iPXE Now Available for Cherry Servers Dedicated Bare Metal

Cherry Servers now supports iPXE installation for dedicated bare metal servers, giving advanced users full control over operating system deployment.

With iPXE, you can install operating systems from remote images, custom scripts, or external sources, including distributions and configurations outside our officially supported OS templates.

👉 Find the full documentation here

#What Is iPXE?

iPXE is an open-source network boot firmware that extends traditional PXE by supporting modern protocols such as HTTP, HTTPS, and iSCSI.

Instead of relying only on predefined OS images, you can:

• Boot from remote ISO files
• Execute custom iPXE scripts
• Chainload external installation environments

This approach is particularly useful for teams managing custom infrastructure stacks or automated provisioning workflows.

#How iPXE Works on Cherry Servers

Because standard metal-as-a-service (MaaS) infrastructure does not support iPXE over DHCP directly, Cherry Servers uses a custom implementation.

During first boot:

1. A universal iPXE ISO is automatically attached.
2. The server receives network configuration via DHCP.
3. Your selected or custom iPXE script executes from RAM.
4. The OS installation begins.
5. The ISO disconnects automatically after five minutes.

iPXE can be selected:

• During new server deployment;
• During server rebuild;
• On all dedicated bare metal servers (excluding Outlet servers).

All installations are fully user-managed.

#netboot.xyz Support

Cherry Servers also supports netboot.xyz for iPXE.

This allows you to deploy a wide range of Linux distributions and diagnostic tools from a centralized menu, pulling official images directly from upstream sources.

Supported systems include Ubuntu, Debian, Rocky Linux, Proxmox, Fedora, Arch Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Kali Linux, and many others, along with recovery and troubleshooting tools like Clonezilla, GParted, and Memtest86+.

#Who Is It For?

iPXE is particularly useful for:

• Infrastructure engineers running custom Linux builds
• Virtualization hosts and hypervisor deployments
• Blockchain and validator node operators
• Automated infrastructure pipelines
• Experimental or unsupported OS setups

If you need more control than a standard OS template provides, running advanced workloads, and want full control from boot to production, iPXE removes those limitations and is now available directly in the Cherry Servers client portal.

For implementation details and templates, visit the documentation.