Ironic is an OpenStack service that provisions bare-metal-for users. Ironic integrates with other OpenStack services, such as Nova, Keystone, Swift, Neutron, and Glance.

To manage the bare-metal servers, Ironic uses both common remote management tools, such as PXE and IPMI, and vendor-specific remote management tools. Ironic provides a unified interface to a heterogeneous fleet of servers. 

This service is made up of the following three components:

• The Ironic API: This is a RESTful API that processes application requests.
• Ironic conductor: This manages the bare-metal server. It can start and stop bare-metal servers using IPMI or other vendor-specific remote-management tools. It is also responsible for provisioning the bare-metal servers and deploying them.
• Ironic Python Agent: This provides the Ironic conductor with remote access for band hardware control and hardware introspection.