Day 1 — Build
Day 1 is the initial deployment phase — turning bare-metal hardware into a running Kubernetes platform. Work through these steps in order: each stage depends on the previous one being healthy.
Build Order
1. Admin Host (nuc-00)
└── OS install, KVM, Apache, TFTP, HTTP/S (ISOS, etc..), LVM, SSH keys
2. Infrastructure VMs (on nuc-00)
├── infra-01: ISC DHCP + BIND DNS (pirmary)
└── infra-02: BIND DNS (replica) + bastion
└── infra-03: HAProxy + Keepalived
3. Harvester Cluster (nuc-01/02/03)
└── PXE boot → automated install → cluster join
4. Rancher Manager (inside Harvester)
└── K3s VM → cert-manager → Rancher Helm deploy
Build Steps
| Step | Document | Estimated Time |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Admin host setup | Admin Host | 45–60 min |
| 2. Infrastructure VMs | Infrastructure VMs | 30–45 min |
| 3. Harvester cluster | Harvester Cluster | 60–90 min |
| 4. Housekeeping Tasks | Housekeeping | 10–15 min |
| 5. Rancher Manager | Rancher Manager | 30–45 min |
Total Day 1 build time: approximately 3–4 hours for a first-time deployment, less than 2 hours for subsequent runs with the automation in place.
Prerequisites
Before starting Day 1:
- All Day 0 checklist items complete (see Prerequisites)
- All 4 NUCs powered on and network cables connected to switch
- ISO images available on your workstation
- SSH key pair ready
Health Checks Between Stages
Do not proceed to the next stage until the current stage passes its health checks. Each build document ends with a verification section. Use these as gates before continuing.
Idempotency
The Ansible playbooks in the source repo are designed to be idempotent — you can re-run them safely if a step fails partway through. Shell scripts are generally not idempotent; check their status before re-running.