Fluid Installation¶
Installing and configuring Fluid is straightforward and the same process for a single node or many. Fluid nodes can boot as quickly as 30 seconds from provisioning and automatically assemble into centrally managed clusters. Fluid has a unique pairing flow that’s helpful to understand throughout the installation procedure.
All Fluid nodes are managed by the Fluid Cloud service which is accessible via the Fluid portal in NetApp CloudManager. Fluid ships as an _immutable_ operating system image which boots much like an installer ISO but doesn’t install an operating system onto system storage as an installer image would. Instead, the Fluid image will configure available storage on nodes for persistent data, with the boot image being completely replaceable (much like a Docker container for instance).
When the Fluid image is booted, Fluid will establish connectivity with Fluid Cloud which will either:
Issue a pairing token (such as DogGoatCat-ea43cd) in the case of an ISO boot; to be manally entered into Cloud
Connect to a predefined cluster by sending a cluster identifier in PXE arguments
Note
Review the installation options for various platforms below