MaaS LAN cable wiring topology for DHCP

Question

I installed the MaaS controller, DHCP and related packages at the master node. I can see the web UI as well.

Now I need to add slave nodes. But I have vague knowledge about DHCP, so I don't know how I should wire them.

I have - 1 master node that has 2 lan ports - 4 slave nodes that have 1 lan port - 1 network switch that has 16 lan ports - I have static (public) IPs for all lan cards (master and slaves) though I think they are not necessary when I use DHCP.

I tried the following wiring Master -- to The Internet | |[WAN input] | Network Switch | | Slave 1 Slave 2 ... But when I boot the slaves, they are not automatically detected in the Web UI of the master. I also tried to add them manually with MAC addresses, but still no luck.

So I am wondering if I did wrong with the lan wirings. Or is it because of the wrong setting of the PXE in the BIOS maybe? (but I think it should work for manual addition, regardless of PXE)

Please help me.. All my lab members are relying on me..

Any comments will be helpful. Thank you.

Answer 1

Assuming that each slave (node) has only one Ethernet adapter in it...

Make sure that each node's Ethernet adapter is connected to the same Ethernet switch. Make sure that one Ethernet adapter from your MaaS controller is also plugged into that switch. If you want, you can label that switch "Private".

In MaaS, make sure that you issue a good network address range (CIDR) to this Private network. You might issue 10.1.1.0 as the network, 24 or 255.255.255.0 as the mask and bind 10.1.1.1 to the Ethernet adapter in the MaaS controller. When defining the cluster you could indicate that static addresses are from 10.1.1.10 through 10.1.1.50 and dynamic addresses are from 10.1.1.100 through 10.1.1.200, for example.

Now for the other Ethernet adapter in your cluster controller, this would be the one that faces the Internet. Typically, you would connect this one to a different Ethernet switch. The network would be something else appropriate for your existing setup. As long as you issue a unique IP address within this range and set the default gateway to point to the next upstream router then things should work smoothly.

It's important that each node can fetch software from the Internet so the routing must be correct to allow for this. The cluster controller typically only provides DHCP for the Private side of this, btw. People often already have an existing system in place when they add a MaaS controller and they don't want MaaS taking over things on the opposite side of the network.