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No OS option

No OS option

No OS is an option to order IBM Cloud® Bare Metal Servers without an operating system.

Ordering Bare Metal Servers with no OS

Use the following steps to order a bare metal server without an operating system.

  1. Use the steps that are outlined in Building a Custom Bare Metal Server to order your server.

    Because of compatibility issues, you can't select NMVe drives if you're installing Windows®.

  2. Select No OS under Image.

  3. Complete your server order.

Installing an operating system on a no OS server

You have two methods to install operating systems on Bare Metal Servers when you select the no OS option.

Option 1: PXE Server

You can set up Bare Metal Servers with no operating system to boot and load an OS from a PXE setup. Deployment of Bare Metal Servers in a network environment with a PXE setup (this process usually involves running a DHCP and TFTP daemon) and configure the new server BIOS to boot from the network adapter. For the no OS option to work properly, you need to set up PXE in the same VLAN as the Bare Metal Servers, or you need to use DHCP forwarding.

It might be necessary to open a support case to request that the switch ports be regrouped in basic mode for this option to work. This request is necessary because the PXE protocol doesn't require compatibility with link aggregation (LACP), which is now a standard capability to provide redundancy. Another option is to order the server with unbonded uplinks (no link aggregation) and then change them to redundant uplinks after the OS is installed.

Option 2: IPMI device

You can install an operating system on Bare Metal Servers by booting from an ISO with the included IPMI device. For more information about booting from an ISO, see Mounting an ISO on a bare metal server.