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+# VPD collection app on OpenBMC
+
+Author: Santosh Puranik <santosh.puranik@in.ibm.com> <santosh.puranik>
+
+Primary assignee: Santosh Puranik
+
+Created: 2019-06-11
+
+## Problem Description
+On OpenBMC, Vital Product Data (VPD) collection is limited to only one or two
+Field Replaceable Units (FRUs) today - one example is the BMC FRU.
+On OpenPower systems, the BMC also supports just one VPD format, the
+[OpenPower VPD] [1] format.  As a part of its enterprise class servers, IBM will
+use the IPZ format VPD, which the BMC currently does not support.
+Certain FRUs also have keyword format VPD.
+
+The BMC requires to read VPD for all FRUs for several reasons:
+
+- Some of the VPD information such as FRU part number, serial number need to be
+  included in the Platform Error Logs (PELs) for calling out FRUs for service.
+
+- Several use cases on the BMC require that the applications decide on a certain
+  code path based on what level of FRU is plugged in. For example, the
+  application that controls voltage regulators might need to set
+  different registers based on the version of the voltage regulator FRU.
+
+- There are use cases for the BMC to send VPD data to the host
+  hypervisor/operating system (over PLDM). This is mainly so that the host can
+  get VPD that is not directly accessible to it.
+
+The VPD data itself may reside on an EEPROM (typical) or may be
+synthesized out of certain parameters of the FRU (atypical - for FRUs that do
+not have an EEPROM).
+
+This design document aims to define a high level design for VPD collection and
+VPD access on OpenBMC. It does *not* cover low level API details.
+
+## Background and References
+Essentially, the IPZ VPD structure consists of key-value pairs called keywords.
+Each keyword can be used to contain specific data about the FRU. For example,
+the SN keyword will contain a serial number that can uniquely identify an
+instance of a part. Keywords themselves can be combined or grouped into records.
+For example, a single record can be used to group keywords that have similar
+function, such as serial number, part number.
+
+The keyword format VPD does not contain records, but instead has just keywords
+laid out one after another.
+
+The IPZ format is quite similar in its structure to the OpenPower format except
+for the following details:
+
+- IPZ VPD has different records and keywords.
+
+- IPZ VPD is required to implement and validate ECC as defined in the OpenPower
+  specification. The BMC code currently does not validate/use ECC although the
+  specification does define it, but will need to use the ECC for IBM's
+  enterprise class of servers.
+
+- The keyword format VPD is also something that consists of key-value pairs, but
+  has no concept of a record to group keywords together. The ECC for the keyword
+  format VPD is simply a CRC.
+
+## Requirements
+The following are requirements for the VPD function on OpenBMC:
+
+- The BMC must collect VPD for all FRUs that it has direct access to by the time
+  the BMC reaches Standby (aka the Ready state, a state from where the BMC can
+  begin CEC poweron). This is needed for several reasons:
+
+  BMC applications need to be able to read VPD for FRUs to determine, for ex.,
+  the hardware level of the FRU.
+
+  Some of the VPD will need to be exchanged with the host.
+
+  Manufacturing and Service engineers need the ability to view and program
+  the FRU VPD without powering the system ON.
+
+  Certain system level VPD is also used by applications on the BMC to determine
+  the system type, model on which it is running.
+
+- If a FRU does not have a VPD store such as an EEPROM, the BMC should be able
+  to synthesize VPD for such FRUs. Details on VPD synthesis will be in its own
+  design document and are not covered here.
+
+- The BMC should be able to recollect VPD for FRUs that can be hotplugged or
+  serviced when the BMC is running.
+
+- The BMC must log errors if any of the VPD cannot be properly parsed or fails
+  ECC checks.
+
+- The BMC must create/update FRU inventory objects for all FRUs that it collects
+  VPD for. The inventory D-Bus object must contain (among other details), the
+  serial number, part number and CCIN (an IBM way of differentiating different
+  versions of a FRU) of the FRU.
+
+- Applications on the BMC need to have the ability to query any given VPD
+  keyword for a given FRU.
+
+- Applications also need to have the ability to update the VPD contents in a
+  FRU. For example, the BMC needs to have the ability to update the system VPD
+  in scenarios where the FRU containing the system VPD is repaired in the field.
+
+- There needs to be a tool/API that allows viewing and updating VPD for any
+  given FRU. This includes FRUs that the BMC does not directly collect VPD for
+  (such as FRUs that can be accessed both by the BMC and the host, but the host
+  collects VPD for)
+
+## Proposed Design
+This document covers the architectural, interface, and design details. It
+provides recommendations for implementations, but implementation details are
+outside the scope of this document.
+
+The proposal here is to build upon the existing VPD collection design used by
+open power. The current implementation consists of the following entities:
+
+- [op-vpd-parser] [2] service, which parses the contents of an EEPROM
+  containing VPD in the OpenPower VPD format.
+
+- A udev [rule] [3] that is used by systemd to launch the above service as
+  EEPROM devices are connected.
+
+- A set of config [files] [4] that describe the inventory objects and D-Bus
+  properties to update for a given FRU.
+
+In order to meet the requirements noted in the previous section, the following
+updates will be made:
+
+- Two new services will be created to handle the new VPD formats. ipz-vpd-parser
+  and a keyword-vpd-parser. These services shall be templated to allow for
+  multiple instances to be run.
+
+- Another service will be created to update the inventory with location code
+  information. Since the location code expansion comes from the system VPD, this
+  service can only be launched after the system VPD (stored on the backplane) is
+  collected.
+
+- There will be one udev rule per EEPROM on the system from which the BMC has to
+  collect VPD. We could also have just a single rule, but that would mean we
+  would have to filter out non-VPD EEPROMs somehow.
+
+- Each udev rule will be setup to launch an instance of one of the VPD parser
+  services (The format of the VPD in any given EEPROM are known at build time
+  as they are system specific)
+
+- The service (one instance of ipz-vpd-parser or keyword-vpd-parser), when
+  launched, will read the EEPROM, parse its contents and use config files
+  to determine what VPD contents to store in the inventory.
+
+- The service will update the inventory D-Bus object with the contents of the
+  VPD in the following format: There will be one interface per
+  record (ex, VINI record) which will have each keyword as a property
+  (ex, FN, PN). This will allow us to support multiple records that can have the
+  same keyword and will also serve as means to logically group keywords in the
+  inventory, quite similar to how they are grouped in the actual VPD.
+  For example (some names here are made up, but they help illustrate the point),
+  for the VINI record containing keywords SN, FN and CCIN, the representation in
+  D-Bus would look like:
+
+```
+Interface: com.ibm.ipzvpd.VINI
+Properties:
+    SN
+    FN
+    CCIN
+```
+
+- In case of keyword format VPD, all keywords shall be placed as properties
+  under a single interface.
+
+- The parser services will not format or transform the data in VPD in any way
+  before updating the properties noted above, the properties shall be stored as
+  byte arrays. Note, however, that the services will continue updating the
+  commonly used FRU properties such as SerialNumber, PartNumber as strings, just
+  as the openpower-vpd-parser does.
+
+- To handle VPD writes, another systemd service will be launched once all the
+  VPD read services have completed. This service shall be a daemon that will
+  manage parallel writes to EEPROMs. The VPD writer service will expose D-bus
+  interfaces to update VPD for a FRU given its inventory path.
+
+- Generation of the udev rules and configs shall be layered such that
+  they can be tweaked on a per-system basis.
+
+### Open topics
+Some open questions:
+
+- Some more thought is needed on how concurrent maintenance (replacing a FRU
+  when the host is up and running) will be handled.  That will be presented in
+  its own design document.
+
+## Alternatives Considered
+The following alternative designs were considered:
+### Write a standalone VPD server app
+One option considered was to develop a standalone, do-it-all VPD application on
+the BMC that collects all of the VPD by BMC standby. The application has to be a
+daemon that will expose a set of D-bus interfaces to:
+
+- Collect/recollect all VPD.
+- Query a given FRU for its VPD. Example read the serial number of the VRM.
+- Update the VPD keyword(s) for a given FRU.
+- Concurrently maintain a FRU, which will in turn perform a remove/add/replace
+  operation.
+
+The application would be driven off of a configuration file that lists the FRUs
+available for a given system, their I2C bus address, slave address etc.
+
+This option was rejected for the following reasons:
+
+- Design would make the application very specific to a given system or a set of
+  VPD formats. Although the application could be written in a way that allows
+  plugging in support for different VPD formats, it was deemed that the current
+  approach of small applications that target a very specific requirement is
+  better.
+- The design does not leverage upon the layered design approach that the chosen
+  option allows us to do.
+
+### Build upon the entity manager
+Using the entity manager: https://github.com/openbmc/entity-manager.
+The Entity manager has an application called the FruDevice, which probes
+/dev/i2c/ for EEPROMs, reads (IPMI format) VPD and stores it on DBUS.
+
+The application could be enhanced to:
+- Add support for other VPD formats such as the IPZ and keyword format.
+- Perhaps update a different set of data into a different DBUS object, like the
+  Inventory manager.
+- Change the external DBUS interfaces that read/write FRU data to take an
+  inventory path (instead of the I2C path, address it takes in today).
+
+This option was rejected for the following reasons:
+
+- We do not need the full spectrum of functions offered by the entity manager,
+  that is we do not want to replace the existing inventory manager. Moving away
+  from the inventory manager for Power systems is outside of the scope of this
+  document.
+- The code did not appear very pluggable to add support for new VPD formats, we
+  might have to end up just utilizing #ifdef's to separate functions.
+- Does not have a way to determine system blueprint for FRU devices, scans the
+  entire /dev/ tree to pick out EEPROMs.
+
+## Impacts
+The following impacts have been identified:
+- The services to parse VPD and store it in the inventory will add some time to
+  the BMC boot flow. The impact should be kept to a minimum by achieving maximum
+  possible parallelism in the launching of these services.
+- Applications that need to read VPD keywords will be impacted in the sense that
+  they would have to use the inventory interfaces to fetch the data they are
+  interested in.
+
+## Testing
+VPD parsing function can be tested by faking out the VPD EEPROMs as files on the
+filesystem. Such testing can also ensure that the right set of VPD data makes
+its way into the OpenBMC Inventory. There is also a proposal to build in a file
+mode into the application. The file mode will not need real hardware to test the
+code functions, but can use files on the BMC to mimic the EEPROMs.
+
+VPD writes can be tested by writing a small command line utility
+that can invoke the VPD write application's APIs to write VPD.
+
+[1]:https://www-355.ibm.com/systems/power/openpower/posting.xhtml?postingId=1D060729AC96891885257E1B0053BC95
+[2]:https://github.com/openbmc/meta-openpower/blob/master/recipes-phosphor/vpd/openpower-fru-vpd/op-vpd-parser.service
+[3]:https://github.com/openbmc/meta-openpower/blob/master/recipes-phosphor/vpd/openpower-fru-vpd/70-op-vpd.rules
+[4]:https://github.com/openbmc/meta-openpower/blob/master/recipes-phosphor/vpd/openpower-fru-vpd-layout/layout.yaml
+