There is an ever-increasing chance that the next time you will need to add a node to the cluster or build a brand new cluster using new nodes – they will be bare metal nodes.
What that means is that there is neither AHV nor CVM pre-installed on the node (unlike with factory imaged nodes).
The process of imaging differs slightly from handling a factory imaged nodes hence this post.
Bare metal nodes might come with a Discovery OS - small footprint software which allows for the node to be discovered by AOS 5.11 and later and thus imaged by an existing cluster CVM.
When building a new cluster standalone (bare metal) imaging is performed from a workstation with access to the IPMI interfaces of the nodes in the cluster. Imaging a cluster in the field requires first installing certain tools on the workstation and then setting the environment to run those tools. This includes setting up Foundation VM and uploading Nutanix software images to the Foundation VM.
Now follow the guide and let the imaging process begin!
There are more items to check, of course, but the above should give you a rough structure of how to arrange the process.
When you are ready read on the below:
Field Installation Guide: Prepare Bare Metal Nodes for Foundation
Software downloads: Foundation