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Installation

To install Sidero and the other Talos providers, simply issue:

clusterctl init -b talos -c talos -i sidero

Sidero supports several variables to configure the installation, these variables can be set either as environment variables or as variables in the clusterctl configuration:

  • SIDERO_CONTROLLER_MANAGER_HOST_NETWORK (false): run sidero-controller-manager on host network
  • SIDERO_CONTROLLER_MANAGER_API_ENDPOINT (empty): specifies the IP address controller manager API service can be reached on, defaults to the node IP (TCP)
  • SIDERO_CONTROLLER_MANAGER_API_PORT (8081): specifies the port controller manager can be reached on
  • SIDERO_CONTROLLER_MANAGER_CONTAINER_API_PORT (8081): specifies the controller manager internal container port
  • SIDERO_CONTROLLER_MANAGER_SIDEROLINK_ENDPOINT (empty): specifies the IP address SideroLink Wireguard service can be reached on, defaults to the node IP (UDP)
  • SIDERO_CONTROLLER_MANAGER_SIDEROLINK_PORT (51821): specifies the port SideroLink Wireguard service can be reached on
  • SIDERO_CONTROLLER_MANAGER_EXTRA_AGENT_KERNEL_ARGS (empty): specifies additional Linux kernel arguments for the Sidero agent (for example, different console settings)
  • SIDERO_CONTROLLER_MANAGER_AUTO_ACCEPT_SERVERS (false): automatically accept discovered servers, by default .spec.accepted should be changed to true to accept the server
  • SIDERO_CONTROLLER_MANAGER_AUTO_BMC_SETUP (true): automatically attempt to configure the BMC with a sidero user that will be used for all IPMI tasks.
  • SIDERO_CONTROLLER_MANAGER_INSECURE_WIPE (true): wipe only the first megabyte of each disk on the server, otherwise wipe the full disk
  • SIDERO_CONTROLLER_MANAGER_SERVER_REBOOT_TIMEOUT (20m): timeout for the server reboot (how long it might take for the server to be rebooted before Sidero retries an IPMI reboot operation)
  • SIDERO_CONTROLLER_MANAGER_IPMI_PXE_METHOD (uefi): IPMI boot from PXE method: uefi for UEFI boot or bios for BIOS boot
  • SIDERO_CONTROLLER_MANAGER_BOOT_FROM_DISK_METHOD (ipxe-exit): configures the way Sidero forces server to boot from disk when server hits iPXE server after initial install: ipxe-exit returns iPXE script with exit command, http-404 returns HTTP 404 Not Found error, ipxe-sanboot uses iPXE sanboot command to boot from the first hard disk (can be also configured on ServerClass/Server method)

Sidero provides three endpoints which should be made available to the infrastructure:

  • TCP port 8081 which provides combined iPXE, metadata and gRPC service (external endpoint should be specified as SIDERO_CONTROLLER_MANAGER_API_ENDPOINT and SIDERO_CONTROLLER_MANAGER_API_PORT)
  • UDP port 69 for the TFTP service (DHCP server should point the nodes to PXE boot from that IP)
  • UDP port 51821 for the SideroLink Wireguard service (external endpoint should be specified as SIDERO_CONTROLLER_MANAGER_SIDEROLINK_ENDPOINT and SIDERO_CONTROLLER_MANAGER_SIDEROLINK_PORT)

These endpoints could be exposed to the infrastructure using different strategies:

  • running sidero-controller-manager on the host network.
  • using Kubernetes load balancers (e.g. MetalLB), ingress controllers, etc.

Note: If you want to run sidero-controller-manager on the host network using port different from 8081 you should set both SIDERO_CONTROLLER_MANAGER_API_PORT and SIDERO_CONTROLLER_MANAGER_CONTAINER_API_PORT to the same value.