Overview

This Knowledge Base (KB) article explains the supported method for deploying and managing a DGX H200 system using Bright Cluster Manager (BCM) 11 while booting the operating system from the node's local NVMe storage. To be managed by BCM, the node must be provisioned from a BCM-controlled software image, and local-NVMe boot is then configured on top of that.

Requirements for Local Boot Order

As per the BCM 11 Administrator Manual, Section 5.4.10 (Booting From The Local Hard Drive), three things must be in place:

1. In the node BIOS, the local drive must be higher in the boot order than network boot. Otherwise the node attempts PXE regardless of the BCM setting.
2. A working bootloader and boot record on the local disk. BCM writes the boot record when installbootrecord is enabled. The default bootloader is SYSLINUX; it can be set to GRUB, which is the usual choice on UEFI systems like the DGX H200.
3. The provisioning interface must be changed from BOOTIF to the node's real network device name. BOOTIF is only defined inside the BCM provisioning environment; during local-disk boot that environment is not running, so a node left on BOOTIF comes up with no network and is therefore not manageable. This is the step most often missed.

Configuration Steps

The cmsh sequence, run on the head node, is:

# cmsh
% device use <dgx-node-name>
% set installbootrecord yes
% set bootloader grub
% commit

Then change the boot interface from BOOTIF to the node's real device name (find it with ip link on the node; the example below uses eth0):

% device interfaces <dgx-node-name>
% set bootif networkdevicename eth0
% commit

A reboot alone is not enough here: the boot record (and, on UEFI, the local boot entry) is written during image synchronization, not at commit time. So provision the node once more with a normal PXE / image-sync pass to write it. After that pass, with the BIOS set to prefer the local drive (point 1 above), the node boots from the local NVMe as a standalone, managed node on every subsequent boot.

Because the DGX H200 is UEFI, the exact bootloader and boot-record behavior depends on the disk and EFI-partition layout.

Verification

Verify the following after deployment using the below command outputs: the node's real network device name (from ip link on the node); that the disk setup includes an EFI system partition on the intended local boot NVMe; and your installed DGX OS release.

# cmsh
% device use <dgx-node-name>
% get disksetup

Conclusion

BCM 11 fully supports DGX H200 local boot deployments, provided the node is first provisioned using a BCM-controlled software image.

The factory-installed DGX OS cannot be directly adopted as a managed BCM node. After provisioning, BCM can configure the system to boot from local NVMe storage while maintaining full node management, monitoring, configuration synchronization, and Kubernetes cluster participation.