In one of my previous articles, I talked about my Nutanix Foundation installation on my Steamdeck. Unfortunately, I hadn’t yet had the opportunity to run an installation with the setup due to a lack of a server to image.

But things have changed since I recently acquired a Supermicro SuperServer 5019D-FN8TP! I also wrote an article about implementing Nutanix Foundation on unofficially supported hardware:

Hardware Preparation for Foundation

To be able to image my node with Nutanix Foundation from my Steamdeck, I absolutely needed to be connected to the network via RJ45, a type of connection missing from Valve’s console…

So I purchased an external dock with several USB ports and an RJ45 port that can be connected via USB-C.

I made the following connections:

• Connecting the external dock to the Steamdeck’s USB-C port
• Connecting the power supply to the dock’s USB-C port
• Connecting the network cable to the dock’s RJ45 port
• Connecting the external SSD (on which Windows is installed) to one of the dock’s USB ports

This allowed me to boot the Steamdeck from the SSD to start Windows 11!

Nutanix Foundation for a Node with a Steamdeck

As I mentioned in the previous article, I already have Nutanix Foundation installed, so I won’t dwell on that part and will move directly to the Foundation section!

For this Foundation, I used the latest version available, namely Foundation 5.9 with AOS 10 and AHV 7!

The Foundation process starts flawlessly as expected and the process completes after a while:

As you can see, imaging a node with the Steamdeck is possible! Is it relevant? No certainty, but I can at least say that “I did it!”