When creating a cluster using assisted installer using BMO integration and using a bonded network configuration hosts sometimes will not be able to register with ironic because the bootMACAddress will not be present due to the bond.    

4.16    

Usually 50%, but 100% in this customer's case

When the bond is created one of the member interfaces' mac is used for the bond. If the bond uses the interface that matches the boot mac address in the BMH, the issue will not reproduce, but if the mac of the bond doesn't match the issue will reproduce (this is how you get the 50% reproduction rate). In this customer's case they're using some strategy to choose which NIC they use for bootMACAddress such that it fails 100% of the time.    

    1. Create the cluster manifests to deploy a cluster using a bond
    2. Create the BMH to provision a host where the bootMACAddress field is the MAC of one of the bonded interfaces

Example cluster manifests and networking config can be found in the must-gather

ironic agent cannot find corresponding BMH:

Aug 12 16:44:48 ******* ironic-agent[3605]: 2025-08-12 16:44:48.712 1 WARNING ironic_python_agent.ironic_api_client [-] Failed looking up node with addresses 'd8:9d:67:2e:ca:77,2c:44:fd:89:5b:51,d8:9d:67:2e:ca:75,b8:83:03:9b:98:ac,b8:83:03:5d:c2:d1,2c:44:fd:89:5b:52,b8:83:03:9b:98:ac,d8:9d:67:2e:ca:76,2c:44:fd:89:5b:50,d8:9d:67:2e:ca:74,b8:83:03:9b:98:ac,2c:44:fd:89:5b:53,b8:83:03:9b:98:ad' at https://10.210.94.158:6385. Check if inspection has completed? Error 404: Resource could not be found.    

Provisioning completes successfully    

Must gather attached to https://access.redhat.com/support/cases/#/case/04226557

Expected to be solved by https://bugs.launchpad.net/ironic-python-agent/+bug/2103450

The related issue is the same problem, but in the assisted installer which also matches Agents to BareMetalHosts using bootMACAddress