Provision an Edge Host VM Using iPXE Netboot

Palette Edge supports deployment through iPXE netboot. This method is helpful when you want to automate provisioning, use external configuration, or avoid embedding user-data configuration into each ISO. It’s especially useful when deploying many VMs or Edge hosts dynamically. This guide teaches you how to provision Edge hosts in VMware using iPXE. To use iPXE provisioning, you must use an HTTP/HTTPS server to serve the necessary boot artifacts and the iPXE configuration files, and configure the VMs to boot from a iPXE ISO file, which then chains a script that downloads the boot artifacts and boot using those artifacts.

You do not need to customize the Palette Edge Installer ISO. It is only used to extract the generic kernel, initrd, and root filesystem. Configuration is handled externally via a config.yaml file served over HTTP. This lets you reuse the same boot artifacts across any number of nodes.

Prerequisites

A Palette Installer ISO built using CanvOS tag version 4.6.21 or later. You do not need to customize this installer using user-data, because you only need to extract a few boot artifacts from this ISO and it does not preserve customizations. For more information, refer to Build Installer ISO.
A Linux host machine that is capable of serving files over an HTTP/HTTPS server. This guide uses Python 3 and the http-server module to serve the artifacts, but you can use any other tool to start your server.
govc is installed on your Linux VM and available.
Access to a VMware vCenter environment where you can provision new VMs and upload files to datastores. Your VMs in vCenter must be able to access the HTTP/HTTPS server you provision.

Procedure

Mount your Palette Edge installer ISO onto your Linux host. Replace /path/to/palette-edge-installer-<version>.iso with the path to your Palette Edge installer ISO file. Create a folder to hold netboot files.
```
sudo mount /path/to/palette-edge-installer-<version>.iso /mnt
mkdir -p ~/ipxe/netboot
```

Copy the necessary boot artifacts into the netboot directory.

cp /mnt/boot/kernel ~/ipxe/netboot/palette-kernel
cp /mnt/boot/initrd ~/ipxe/netboot/palette-initrd
cp /mnt/rootfs.squashfs ~/ipxe/netboot/palette.squashfs

The files are the initrd, kernel and squashfs.

Unmount the ISO after you finish copying the files.
```
sudo umount /mnt
```
Create a configuration file for the installer to use. This is equivalent to your user-data file you use to configure the Edge installer ISO. Refer to Prepare User Data and Argument Files for more information.
```
cat > ~/ipxe/netboot/config.yaml <<'EOF'
#cloud-config
# ... your settings here ...
EOF
```
Change into the netboot directory and start an HTTP server.
```
cd ~/ipxe/netboot
python3 -m http.server 8080 &
```
Leave this server running and perform the subsequent steps in a different terminal tab.
In a different terminal tab, but still on your Linux host, create an iPXE script that tells your VMs booted from the iPXE ISO to download the boot artifacts and boot using those artifacts. Replace <YOUR_SERVER_IP> with the IP address of your HTTP server. Often, this is the IP address of your Linux host unless you specify otherwise. You can use ip addr show to obtain your IP address if your do not know it.
```
cat > ~/ipxe/netboot/palette.ipxe <<'EOF'
#!ipxe
kernel http://<YOUR_SERVER_IP>:8080/palette-kernel initrd=palette-initrd rd.neednet=1 ip=dhcp rd.cos.disable root=live:http://<YOUR_SERVER_IP>:8080/palette.squashfs netboot install-mode config_url=http://<YOUR_SERVER_IP>:8080/config.yaml console=tty1
initrd http://<YOUR_SERVER_IP>:8080/palette-initrd
boot
EOF
```
Download the generic iPXE ISO and upload it to your vCenter datastore. Replace path/to/datastore/iso with the vCenter datastore path where you want to upload the ISO. You may need to configure the correct environment variables with credentials to your vCenter environment to use the govc command.
```
wget https://boot.ipxe.org/ipxe.iso -O ~/ipxe/ipxe.iso
govc datastore.upload ~/ipxe/ipxe.iso path/to/datastore/iso
```
You are now done with all the steps you need to perform from your Linux host. Your ~/ipxe/netboot folder should contain the following files.
```
~/ipxe/netboot/
 ├── palette-kernel
 ├── palette-initrd
 ├── palette.squashfs
 ├── config.yaml
 └── palette.ipxe
```
Leave your HTTP server running and open your browser to your vCenter environment.
In your vCenter, create a new VM with the following hardware configurations.
- 8 vCPUs
- 32 GB RAM
- 300 GB disk
Add a CD/DVD device to your VM. Choose the iPXE ISO you previously uploaded to your vCenter datastore. Make sure you check Connect on Power On option to ensure that the ISO is connected when your VM boots.
Finish configuring your VM and power it on.
Open the VM’s console via the vCenter web client to access your VM. As soon as the "iPXE boot image" screen shows, press CTRL + B to interrupt and enter the iPXE> prompt. The interval you have to press CTRL + B is very short. Therefore, make sure to launch the web console as soon as your VM boots and get ready to press the keys.

tip
If the VM does not register CTRL + B, try pressing ESC + B instead. Many BIOS-level environments and virtual terminals interpret ESC + B as a fallback for CTRL + B, especially when CTRL is not reliably passed through.
Issue the following commands in the iPXE> prompt.
```
dhcp
chain http://<YOUR_SERVER_IP>:8080/palette.ipxe
```
This tells iPXE to download and execute the script you wrote, which kicks off the install using the boot artifacts and your config file. The VM then downloads kernel, initrd, and rootfs and begin the installation using your config.yaml (user-data).

Validate

After installation is complete, power on your VM.
Ensure that the VM displays that the Edge host is ready to be added to a cluster in Palette or the address of Local UI, depending on how you configured the management mode for the Edge host.

Prerequisites​

Procedure​

Validate​

Prerequisites

Procedure

Validate