# Key Features

HPE BMaaS for Morpheus Enterprise provides centralized discovery, provisioning, lifecycle management, and monitoring for HPE ProLiant bare-metal infrastructure. The key features of HPE BMaaS are as follows:

- **Automated Server Discovery and Inventory**

  - Server Import: Imports HPE ProLiant servers into Morpheus using iLO IP addresses and credentials.
  - Hardware Inventory Discovery: Automatically collects detailed hardware data, including:

    - Server model and generation
    - CPU, memory, and storage configurations
    - Network interfaces and adapters
    - Firmware and driver versions
  - Service Plan Mapping: Maps discovered hardware to Morpheus Service Plans to align metering, consumption tracking, and billing.
  - Metadata Management: Maintains updated server metadata to ensure operational visibility and support capacity planning.
- **Resource Pool and Bare Metal Cloud Management**

  - Create a Bare Metal Cloud per tenant to represent dedicated HPE ProLiant infrastructure.
  - Organize servers within the cloud into Resource Pools for multi-site deployments and infrastructure segmentation.
  - Allocate servers to specific groups, environments, or use cases.
  - Apply policies, access control, and governance at the cloud or resource pool level.
- **Bare Metal Instance Provisioning**

  - Provision bare metal instances directly from available HPE ProLiant servers.
  - Support for:

    - Local disk RAID configuration during deployment
    - Automated OS installation
    - Post-install configuration and customization
  - Associate instances with user-defined groups, clouds, and resource pools.
- **Operating System Deployment**

  - Deploy Windows Server, VMware ESXi, and Linux operating systems using ISO images stored in the Morpheus Virtual Image Library.
  - Supported unattended installation mechanisms:

    - Windows Setup (AutoUnattend)
    - RHEL / Oracle Linux Kickstart
    - Ubuntu Autoinstall (cloud-init)
    - SLES AutoYaST XML (cloud-init)
    - ESXi Kickstart
  - Consistent and repeatable OS deployments across environments.
- **Image Management**

  - Centralized catalog of bootable OS images.
  - Support for multiple image storage backends:

    - Storage > File Shares

      - CIFS (Samba Windows File Sharing): Windows-compatible network file sharing
      - Local Storage: Direct storage on the server
      - Network File System version 3 (NFSv3): Linux network file sharing
    - Storage > Buckets

      - S3-compatible object storage (for example, using MinIO): Object storage through S3 API
    - Images can be reused across multiple provisioning workflows.
- **Greenfield (New Server) Provisioning**

  - Provision brand-new, unconfigured HPE ProLiant servers into Morpheus-managed bare metal instances.
  - Perform full end-to-end lifecycle automation, including:

    - Server discovery
    - Power control and boot orchestration
    - RAID and storage configuration
    - Network configuration
    - Operating system deployment
  - Enable zero-touch deployment from factory-fresh hardware to production-ready servers.
  - Ensure consistent, repeatable provisioning aligned with organizational standards.
- **Brownfield (Pre-Provisioned Server) Import**

  - Import existing physical servers into Morpheus as Pre-Provisioned resources
  - Convert imported servers into fully managed Morpheus instances.
  - Add additional imported servers as nodes to an existing instance.
- **Firmware and Driver Lifecycle Management**

  - Execute firmware and driver inventory and updates using HPE Service Pack for ProLiant (SPP).
  - Run updates through Morpheus Jobs and Workflows.
  - Target firmware only, drivers only, or both.
  - Support for:

    - Dry Run (inventory only)
    - Deploy (apply updates)
- **Monitoring and Metering**

  - Monitor real-time hardware health and operational status through iLO integration.
  - Surface system alerts and hardware events inside HPE Morpheus Enterprise.
  - Meter resource consumption for reporting and charge-back or show-back.

  NOTE

  HPE Morpheus does not support OS-level health status or performance metrics (CPU, memory, network, and storage) for ESXi instances. However, the system reports HPE iLO hardware health status for all deployed servers.
- **Networking Integration**

  - Automated VLAN and switch port configuration in managed mode.
  - Flexible network attachment to physical or bonded interfaces.
  - Support for:

    - Unmanaged networks
    - Managed networks using HPE Aruba CX switches
- **Storage Integration**

  - Use local server storage for OS installation.
  - Integrate with HPE Alletra MP storage arrays for remote SAN volumes.
  - Create, attach, detach, resize, and delete volumes from HPE Morpheus Enterprise.
- **Integration with Morpheus Core Platform Capabilities**

  Bare metal instances benefit from native Morpheus platform features, including:
  - SSH and RDP access
  - Morpheus agent (morphd) deployment
  - Workflow automation and lifecycle scripts
  - Policy-based governance
  - Role-based access control
  - Multi-group and multi-cloud support

  NOTE

  Morpheus agent (morphd) deployment and Workflow automation/lifecycle scripts are not supported for ESXi bare metal instances.
- **Boot from SAN**

  Boot from SAN (BFS) provisions bare metal instances that boot from a SAN-attached volume instead of local disk storage. The BM Plugin installs the OS image directly onto a SAN boot volume, and the instance boots from this volume.

  - SAN Install: During provisioning, the system installs the OS image onto a SAN boot volume created on an HPE Alletra storage array. The instance then boots from this SAN volume instead of a local RAID volume.
  - Supported Storage: The system supports only Fibre Channel (FC) transport.
  - Provisioning Wizard: The configuration step allows you to select the root volume as a SAN volume type (in addition to RAID1 for local storage) and specify its size and datastore.
  - OS Image Support: BFS supports all OS images that the BM Plugin supports, including Windows Server, RHEL, Oracle Linux, Ubuntu, SLES, and VMware ESXi.
  - HBA Configuration: The BM Plugin automatically configures the server’s Fibre Channel HBA for SAN boot through the Redfish API.
  - Server Selection: Only servers with discovered FC HBA cards qualify for provisioning when you specify a SAN root volume. The BM Plugin uses HBA WWPNs collected during server discovery to identify eligible servers.
  - Multi-Node Instances: The system treats the boot volume as unshared. It creates and exports a separate boot volume for each node in a multi-node instance.
  - Reconfigure: You cannot detach the SAN boot volume from the instance. You can only resize (expand) it, consistent with standard boot volume behavior.
  - Prerequisites: Complete SAN zoning before provisioning. Ensure that a zone allows communication between the server’s HBA ports and the SAN LUN ports.
  - Limitations:
    - The system does not support SAN Import (booting from a pre-existing SAN boot volume without OS installation by the BM Plugin) in this release.
    - The system supports only Fibre Channel storage; it does not support iSCSI or other transport types.
    - When provisioning a Windows instance with a SAN boot volume, the system does not support adding data volumes during initial provisioning. You can attach data volumes after provisioning through the Reconfigure action.
- **Auto-Discover Bare Metal Servers**

  Automatically discover eligible HPE ProLiant servers without manual import. Server discovery now also supports an automatic, import-free mode where the BM plugin proactively scans configured network ranges to detect BMC (iLO) endpoints without requiring per-server manual import.

  The following describes the automatic server discovery process:

  - Configuration : An administrator provides one or more CIDR IP ranges representing the BMC/iLO management network(s) and target resource pool assignments. An optional exclusion list can omit specific IPs or IP ranges from scanning. Cloud credentials from Morpheus trust store are used to access the iLOs.
  - Network Probing: The plugin enumerates every IP address in the configured CIDR ranges, filters out excluded addresses and already-known servers, then probes each candidate IP over HTTPS using the Redfish API. A probe is a lightweight connectivity check that determines whether a responsive iLO BMC exists at that address and retrieves the server's serial number.
  - Server Import: For each reachable BMC, the plugin automatically creates a ComputeServer record in Morpheus, associating it with the appropriate resource pool based on which CIDR range the IP belongs to. The server then proceeds through the standard provisioning workflow (prepare → run → finalize).
  - Periodic Polling: Discovery can run as a one-time manual operation (triggered via cloud short refresh) or as a recurring scheduled poll at a configurable interval. The polling interval can be set explicitly or is auto-calculated based on the number of IPs to scan.
  - Failure Tolerance: Unreachable IPs are silently skipped (treated as no BMC present). Duplicate detection prevents re-importing servers already known to the cloud. If import or provisioning of a discovered server fails, the server is marked as failed without affecting other discovery operations.
