Bare Metal Provider Installation
This document describes how to install the Bare Metal Infrastructure Provider for Immutable Infrastructure.
Prerequisites
Before installing the provider, ensure you have:
- Access to the
globalcluster. - Access to Customer Portal for downloading plugins.
Downloading
The bare-metal workflow requires two plugins from Customer Portal:
- Alauda Container Platform Kubeadm Provider
- Alauda Container Platform Bare Metal Infrastructure Provider (umbrella chart that ships the
cluster-api-provider-baremetal-managerandelemental-operatorsubcharts together)
Download both plugins from the Customer Portal.
Uploading
For detailed instructions on uploading packages, refer to Upload Packages.
Installing
For detailed instructions on installing cluster plugins, refer to Cluster Plugin.
The umbrella chart installs both the bare-metal provider manager and elemental-operator in one step. The image catalog ConfigMap is created by the chart — you do not need to apply it separately when creating a workload cluster.
Verifying Installation
After installing the plugins, verify that the controllers and CRDs are present:
Expected output includes:
baremetalclusters.infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.iobaremetalmachines.infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.iobaremetalmachinetemplates.infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.iomachineinventorypools.infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.iomachineinventories.elemental.cattle.iomachineregistrations.elemental.cattle.ioseedimages.elemental.cattle.io
Confirm that elemental-image-catalog contains the Kubernetes versions you intend to deploy:
Every Machine.spec.version used by a cluster — both at creation time and at upgrade time — must appear as a key in this ConfigMap.
Next Steps
After installing the provider, you can proceed to:
- Create a Cluster
- Review Provider Overview for the pool model and plan lifecycle.