Capabilities - Non-BCM Solution¶
The Bare Metal Service (Non-BCM Solution) is powered by the open-source Metal3 project, leveraging OpenStack Ironic to provision physical servers without requiring an NVIDIA BCM license. It provides a flexible and license-free alternative for organizations that want to automate bare metal provisioning in their own data centers.
Key Capabilities¶
The following capabilities are supported as part of the Non-BCM Bare Metal Service:
| Capability | Description |
|---|---|
| License-Free Provisioning | Based on open-source Metal3/Ironic — no vendor licensing required |
| Standard Protocols | Supports IPMI and Redfish for power management of bare metal servers |
| PXE-Based Booting | Requires PXE-enabled NICs and provisioning network setup |
| Gateway + Head Node Setup | Bare Metal Gateway deployed on a head node runs an infra agent to connect with the Rafay controller |
| Bare Metal Provisioner | Provides a self-service way to create provisioners linked to gateways for managing server pools |
| Inventory Management | Partner admins define available servers (BMC credentials, MAC addresses, PXE labels, tags) |
| Tag-Based Matchmaking | Inventory servers are allocated to requests by matching tags in compute profiles |
| Environment Templates | Predefined templates simplify launching provisioned servers |
| Custom Disk Images | Supports qcow2/raw format disk images (e.g., Ubuntu) with checksum validation |
| Cloud-Init User Data | End users can provide cloud-init configs for machine customization during provisioning |
| SSH Access | Public SSH keys can be injected into provisioned machines for secure access |
| Partner-Driven Setup | One-time setup of gateways, provisioners, and inventories is performed by the partner admin |
| Tenant Self-Service | End users consume bare metal resources via Developer Hub by requesting new bare metal nodes |
Supported Workloads¶
The Non-BCM solution is optimized for:
- General-purpose bare metal provisioning in partner-managed data centers
- OS-level provisioning for compute nodes (e.g., Ubuntu 22.04 LTS)
- AI/ML workloads (with GPU-capable servers where available)
- High-performance, non-virtualized workloads requiring direct hardware access
Platform Setup Overview¶
Partner admins perform a one-time setup that includes enabling the bare metal feature, deploying a gateway and infra agent, creating provisioners, and adding server inventory with tags.
➡️ See Partner Admin Setup Guide for detailed steps.
Supported Integrations¶
| Integration | Availability |
|---|---|
| Custom OS Images | ✅ Supported (raw disk format) |
| Cloud-Init User Data | ✅ Supported |
| Power Management Protocols | ✅ IPMI, Redfish |
| Monitoring & Observability | ⚙️ Requires setup |