redfish Provider
Terraform Provider Redfish
Information about Redfish Terraform Provider
This guide will explain different parts of the provider and will give an overview about how the provider is built.
1. Provider’s way of operation
When you think of Terraform, normally operators tend to think that the way a provider connects with a cloud provider is via a single endpoint. Well, actually that’s the way it works. Cloud providers provide an endpoint and operators point to that endpoint when configuring terraform.
+-----------------+
| Cloud provider |
+-------+---------+
^
|
|
+---------+----------+
| Terraform provider |
+--------------------+
With the Redfish Terraform Provider, that operating model has been changed because of the way the provider interacts with the infrastructure (Redfish endpoints). In a regular scenario (for instance a datacenter), operators don’t just have one endpoint, but a bunch of them. Each redfish endpoint corresponds to each physical server.
+------------------+ +------------------+ ...N +------------------+
| PowerEdge Server | | PowerEdge Server | +-----------+ | PowerEdge Server |
| with Redfish API | | with Redfish API | | with Redfish API |
+-------+----------+ +--------+---------+ +---------+--------+
^ ^ ^ ^
| | | |
+-------------------------+----------+--------+------------------+
|
|
+----------+---------+
| Terraform Provider |
+--------------------+
How we overcome this
Normally the provider is initialized in the provider block, giving it your cloud credentials to deal with the infrastructure. Something like this:
provider "aws" {
region = "eu-west-1"
access_key = "myaccesskey"
secret_key = "mysecretkey"
}
When that is done, then operators would start writing the resources they want to deploy in those regions.
With this terraform redfish provider a different approach had to be followed since there are multiple endpoints. What has been done (and kudos to Kyriakos Oikonomakos from Hashicorp for proposing this) was to initialize the client at the resource level. This allows operators to manage different servers from one central point. Take a look into this example:
users.tf
resource "redfish_user_account" "rr" {
for_each = var.rack1
redfish_server {
user = each.value.user
password = each.value.password
endpoint = each.value.endpoint
ssl_insecure = each.value.ssl_insecure
}
user_id = "4"
username = "test"
password = "Test@123"
role_id = "Operator"
enabled = true
}
terraform.tfvars
rack1 = {
"my-server-1" = {
user = "admin"
password = "passw0rd"
endpoint = "https://my-server-1.myawesomecompany.org"
ssl_insecure = true
},
"my-server-2" = {
user = "admin"
password = "passw0rd"
endpoint = "https://my-server-2.myawesomecompany.org"
ssl_insecure = true
},
"my-server-3" = {
user = "admin"
password = "passw0rd"
endpoint = "https:://[2001:db8:a::123]"
ssl_insecure = true
},
}
By doing this, operators create two users on two different servers using this provider and the Redfish API. Remember, in every CRUD operation, the client must be initialized.
Overwriting client credentials
There might be scenarios where operators have the same credentials for all machines they want to manage. In that case they don’t need to repeatedly write the user and password for all servers. They can write their credentials at the provider block level.
provider "redfish" {
user = "root"
password = "passw0rd"
}
After the user specifies their credentials, they will next need to define the infrastructure. Instead of defining credentials for each endpoint they need only provide the endpoint and ssl_insecure values:
rack1 = {
"my-server-1" = {
endpoint = "https://my-server-1.myawesomecompany.org"
ssl_insecure = true
},
"my-server-2" = {
endpoint = "https://my-server-2.myawesomecompany.org"
ssl_insecure = true
},
}
Terraform will always use the most specific client values. In the case client credentials are defined at both the provider block and resource level, the credentials defined at the resource level will be used.
Example Usage
provider.tf
/*
Copyright (c) 2022-2024 Dell Inc., or its subsidiaries. All Rights Reserved.
Licensed under the Mozilla Public License Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.
*/
terraform {
required_providers {
redfish = {
version = "1.4.0"
source = "registry.terraform.io/dell/redfish"
}
}
}
provider "redfish" {
}
variables.tf
/*
Copyright (c) 2022-2024 Dell Inc., or its subsidiaries. All Rights Reserved.
Licensed under the Mozilla Public License Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.
*/
variable "rack1" {
type = map(object({
user = string
password = string
endpoint = string
ssl_insecure = bool
}))
}
Schema
Optional
password(String, Sensitive) This field is the password related to the user givenuser(String) This field is the user to login against the redfish API