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Installing a Hypervisor Node

The MFCloud Hypervisor ISO is an air-gapped installer based on Rocky Linux 9. It produces a fully self-contained KVM/QEMU host with libvirt, OVS/OVN, ZFS, Ceph, and LINSTOR satellite components pre-staged.

What you need

  • A blank server with VT-x/AMD-V virtualization extensions enabled in BIOS.
  • At least 64 GB RAM, 2× SSD/NVMe, 2× NICs (recommended).
  • The mfcloud-v27-enterprise.iso build artifact.
  • An IP address plan: either a DHCP lease for the management interface, or a static IP / netmask / gateway / DNS.

Step 1 — Boot the ISO

Burn the ISO to USB or attach via iDRAC/IPMI virtual media, then boot. The Anaconda installer launches automatically.

Step 2 — Network configuration menu

The installer pauses on tty6 with this prompt:

==================================================================
   MFCloud V27 Hypervisor — Management Network Setup
==================================================================
   [1] DHCP            (auto-configure from the local network)
   [2] Static IP       (manual address, gateway, DNS, hostname)
  • DHCP — accept the default. Optionally type a hostname.
  • Static — enter the IP, netmask, gateway, DNS server, and hostname when prompted.

After 4 seconds the screen flips back to the install progress.

Step 3 — Wait for first boot

When install completes the host reboots. On first boot, mfcloud-firstboot.service runs once. It:

  • Loads the LINSTOR satellite container image.
  • Generates a per-node ed25519 keypair and self-signed TLS cert.
  • Generates a random password for the Emergency Host UI and prints it once on the install console:
================================================================
  MFCloud Emergency Host UI — first-boot credential
----------------------------------------------------------------
  URL:      https://<node-ip>:8443/
  User:     root
  Password: <generated-password>

  RECORD THIS NOW. It will not be shown again.
================================================================

Capture the password now

The cleartext is printed exactly once. If you missed it, see Reset the Emergency UI Password.

Step 4 — Verify the Emergency UI

Browse to https://<node-ip>:8443/ and log in as root with the captured password. You should see CPU, memory, disk, and VM stats. Accept the self-signed certificate warning.

Step 5 — Onboard the node into the cluster

In the master console, Inventory → Add Host, then enter the node's IP. The master will SSH in (or use the Agent Trust API if configured) and register it as a compute node.

Troubleshooting