# 01 - Prerequisites & Node Preparation

This documentation outlines the required state for bare-metal servers before executing the Ansible provisioning pipeline.

## Node State
* **OS:** Proxmox VE 9.x freshly installed.
* **Authentication:** Root password known. *(Highly Recommended: Pre-deploy your local SSH public key to the nodes using `ssh-copy-id root@<ip>` before starting. This establishes passwordless authentication from your DevContainer/Control Node and prevents Ansible from prompting you for passwords).*
* **Network:** Static IPs assigned. If deploying Linstor, the management interface and Corosync/DRBD replication should ideally be physically separated. If utilizing a single NIC, QoS/traffic shaping must be handled at the switch level to prioritize Corosync UDP (5404/5405) over DRBD replication traffic.
* **Storage:** Target block devices intended for Linstor raw LVM provisioning must contain no existing partition tables, LVM metadata, or filesystems. 

## Execution Environment
Local Ansible installation is not required. This repository enforces the use of an isolated VS Code DevContainer.

1. Open this repository in Visual Studio Code.
2. Ensure Docker/Podman and the "Dev Containers" extension are installed.
3. Select `Reopen in Container`. *(Note: VS Code automatically forwards your local SSH agent into the DevContainer).*
4. Open a terminal within VS Code. All paths referenced in this documentation originate from the `ansible/` directory.

```bash
cd ansible/
```