Harvester may not be the most popular home server OS, but it's worth considering if you need a high-end production environment. Besides delivering solid performance in virtualization workloads, Harvester provides top-notch clustering provisions. Harvester also has a straightforward procedure when you want to passthrough devices - including GPUs - to virtual guests, making it the perfect platform for hardcore server projects.

Since it can be tricky to set up Harvester when you're a beginner, we've compiled a step-by-step guide to help you master this enterprise-grade virtualization platform.

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What you'll need

Unlike Proxmox, XCP-ng, and other rivals, Harvester has sky-high hardware requirements - to the point where it might not even run on some budget-friendly consumer-grade PCs. For starters, you'll need a x86_64 processor with at least 8 cores alongside 32GB of memory, and 200GB of disk space to set up a test environment using Harvester.

If you thought that was insane, a Harvester-based production environment requires even higher specifications. Not only do you need 16 cores, 64GB RAM, and 500GB of free space, but you'll also have to outfit your local network with 10GbE provisions! That said, a test environment works well for most home lab projects, and so long as you're using a high-end processor, you shouldn't have any issues getting Harvester to run.

For a normal, non-PXE boot, you'll need to flash a USB drive with the Harvester ISO. Considering that the Harvester ISO file has a massive 6GB size, you'll need a flash drive with at least 8GB storage capacity for this project.

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Creating a bootable USB drive

Once you've got your hands on a machine that can handle this behemoth of an operating system, it's time to write the Harvester ISO onto a USB drive. We've used Balena Etcher in this tutorial, but you can also go with Rufus and other flashing tools.

Head to the Harvester GitHub page and download the latest ISO file of the OS. Download the setup.exe file for Balena Etcher from the official website and use it to install the tool on your PC. Run Balena Etcher.exe with admin privileges. Click on the Flash from file button and select the harvester.iso file you downloaded earlier.

Press the Select target button and choose the USB drive that you wish to use as the bootable disk.

Hit Flash and wait for Balena Etcher to write the OS files onto your flash drive.

Switching the boot order in the BIOS

With the bootable drive ready, you can dust off the system you plan to use as the Harvester server. However, you'll need to modify certain settings in your motherboard's BIOS to boot from the newly-flashed drive. Since Harvester relies on hardware-assisted virtualization, you'll have to enable this setting inside the BIOS as well.

Power on your server PC, plug the bootable drive into a USB port, and keep tapping the Delete key as it boots up. Head to the Boot tab inside the BIOS menu and set the flash drive as Boot Order #1.

Select the Advanced CPU Settings within the Tweaker tab and set the Intel VT-x/AMD-V/CPU Virtualization/SVM Mode option to Enabled.

Save your changes and exit the BIOS.

Installing Harvester

After your PC reboots, you'll enter the Harvester installation wizard, where you'll have to modify multiple settings for your Harvester instance.

Select the Create a Harvester cluster option when you're prompted to choose the installation mode.

Pick the drive you want to use as the Install disk, enter the capacity you want to assign to the Persistent storage (the directory that will contain the VM and container images), and press No under the MBR partitioning option.

Hit the Tab key to bring your Ethernet card under the Management NIC setting and press Enter to select it.

Feel free to leave the rest of the

Network settings at their default values. Type a HostName for your Harvester machine.

Add a DNS server and hit Enter when the installer prompts you to set the VIP (Virtual IP) address.

Enter a Cluster token and Password for your Harvester instance.

Leave the NTP server, Proxy address, and HTTP URL settings at their default values, and tap Yes to begin installing Harvester.

Unplug the USB drive once the installation process has finished and wait for your PC to boot into Harvester.

Accessing the Harvester web UI

Just like every other server operating system, you'll have to log into a web UI to access your Harvester node.

When the system reboots after the installation, you'll spot the IP address on the screen.

You can enter it into a web browser to access Harvester from another device on your home network.

Set a Password for your node and accept the Harvester terms and conditions.

Enter admin as the Username and type the Password you'd set earlier to log in as a local user.

Running a virtual machine on Harvester

Now that you've signed in to the Harvester web UI, you're free to deploy your first virtual machine on the server.

From the Dashboard, head to the Images tab and press Create.

Give a Name to this image, select File under the Basic section, and tap the Upload file button to choose an ISO file from your local machine.

Hit Create and wait until the image has been uploaded to your Harvester machine.

Switch to the Virtual Machines tab and click on Create.

Allocate the CPU and Memory resources to the VM under the Basic menu.

Click on Volumes and pick the ISO file you uploaded earlier under the Image field.

Press the Add Volume button, modify the Size parameter in accordance with the amount of storage you want to grant to the VM, and hit Create.

Finally, head to the Virtual Machines tab and select the Open in VNC option under Console to access the newly-configured VM.

Building a powerful home server with Harvester

Close

Once you've deployed all your necessary VMs, you can tinker with the more advanced options in Harvester. I recommend heading to the Add-ons submenu inside the Advanced tab because that's where you can enable several cool extensions for your Harvester server. If you've got an Nvidia GPU, you can use the nvidia-driver-toolkit and pcidevices-controller add-ons to pass it through your virtual machines. Meanwhile, the rancher-logging and rancher-monitoring extensions leverage Grafana and Prometheus instances to provide detailed logs of your virtual guests.

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