PXE-assisted boot#

This page provides high-level description of the PXE-assisted boot.

IMPORTANT! The PXE-assisted boot has been developed to support provisioning of Standalone Edge Nodes at scale (see Provision Standalone Edge Nodes at scale) with the OXM Deployment Profile. In this case, Edge Orchestrator is deployed locally on-premises and Edge Nodes are attached to the same local network. The OXM deployment profile should be the default environment for using PXE-assisted boot. For cloud-based Edge Orchestrator the recommended options are USB-assisted boot and HTTPS-assisted boot. However, we provide PXE-assisted provisioning with cloud-based Edge Orchestrator as an experimental feature.

Requirements#

  • Ensure you deploy a local PXE server (DHCP+TFTP) that stores iPXE script (see instructions below).

  • PXE-assisted boot can only be used if Edge Nodes have direct (Layer-2) connectivity to the PXE server.

  • Ensure that Edge Nodes are connected to the network and has access to the orchestrator.

  • Configure Edge Nodes to boot from the PXE boot option.

  • Configure Edge Node to boot from the hard disk as second boot option.

PXE-assisted boot flow#

  1. Prepare local PXE server deployment. It can be done via OXM Deployment Profile or PXE-assisted provisioning with cloud-based Edge Orchestrator (experimental feature). The local PXE server must provide the iPXE script exposed at https://tinkerbell-nginx.CLUSTER_FQDN/tink-stack/signed_ipxe.efi via TFTP.

  2. Optionally, if Edge Nodes have been configured with Secure Boot, configure BIOS to enable Secure Boot and upload Edge Orchestrator CA certificates.

  3. Manage boot order to boot from PXE as the fist option and reboot Edge Nodes.