Prerequisites
=================

* All target bare-metal servers (cluster nodes) should be reachable from the OIM.

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

* Manually configure the Admin and BMC network switches before running the provision tool. 

* Ensure that the external NFS is accessible by all the nodes intended to be booted and is reachable by admin network. 

* 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.

    .. figure:: ../../../images/ControlPlaneNic.png

                *OIM NIC IP configuration in a LOM setup*

    .. figure:: ../../../images/ControlPlane_DedicatedNIC.png

                *OIM NIC IP configuration in a dedicated setup*

* To provision the bare metal servers, ensure the images are built using the ``build_image_x86_64.yml`` or ``build_image_aarch64.yml``.

* 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.

* When discovering nodes via mapping files, all cluster nodes should be set up in PXE mode before running the playbooks.

.. note::

    * After the cluster has been configured and deployed, changing the OIM node is not supported. If you need to change the OIM node, you must redeploy the entire cluster.