

Power Management

Power Status

ipmitool -I lan -U admin -P password -H testvm-virtbmc.default.svc.cluster.local power status

Output:

  • Chassis Power is on - VM is running
  • Chassis Power is off - VM is stopped

Power On

ipmitool -I lan -U admin -P password -H testvm-virtbmc.default.svc.cluster.local power on

Power Off (Graceful)

ipmitool -I lan -U admin -P password -H testvm-virtbmc.default.svc.cluster.local power off

Sends ACPI shutdown signal. VM must support ACPI for graceful shutdown.

Power Cycle

ipmitool -I lan -U admin -P password -H testvm-virtbmc.default.svc.cluster.local power cycle

Powers off, waits briefly, then powers on.

Power Commands Summary

Command Description Graceful
power on Start VM N/A
power off Shutdown VM Yes
power cycle Off then On Partial

Boot Device Configuration

Set Boot to PXE

ipmitool -I lan -U admin -P password -H testvm-virtbmc.default.svc.cluster.local chassis bootdev pxe

Set Boot to Disk

ipmitool -I lan -U admin -P password -H testvm-virtbmc.default.svc.cluster.local chassis bootdev disk

Supported Boot Devices

Device Description
pxe Network boot (PXE)
disk Boot from disk

Next Steps