About machine basics

MAAS provisions bare-metal or virtual servers on a reachable network segment.

Machine List

The machine list serves as a dashboard for managing MAAS operations. It displays available and allocated servers, showing key details such as status, power state, owner, and tags.

Status icons provide additional information on hover. For example, failed hardware tests display a warning icon, which reveals details when hovered over. Column data items also include quick-action options.

The Add hardware menu allows adding new machines or a chassis. When one or more machines are selected, this menu moves left and is joined by the Take action menu, which provides access to various machine actions.

Filtering options enable users to refine the machine list based on attributes and keywords.

CLI Dashboard

A non-interactive machine dashboard can be generated via the CLI with jq:

maas admin machines read | jq -r '(["FQDN","POWER","STATUS", "OWNER", "TAGS", "POOL", "NOTE", "ZONE"] | (., map(length*"-"))),
(.[] | [.hostname, .power_state, .status_name, .owner // "-", .tag_names[0] // "-", .pool.name, .description // "-", .zone.name]) | @tsv' | column -t

This output provides an overview of each machine’s state, tags, and assignment.

Machine Summary

Selecting a machine’s FQDN or MAC address (in the UI) opens a summary view with key details:

  • Overview: Status, OS version, and owner.
  • CPU & Memory: Specs and test links.
  • Storage: Disk layout and modification options.
  • Domain & Zone: Configuration settings with edit links.
  • Power Type: Configurable power settings.
  • Tags: Assigned tags with edit options.

Most machine events are accessible from the Machines menu.

USB & PCI Devices

Machines may include USB or PCI devices such as keyboards, GPUs, or network cards. These devices are detected during commissioning and listed under the PCI devices and USB tabs, showing device type, vendor ID, product ID, driver name, NUMA node (if applicable), and address.

These devices can be removed via the CLI:

maas $PROFILE node-device delete $SYSTEM_ID $DEVICE_ID

Recommissioning the machine will restore detected devices.

Network Configuration

The Network tab allows viewing and editing machine network settings. Changes can be made while a machine is in the ‘Ready’ state.

Booting & Power Management

The Booting tab provides machine configuration options, including PXE boot settings.

  • Hard Power-Off immediately shuts down power.
  • Soft Power-Off (MAAS 3.5+) gracefully shuts down the OS.

Storage Management

MAAS supports various storage configurations, including:

  • Traditional partitioning, LVM, RAID, and bcache.
  • UEFI boot mechanisms.
  • Storage configuration for CentOS and RHEL, including RAID and custom partitioning (ZFS and bcache excluded).

Storage layouts are applied during commissioning, and users can modify configurations as needed. Multiple disk erasure options are available when releasing a machine.


Last updated 2 days ago.