Technology · Ebook

Tinkerbell: Declarative Bare-Metal Provisioning

by Shriira Press

Tinkerbell is a CNCF sandbox project that network-boots physical servers and runs workflows on them, bringing the declarative, controller-driven model of Kubernetes all the way down to the rack. Where provisioning bare metal once meant a fragile patchwork of DHCP, TFTP, PXE configs, and hand-run installers, Tinkerbell lets you describe a machine and a provisioning recipe as Kubernetes custom resources and reconciles the physical world toward them. This book follows a single machine through its journey: Smee answering its network-boot request, Hook booting it into an in-memory workshop, the Tink engine turning templates into containerized actions, Hegel serving cloud-style metadata, and Rufio controlling power and boot through the management controller. A closing chapter covers deployment, Cluster API, and scaling.

Contents

1. 1Preface
2. 2Chapter 1 — The Bare-Metal Problem
3. 3Chapter 2 — The Architecture
4. 4Chapter 3 — Smee and the Network Boot
5. 5Chapter 4 — Hook, the In-Memory Workshop
6. 6Chapter 5 — Tink, the Workflow Engine
7. 7Chapter 6 — Hegel and the Metadata Service
8. 8Chapter 7 — Rufio and the Baseboard Management Controller
9. 9Chapter 8 — Tinkerbell in Practice