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Prerequisites

Software, credentials, and knowledge required before starting Day 1.

Hardware Prerequisites​

  • 3× Intel NUC (or equivalent x86-64 hardware) for Harvester nodes — see Hardware
  • 1× Admin workstation / admin NUC (nuc-00)
  • 16-port unmanaged switch
  • Internet connectivity (Community and Carbide) or pre-synced Hauler store (Enclave)

Software Prerequisites​

Admin Host (nuc-00)​

  • openSUSE Leap (or compatible SUSE Linux) installed on the admin host
  • KVM/libvirt — for running infra VMs
  • Apache httpd — for serving PXE artifacts and Harvester ISOs
  • TFTP server — for serving ipxe.efi to UEFI clients
  • envsubst — for rendering config templates (part of gettext)
# Install required packages on openSUSE Leap
sudo zypper install -y apache2 tftp qemu-kvm libvirt virt-install gettext-tools
sudo systemctl enable --now libvirtd apache2

Workstation (for running scripts)​

  • bash — scripts target bash
  • kubectl — for post-deploy verification
  • helm — for Rancher Manager installation
  • envsubst — for template rendering

Carbide and Enclave — Additional Prerequisites​

  • RGS Carbide portal account and registry credentials
  • Cosign — for image signature verification
  • Hauler (Enclave only) — for artifact sync and local registry

Harvester ISO​

Download the Harvester installer and artifacts to nuc-00 before PXE booting:

ISO_VERSION="${HARVESTER_VERSION}"
ISO_DIR=/srv/www/htdocs/harvester/${ISO_VERSION}
mkdir -p "${ISO_DIR}"

BASE=https://releases.rancher.com/harvester/${ISO_VERSION}
for f in \
  harvester-${ISO_VERSION}-amd64.iso \
  harvester-${ISO_VERSION}-vmlinuz-amd64 \
  harvester-${ISO_VERSION}-initrd-amd64 \
  harvester-${ISO_VERSION}-rootfs-amd64.squashfs
do
  wget -P "${ISO_DIR}" "${BASE}/${f}"
done

For Enclave, these files are pre-synced by modules/enclave/hauler_sync.sh and served from the local Hauler file server — no manual download needed.

Knowledge Prerequisites​

  • Linux command line (SSH, systemctl, journalctl)
  • Basic networking (subnets, VLANs, DNS, DHCP)
  • YAML syntax
  • Kubernetes basics (pods, deployments, services)
  • KVM/libvirt virtualization concepts

For Carbide/Enclave: familiarity with container image signing (Cosign) is helpful.

References​