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Vault quick-start guide

All-flash storage servers to feed your GPUs. From unboxing to a verified first boot.

Applies to: Vault 24

Safety first. Never open a power supply or work on mains wiring; use a licensed electrician. If you see coolant or smell burning, power off and unplug immediately. Your components’ manufacturer documentation takes precedence over this general guide.

01Unbox and inspect

  1. Inspect the shipping carton before you open it. If it is crushed, punctured or wet, photograph it first.
  2. Unpack on a clean, dry surface and keep all packaging. You may need it to ship a part back under the manufacturer’s warranty.
  3. Check the system for visible damage: dents, loose parts rattling inside, or bent connectors.
  4. Report shipping damage to [email protected] right away, with photos. Do not power on a system that looks damaged.
  5. Let the system reach room temperature before you power it on if it arrived cold, so no condensation forms inside.

02Rack installation

  1. Check rack depth and free rack units, install the rails, and mount the server with two people.
  2. Keep front-to-back airflow clear and fill empty drive bays with their blanks so drives stay cool.

03Power

  1. Connect both power supplies, ideally to separate PDUs.
  2. Plug each power supply into its own outlet or PDU socket, not a shared power strip. Never use extension cords for a GPU system.
  3. If you are not sure a circuit can carry the load, have a licensed electrician check it. Don’t modify circuits, outlets or breakers yourself, and never open a power supply.

04Management controller (BMC)

  1. Connect the BMC port to your management network and change the default password straight away.

05First boot and software

  1. Your system ships with the operating system and software you chose on your quote, for example Ubuntu with the NVIDIA driver, CUDA, PyTorch and vLLM, or Windows.
  2. On first boot, create your user account, connect to the network and install updates: sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade. Reboot afterwards.
  3. Kernel updates can need a matching NVIDIA driver. If nvidia-smi stops working after an update, reinstall the recommended driver with sudo ubuntu-drivers install and reboot.
  4. Keep work in Python virtual environments or containers so system packages and the driver stay stable.

06Set up storage

  1. List the drives with lsblk and check their health with sudo smartctl -a /dev/nvme0 (from the smartmontools package).
  2. Create your storage pool with redundancy, for example ZFS RAIDZ2 or mirrored vdevs, or Linux RAID. Avoid layouts where a single drive failure loses data.
  3. Share the storage to your GPU systems over NFS or SMB on your fastest network link, and test throughput with fio before production.
  4. Storage redundancy is not a backup. Keep a separate copy of important data.

07Verify

  1. Confirm every drive is detected and healthy, and that the network links run at their full speed (ethtool <interface>).
  2. Write down the serial numbers of the system and drives. You need them for any warranty claim.

08Getting help

  1. For setup, configuration, performance and troubleshooting questions, use the AI technical assistant in the chat (bottom right of any page). Paste exact error messages and command output for the best answers. It is best-effort, so verify before acting.
  2. Hardware faults (a dead part, failing memory, a GPU missing after basic checks) are covered by the component manufacturer’s warranty. The assistant can help you identify the failing part and its serial number.
  3. Warranty terms: see our quote and order terms at /terms/.