Managing clusters in a disconnected or air-gapped environment v23.42.0

In a security controlled environment where no direct connection to the Internet is allowed, it is necessary to provide all packages needed by TPA to complete the deployment. This can be done via a local-repo on each node in the cluster. TPA supports the addition of custom repositories on each node via a local-repo and the required packages can be downloaded using the download-packages command.

Preparation

Choose an internet connected machine where you can install TPA and follow the instructions below to either copy an existing cluster configuration or create a new cluster.

If you have an existing cluster in a disconnected environment, all you need on the internet connected host is the config.yml. Create a directory and copy that file into it then run tpaexec relink on that directory to generate the remaining files that would normally be created by tpaexec configure.

Alternatively, to create a new configuration for an environment where the target instances will not have network access, configure a new cluster with this option:

tpaexec configure --use-local-repo-only …

This will do everything that --enable-local-repo does, and disable the configuration for all other package repositories. On RedHat instances, this also includes disabling access to subscription-based services.

In an existing cluster, you can set use_local_repo_only: yes in config.yml:

cluster_vars:
    use_local_repo_only: yes

Note: that you do not need separate cluster configurations for internet connected and disconnected environments, the options below work in both.

More info on using local-repo for distributing packages

Downloading packages

On the internet connected machine, ensure that you have docker installed and run:

tpaexec download-packages cluster-dir --os <OS> --os-version <version>

See detailed description for the package downloader.

Copying packages to the target environment

The resulting repository will be contained in the cluster-dir/local-repo directory. This is a complete package repo for the target OS. Copy this directory, from the connected controller to the disconnected controller that will be used to deploy the cluster. Place the directory in the same place, beneath the cluster directory. TPA will then copy packages to the instances automatically when deploy is run.

Deploying in a disconnected environment

Ensure that the cluster config.yml has been configured as above in Preparation. Run tpaexec provision and deploy as you would normally.

Updating in a disconnected environment

You can use the upgrade command to perform updates in an air-gapped environment. Prior to running this command you must follow the steps below.

Updating local repository content with direct access to internet on TPA node

If the air-gapped environment has internet access, we can safely rely on tpaexec download-packages to download the new packages, check the download section to know its usage.

Updating local repository content without direct access to internet on TPA node

There are two ways of performing the updating an internet-disconnected local repository: Recreate the local repository manually following the correct steps depending on the distribution of your choice; or use --refresh-repository option in tpaexec download-packages after placing the new packages on the local repository. Check the documentation for more information (Docker must be available, alongside the corresponding Docker image to the TPA nodes cluster).

Once the changes are saved, we can execute tpaexec upgrade cluster-dir and the packages will be updated.