Ironic is released as OpenStack integrated project from kilo release. Many users, in particular enterprise users, want to use bare metal servers for DB, HPC etc. and so Ironic gets a lot of attention recently. To provide bare metal servers, Ironic needs to manage all the server life cycle. Typical server life cycle is following:
 
 - Register
 - Discovery a node
 - Register a node
 - Introspection a node
 - Ready
 - Deploy
 - Turn on a node
 - Install OS to a node HDD
 - Connect a node to appropriate network
 - Attach volume to a node
 - Boot a node from volume
 - USE
 - Turn on/off a node
 - Access to a node via ssh/console
 - Cleanup
 - Clean up a node HDD
 - Initialize node firmware/BIOS setting
 - Initialize RAID configuration
 - Turn off a node

Althorugh Ironic developers put in great effort on its improvement, there are serveral issues on each stage. For example, there is no network isolation per tenant. That means all Ironic users need to use same flat network. Also, current Ironic supports neithor attaching external storage volume or booting from volume. In enterprise area, users commonly uses external storage to better throughput, latency, lower overhead back up etc. and so this is one of a key feature for them to use Ironic.

To use external storage volume in Ironic, Ironic needs to work with Cinder (and Nova). In this session, we explain ironic current status first and then introduce our effort to realize Ironic and Cinder integration.