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Provisioning Models

Bare-metal provisioning lets you install an operating system on physical machines. The platform supports two deployment options:

Bare metal with BCM

  • Powered by NVIDIA BCM
  • Requires a dedicated BCM node and a valid NVIDIA BCM license
  • Includes predefined provisioning templates
  • Recommended for customers with an existing NVIDIA BCM footprint
  • Considered the NVIDIA-compliant / recommended approach for bare-metal

Bare metal Provisioning using Metal3/Ironic Solution (non-BCM)

  • Built on the open-source Metal3 project, which uses OpenStack Ironic under the hood
  • No BCM license or requires a head node
  • Software-only approach to managing bare-metal nodes
  • Requires additional setup, including:
    • Bare-metal gateway creation
    • Bare-metal Provisioner (k3s with Metal3/Ironic operators)
  • Supports multiple power/BMC protocols (e.g., IPMI, Redfish)
  • Suitable for customers who prefer not to use NVIDIA BCM licenses

Which option should I choose?

Use BCM if you already have NVIDIA BCM and want the officially recommended path.
Choose Metal3/Ironic if you need an open-source, license-free alternative.