Before you run the provision tool

• (Recommended) Run prereq.sh to get the system ready to deploy Omnia.

• All target bare-metal servers (cluster nodes) should be reachable to the chosen OIM.

• The UEFI boot setting should be configured in the BIOS settings before initiating PXE boot on the nodes.

• Admin and BMC network switches should be configured before running the provision tool. For more information on configuring the switches, click here.

• Set the IP address of the OIM. The OIM NIC connected to remote servers (through the switch) should be configured with two IPs (BMC IP and admin IP) in a shared LOM or hybrid set up. In the case dedicated network topology, a single IP (admin IP) is required.

OIM NIC IP configuration in a LOM setup

OIM NIC IP configuration in a dedicated setup

• Set the hostname of the OIM in the hostname. domain name format.

  • The hostname should not contain the following characters: , (comma), . (period) or _ (underscore). However, the domain name is allowed with commas and periods.

  • The hostname cannot start or end with a hyphen (-).

  • No upper case characters are allowed in the hostname.

  • The hostname cannot start with a number.

  • The hostname and the domain name (that is: hostname00000x.domain.xxx) cumulatively cannot exceed 64 characters. For example, if the node_name provided in input/provision_config.yml is ‘node’, and the domain_name provided is ‘omnia.test’, Omnia will set the hostname of a target cluster node to ‘node000001.omnia.test’. Omnia appends 6 digits to the hostname to individually name each target node.

  For example, controlplane.omnia.test is acceptable.

  hostnamectl set-hostname controlplane.omnia.test
  

Note

The domain name specified for the OIM should be the same as the one specified under domain_name in input/provision_config.yml.

• To provision the bare metal servers, download one of the following ISOs to the OIM:

  • RHEL 8.x

  • Rocky Linux 8.x

Note

Ensure the ISO provided has downloaded seamlessly (No corruption). Verify the SHA checksum/ download size of the ISO file before provisioning to avoid future failures.

Note the compatibility between cluster OS and OIM OS below:

OIM OS	Cluster Node OS	Compatibility
RHEL [1]	RHEL	Yes
Rocky	Rocky	Yes

[1]

Ensure that OIMs running RHEL have an active subscription or are configured to access local repositories. The following repositories should be enabled on the OIM: AppStream, BaseOS.

• Ensure that all connection names under the network manager match their corresponding device names.

  To verify network connection names:

  nmcli connection
  

  To verify the device name:

  ip link show
  

In the event of a mismatch, edit the file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-<nic name> using the vi editor for RHEL/Rocky Linux clusters.

• When discovering nodes via a mapping file, all target nodes should be set up in PXE mode before running the playbook.

Note

• After configuration and installation of the cluster, changing the OIM is not supported. If you need to change the OIM, you must redeploy the entire cluster.

• For servers with an existing OS being discovered via BMC, ensure that the first PXE device on target nodes should be the designated active NIC for PXE booting.

If you have any feedback about Omnia documentation, please reach out at omnia.readme@dell.com.