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vMetal limitations

vMetal has some limitations based on its design and its dependency on Metal3, Ironic, and specific hardware and network configurations.

Hardware requirements​

vMetal requires physical servers with out-of-band management capabilities:

  • Each server must have a BMC (Baseboard Management Controller) that supports Redfish or IPMI.
  • Each server must have a NIC configured for PXE boot with a known MAC address.
  • The host cluster running Metal3 and Ironic must have network access to the BMC endpoints of all managed servers.

Network requirements​

The provisioning network must be configured to allow PXE boot traffic between the DHCP server and the bare metal servers:

  • When the bare metal servers and Ironic are on different networks, a DHCP proxy server is required to bridge communication. The vMetal DHCP server component handles this.
  • Multus CNI is required when the DHCP server pod needs a network interface on the provisioning network in addition to the cluster network.
  • The network must allow DHCP, TFTP, and HTTP traffic for PXE boot operations.

Supported BMC protocols​

vMetal supports BMC protocols through Metal3's Bare Metal Operator. Common protocols include:

  • Redfish: redfish://, redfish+http://
  • IPMI: ipmi://

For the full list of supported drivers and address formats, see the Metal3 Bare Metal Operator documentation.

Platform requirements​

  • vMetal requires an active vCluster Platform installation with a license plan that includes vMetal.
  • The host cluster where Metal3 and Ironic are deployed must be connected to the platform.
  • BareMetalHost resources and their associated Secrets must be in the same namespace as the Metal3 components.

Provisioning constraints​

  • Servers in error state require manual investigation. Check the BareMetalHost status conditions for details.
  • Provisioning a server involves a full PXE boot cycle, which takes longer than VM-based provisioning. Expect several minutes depending on hardware, network speed, and OS image size.
  • The OS image must be accessible via HTTP from Ironic. Local or authenticated image sources aren't supported directly.

Managed Kubernetes restrictions​

When using managed Kubernetes services as the host cluster for Metal3:

  • GKE Autopilot: Not supported as a host cluster because of restrictions on privileged workloads and host networking.
  • EKS Auto Mode / Fargate: Not supported as a host cluster. Use standard managed node groups instead.
  • Ensure the managed cluster's nodes can reach the BMC network. This may require VPC peering, VPN, or direct network connectivity.