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Purpose: Explain what opencenter cluster drift checks today and where the support boundary stops.

What the Command Compares

The drift workflow builds a desired infrastructure model from the cluster configuration and compares it with the provider’s live API state.

Today that means:

  • OpenStack: servers, networks, security groups, load balancers, volumes, and floating IPs.

  • VMware: configured VM nodes, attached networks, and datastore-backed storage expectations.

Supported Providers

| Provider | Status | Reconciliation | | --- | --- | --- | | OpenStack | Supported | Limited safe reconciliation for mutable items such as tags and security-group rules | | VMware | Supported | Detection only; remediation is manual | | Kind | Not applicable | No infrastructure drift backend | | Baremetal | Not applicable | No infrastructure drift backend | | AWS | Removed from GA drift registry | Not supported |

Typical Flow

# Detect drift
opencenter cluster drift detect prod-cluster

# Filter output by severity
opencenter cluster drift detect prod-cluster --severity=critical

# Preview any supported reconciliation
opencenter cluster drift reconcile prod-cluster --dry-run

VMware-Specific Behavior

VMware drift detection uses the configured vCenter metadata plus secrets.vsphere_csi credentials to inspect:

  • the configured datacenter

  • the named VM nodes

  • the networks attached to those VMs

  • the datastores backing those VMs

The command reports differences, but it does not mutate vSphere resources for you.

Why Kind and Baremetal Are Different

Kind is a local lifecycle provider, not a cloud-resource backend. Baremetal relies on pre-provisioned hosts that openCenter does not create or own. In both cases, the infrastructure drift contract would be misleading, so those providers are intentionally excluded.