A method to onboard a slave node to a high performance computing system that includes a fabric switch network that includes a fabric switch master and a group of slave nodes, wherein the fabric switch master is configured to route messages between slave nodes of the group comprising: receiving a fabric switch master address message, at an onboarding slave node, over an external network; providing an identification message, by the onboarding slave node, over the fabric switch network; receiving the identification message, at the fabric switch master, over the fabric switch network; providing the permission message, by the fabric switch master, over the fabric switch network; and receiving, a permission message, at the onboarding slave node, over the fabric switch network.