Register a Bare Metal Machine (ISO)

A guide on how to register bare metal machines with Omni using an ISO.

Dashboard

Upon logging in you will be presented with the Omni dashboard.

Download the ISO

First, download the ISO from the Omni portal by clicking on the “Download Installation Media” button on the right.

Select the version of Talos for the cluster, then click on the “Options” dropdown menu and search for, or scroll down to, the “ISO” option.

Notice there are two options: one for amd64 and another for arm64. Select the appropriate architecture for the machine you are registering. Now that you have selected the ISO option for the appropriate architecture, click the “Download” button.

Write the ISO to a USB Stick

First, plug the USB drive into your local machine. Now, find the device path for your USB drive and write the ISO to the USB drive.

MacOS

diskutil list
...
/dev/disk2 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                                                   *31.9 GB    disk2
...

In this example disk2 is the USB drive.

dd if=<path to ISO> of=/dev/disk2 conv=fdatasync

Linux

$ lsblk
...
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
sdb      8:0    0 39.1G  0 disk
...

In this example sdb is the USB drive.

dd if=<path to ISO> of=/dev/sdb conv=fdatasync

Boot the Machine

Now that we have our bootable USB drive, plug it into the machine you are registering. Once the machine is booting you will notice logs from Talos Linux on the console stating that it is reachable over an IP address.

Machines must be able to egress to your account’s WireGuard port and TCP port 443.

Conclusion

Navigate to the “Machines” menu in the sidebar of Omni. You should now see a machine listed.

You now have a bare metal machine registered with Omni and ready to provision.