Scale Computing HC3 / HyperCore

Prerequisites

• Access to the HC3 web UI (typically https://<node-ip>)
• The built navengine.qcow2 image available on your workstation
• A VLAN with internet access already defined in HC3

Deployment Steps

Step 1 - Upload the disk image

1. Open a browser and navigate to https://<your-hc3-node-ip>.
2. Log in with your HC3 administrator credentials.
3. In the left sidebar scroll down to the Uploaded Disk Images section (below the VM list and cluster resource panels).
4. Click Upload (or the upload icon next to the section header).
5. Select navengine.qcow2 from your workstation and confirm.
6. Wait for the progress indicator to finish. When complete the filename appears in the Uploaded Disk Images list.

Step 2 - Create the VM

Important: The Boot From dropdown in the Create VM dialog only lists ISO/CD-ROM sources. Uploaded qcow2 disk images never appear there. Leave Boot From set to None - the navengine disk is attached separately in the next step.

1. Click + Create VM (the button in the top-right of the Virtual Machines panel).
2. Fill in the dialog:

3. Click Create. The VM tile appears in the Virtual Machines list showing 4 cores, 100 GB disk, 0% utilisation.

Step 3 - Add the navengine disk to the VM

1. Locate the new VM tile and click the disk / layers icon at the bottom of the tile (the stacked-layers icon in the row of action buttons).
2. The Add Drive dialog opens:
   • Source: select Uploaded
   • Disk Image: open the dropdown and select navengine.qcow2
3. Click Create.
4. HC3 clones the uploaded image onto the VM. A COMPLETED notification appears at the bottom-right of the screen once the clone finishes (wording: “Clone of block device … into virtual machine navengine-01”).

Step 4 - Delete the blank placeholder disk

CRITICAL - this step causes the reboot loop if skipped. Moving the blank disk to Don’t Boot is NOT sufficient. “Don’t Boot” only removes the disk from the BIOS boot sequence; the disk remains physically attached to the VM and the kernel still sees it as vda. When GRUB enumerates VirtIO disks the blank disk becomes hd0 and the navengine disk becomes hd1. GRUB’s OEM partition search starts at hd0, finds nothing there, and may not search further - leaving ignition.config.url unset. Without it, Ignition cannot find its config and Flatcar immediately reboots. The blank disk must be deleted entirely.

1. On the VM tile, click the disk / layers icon (same one used in Step 3).
2. The disk list shows both the navengine disk and the blank 100 GB disk.
3. Click on the blank disk entry (da33589d 100 GB or similar).
4. Click Delete and confirm. The blank disk is removed from the VM.

Step 5 - Change the boot order

1. Click the wrench / settings icon on the VM tile, then choose Boot Order (or look for a Modify Boot Order action in the VM detail view).
2. The Modify Boot Order dialog shows two sections:
   • Boot Order - devices the VM will try to boot from, in order
   • Don’t Boot - devices excluded from the boot sequence
3. The navengine disk (shown by its serial number and size, e.g. b5677b5a 13.2 GB) should appear in Boot Order. Only the VIRTIO network interface should remain in Don’t Boot.
4. If the navengine disk is not already at the top of Boot Order, drag it there using the handle (≡) on the right of its row.
5. Click Modify.

Step 6 - Start the VM and verify

1. Click Start on the VM tile (the power icon).
2. Click the console icon (monitor symbol) to open the graphical console.

Expected boot sequence:

Booting 'Flatcar default'
...

The first boot takes 5–10 minutes depending on your network configuration. After installation, the tty will render a login screen. You can proceed to access navengine on https://<public-ip>:4200

If the VM reboots in a loop:

Open the console at the moment of failure and look for [FAILED] lines.