Decommission Managed Power Shelves

Use this workflow to return a managed power shelf to a pre-ingestion baseline. After the shelf reaches Decommissioning/Decommissioned, force-delete it to remove the control-plane records.

This procedure uses nico-admin-cli against the Core gRPC API.

Prerequisites

• The site must be able to reach the managed power shelf.
• Make sure to save relevant credentials and know their factory default values before performing decommissioning in case of an error:
  • BMC credentials
  • Site-wide credentials
• The power shelf must be in the exact controller state Ready.
• No managed host in the same rack as the power shelf can be assigned to an instance.

Start decommissioning

Start the asynchronous workflow with the stable power-shelf ID:

nico-admin-cli -a <api-url> power-shelf decommission <power-shelf-id>

Expected result: The command records the request and returns. The shelf leaves Ready and enters Decommissioning.

Monitor decommissioning

nico-admin-cli -a <api-url> power-shelf show <power-shelf-id>

Expected result: Successful decommissioning ends in Decommissioning/Decommissioned. If progress stops or errors persist, refer to Troubleshooting.

What the workflow changes

NICo performs these operations in order:

1. Suppresses Site Explorer for the shelf BMC/PMC. Site Explorer will skip this endpoint during periodic exploration to avoid instability and authentication lockout.
2. Suppresses DHCP for the shelf BMC/PMC. DHCP Request packets coming from these interface MACs are dropped.
3. Uses Redfish to factory-reset the BMC or PMC.
4. Deletes the shelf’s per-device secrets and convergence records.
5. Stops in Decommissioning/Decommissioned.

Resulting state

The workflow aims for the following state:

NICo suppresses discovery and responses from its own DHCP service for the device’s associated interfaces until you remove the suppressions with force-delete. Endpoints can remain reachable if they use static IP addresses or receive an address from an external DHCP server. Complete any required network changes or physical hardware removal before force-deleting the device records.

After decommissioning

When the shelf reaches Decommissioning/Decommissioned, remove its control-plane records with the power-shelf command in Force-delete after decommissioning.

If the shelf is still physically present, Site Explorer ingests it from the reset state. If the hardware is not present, it does not come back and those records are gone.