Air-gapped clusters

During installation, Portworx fetches required images and packages from the internet. If you’re installing Portworx onto an air-gapped cluster, you’ll need to perform extra steps to make these resources available.

To fetch required container images, you can download them through a bootstrap script and upload them to either an internal container repository or directly to your cluster nodes.

To fetch required services, such as the NFS service used with the sharedv4 feature, you can do one of the following:

Download and run a package repository container which contains the needed packages
Specify an HTTP proxy
Disable sharedv4 support, removing the service dependency entirely
Preinstall and maintain the required services manually

The steps in this document walk you through the process of installing Portworx and its required packages and images into an air-gapped environment. Once you’ve loaded the Portworx images and, if necessary, installed the packages, you will continue with the spec-based installation procedure.

Install images

Step 1: Export variables

Export your Kubernetes version by entering the following command:
```
KBVER=$(kubectl version --short | awk -F'[v+_-]' '/Server Version: / {print $3}')
```
If the current node doesn’t have kubectl installed, you can set the KBVER variable manually by running export KBVER=<YOUR_KUBERNETES_VERSION>. For example, if your Kubernetes version is 1.19.3, run the following command:
```
KBVER=1.19.3
```
Export the Portworx version you want to install
```
PXVER=2.6.0
```

Step 2: Copy the Portworx version manifest

Skip these steps if you are not using the Portworx Operator.

Download the version manifest

curl -o versions https://install.portworx.com/$PXVER/version

Store the version manifest

Create a ConfigMap from the downloaded version manifest. The ConfigMap must be created in the same namespace as your StorageCluster object.
```
kubectl -n <cluster-namespace> create configmap px-versions --from-file=versions
```

Step 3: Download the air-gapped bootstrap script

Download the air-gapped-install bootstrap script by entering the following curl command:

curl -o px-ag-install.sh -L "https://install.portworx.com/$PXVER/air-gapped?kbver=$KBVER"

Step 4: Pull the container images

Pull the container images by running the px-ag-install script with the pull option:

sh px-ag-install.sh pull

Step 5: Make container images available to your nodes

There are two ways in which you can make the Portworx container images available to your nodes:

Follow Step 5a if your company uses a private container registry
Otherwise, follow Step 5b to push directly to your nodes

Step 5a: Push to a local registry server, accessible by the air-gapped nodes

NOTE: For details about how you can use a private registry, see the Using a Private Registry section of the Kubernetes documentation.

Push the images to the registry by running the px-ag-install script with the push option and your registry location:
```
sh px-ag-install.sh push <YOUR_REGISTRY_LOCATION>
```
For example:
```
sh px-ag-install.sh push myregistry.net:5443
```
alternatively, you can put all images in the same repository:
```
sh px-ag-install.sh push myregistry.net:5443/px-images
```
When you install Portworx, specify your custom registry in the Customize section of the spec generator:

Step 5b: Push directly to your nodes

Load container images onto your nodes individually by running the px-ag-install script with the load option and your intranet host locations:

sh px-ag-install.sh load <intranet-host> [<host2> <host3>...]

For <intranet-host>, use the hostname or IP-address of your node.

NOTE:

The command above uses ssh to load the images on the nodes on intranet. You can customize or replace the ssh command with the -e command switch. For example, px-ag-install.sh -e "sshpass -p 5ecr3t ssh -l root" uses the sshpass(1) command to automatically pass root’s password when logging into the intranet host.
If you’re using this method, you can specify Image Pull Policy as IfNotPresent or Never on the “Registry and Image Settings” page when generating the Portworx spec.

Install NFS packages

Your host systems require the NFS service in order for Portworx to use the sharedv4 feature. Depending on your needs, you can manage this requirement in one of the following ways:

If your host-systems can install NFS packages, no further actions are required. Portworx will automatically install the NFS packages on the host system.
If you have an HTTP proxy available:
- you can configure your host to use the HTTP proxy system-wide, or configure the package management to use the HTTP proxy.
- Alternatively, you can pass the HTTP proxy to Portworx via the PX_HTTP_PROXY environment variable when generating an installation spec.
If you don’t need sharedv4 support, disable it by providing the -disable-sharedv4 parameter to Portworx during installation.

Install the NFS packages either manually or using a package repository container that Portworx provides.

NOTE: If you plan on installing the NFS packages manually, do so now:

Linux distribution	Install command
RedHat, Fedora, AmazonV2	yum install -y nfs-utils rpcbind
OpenSuSE, SLES	zypper install -y nfs-utils rpcbind nfs-kernel-server
Ubuntu, Debian	apt-get install -yq dbus nfs-common rpcbind nfs-kernel-server
CoreOS, Flatcar	none (packages already pre-installed)

Install NFS packages using the Portworx package repository

If you’re installing NFS packages manually, disabling sharedv4 support, or using HTTP proxy, skip this step.

To make NFS packages installations easier on air-gapped environments, Portworx, Inc. provides an all-in-one package repository, delivered as a docker container. Currently, the container includes package repositories for the following Linux distributions:

CentOS 7 and 8,
RedHat Enterprise Linux 7 and 8,
Ubuntu 16.04 (xenial), 18.04 (bionic), 20.04 (focal) LTS, and
Debian 8 (jessie), 9 (stretch), 10 (buster)

Deploy the package repository either as a standalone service in Docker, or onto your Kubernetes cluster:

Start the repository container as a standalone service in Docker by entering the following docker run command:
```
docker run -p 8080:8080 docker.io/portworx/px-repo:1.0.0
```

Deploy the repository container into your Kubernetes cluster by entering the following kubectl commands:

kubectl create deployment px-repo --image=docker.io/portworx/px-repo:1.0.0
kubectl get pods -l app=px-repo -o wide
# expose px-repo deployment, to enable access to host-systems
kubectl expose deployment px-repo --name=px-repo-service --type=LoadBalancer --port 80 --target-port 8080
kubectl get service px-repo-service

Using a browser within your air-gapped environment, navigate to the service’s URL (e.g. http://my-package-repo-host:8080), and follow the instructions provided by the container to configure your hosts to use the package repository service, and install missing NFS packages:

Install Portworx

In this section, you’ll create an install spec using the spec generator. By now, you should have completed the following tasks from the previous sections:

Loaded the Portworx images into your registry or nodes.
If you chose to, installed the packages either manually or using the package repository.

Manage NFS requirements

If you installed your NFS packages already, skip this step. If you intend to use HTTP proxy to install packages or disable sharedv4 support, specify one these options when you create the install spec:

Specify the PX_HTTP_PROXY environment variable

Specify the PX_HTTP_PROXY variable in the environment variables tab of the spec generator to define the HTTP proxy for the Portworx installation, including the automated installation of the NFS packages and kernel modules on the host:

screen capture of PX_HTTP_PROXY on the spec generator

Disable sharedv4 support

Append the &misc=-disable-sharedv4 parameter to the end of the URL created by the spec generator. For example, the following output kubectl command:

kubectl apply -f 'https://install.portworx.com/2.5?mc=false&kbver=1.19.3&b=true&c=px-cluster-0f123456-a12b-345c-678d-e90f1ab234c2&stork=true&st=k8s'

becomes:

kubectl apply -f 'https://install.portworx.com/2.5?mc=false&kbver=1.19.3&b=true&c=px-cluster-0f123456-a12b-345c-678d-e90f1ab234c22&stork=true&st=k8s&misc=-disable-sharedv4'

Create an install spec

Using the Portworx spec generator, create an install spec, making sure to enable sharedV4 support and specify the PX_HTTP_PROXY environment variable if you need to.

Refer to the following installation topics for more installation information:

Air-gapped install bootstrap script reference

./px-ag-install.sh [image-commands] [options] '[arguments...]'

NOTE: The script name px-ag-install.sh reflects the default name specified in the installation instructions, but can be whatever you named the script file when you downloaded it.

Image commands

Command	Description	Required?
`pull`	Pulls the Portworx container images locally
`push <registry[/repo]>`	Pushes the Portworx images into remote container registry server
`load node1 [node2 [...]]`	Loads the images tarball to remote nodes (note: ssh-access required)

Options

Option	Description	Required?
`--help`	Displays help output
`-I`, `--include <image>`	Specify additional images to include
`-E`, `--exclude <glob>`	Specify images to EXCLUDE (e.g. -E ‘csi’)
`-n`, `--dry-run`	Show commands instead of running
`-V`, `--version`	Print version of the script
`-v`	Verbose output

Load-specific options

Option	Description	Required?
`-e`, `--rsh <command>`	specify the remote shell to use (default ssh)
`-L`, `--load-cmd <command>`	specify the remote container-load command to use (default auto)
`-t <prefix>`	specify temporary tarball filename (default px-agtmp.tar)
`--pks`	assume PKS environment; transfer images using ‘bosh’ command

Examples

Pull images from default container registries, push them to custom registry server (default repositories)
```
px-ag-install.sh pull push your-registry.company.com:5000
```
Pull images from default container registries, push them to custom registry server and portworx repository
```
px-ag-install.sh pull
px-ag-install.sh push your-registry.company.com:5000/portworx
```

Push images to password-protected remote registry, then import docker/podman configuration as kuberentes secret

docker login your-registry.company.com:5000
px-ag-install.sh pull
px-ag-install.sh push your-registry.company.com:5000/portworx
px-ag-install.sh import-secrets

Pull images, then load to given nodes using ssh

px-ag-install.sh pull
px-ag-install.sh load node1 node2 node33 node444

Pull images, then load to given nodes using ssh and root-account

px-ag-install.sh -e "ssh -l root" pull load node1 node2 node33 node444

Load images to given nodes using ssh and password ‘5ecr3t’

px-ag-install.sh -e "sshpass -p 5ecr3t ssh" load node1 node2 node33 node444

Pull ONLY busybox image, load it to given nodes

px-ag-install.sh -E '*' -I docker.io/busybox:latest pull load node1 node2 node33 node444