Deployment on Kubernetes without Internet Connection

Owned by Christoph Bergner
Last updated: Oct 17, 2024 by Rene Beckert
6 min read

In some situations, the Smartfacts server has no access to the internet. In this case, it is not possible to download the needed software and images. This article describes which options we have to install Smartfacts in such scenarios.

Content

Preparations

If not done so far please prepare your infrastructure as described in Installing Smartfacts for Proof of Concepts | Prepare your infrastructure.

Setup the Kubernetes Environment

Download the software

Copy the files to the server

  • Create a new directory “download” in your home directory

  • Create a new directory “software” under “download”

  • Copy all downloaded files to ~/download/software
    After copying all files, the file structure should look like this:

    download └── software ├── helm-v3.10.3-linux-amd64.tar.gz ├── install.sh ├── install_airgapped_software.sh ├── k3s └── k3s-airgap-images-amd64.tar.gz

Execute the installation script

In the directory ~/download/software make the install script executeable and execute it:

chmod u+x install_airgapped_software.sh ./install_airgapped_software.sh

Download the Smartfacts Helm Chart

  • Log into the Smartfacts Chart Registry using the credentials provided and download the latest chart version that does not contain the postfix “-dev”.

  • Copy the downloaded helm chart to your home directory on the Smartfacts server

  • Extract the helm chart using the command

    tar -xf smartfacts-*.tgz

Create the deployment configuration

Provide Certificates and Key as Base64 String

The Prerequisite is: The complete certificate chain is available in a file as base64-encoded x509 certificates. The certificates are contained in the file in the correct order (server certificate at the top, root certificate at the bottom). See Section “Certificates” above in this article.

Save the certificate chain as a base64-encoded string:

Save certificate key as a base64-encoded string:

Customize Values File

  • Change to the home directory of your user on the server and create a new text file values.yaml with the following content:

  • Replace the value of the property domain with your domain name

  • Replace the placeholder of the property crtFullChain with the content of the file chain.crt.base64

  • Replace the placeholder of the property key with the content of the key.base64 file

  • Save the file values.yaml

Provide the container images

The Kubernetes environment at the Smartfacts server must have access to the Smartfacts container images.

The recommended way to gain access to the container images is to add the Smartfacts registry https://repo.mid.de to an existing container registry in your organisation that has access to the internet. This registry serves as a proxy registry so that the Smartfacts server can load the images through this proxy registry. Follow the instructions in the section Provide container images with a proxy container registry if you can use a proxy registry.

If it is not possible to use a proxy registry, the container images can be loaded directly into the container service of the Smartfacts server. To do this, follow the instructions in the section Provide container images without a container registry.

Provide Container Images with a Proxy Container Registry

Please contact your administrators to add the Smartfacts registry https://repo.mid.de to the proxy registry.

Add login data to the proxy registry

To connect to your proxy registry, you will need to add the proxy registry login information to your values.yaml file.

To do this, replace the placeholder in the following text and insert it into a file called “registrylogin.txt” on the Smartfacts server.

  • Replace the placehoder <proxy registry name> with the name of your proxy registry without protocol (e.g. write “repo.yourcompany.com”, not “https://repo.yourcompany.com”)

  • Replace the value of the fields “username” and “password” with the login data for your proxy registry

  • Save the file under the name “registrylogin.txt”

  • convert the login information to a base64-encoded string

  • In the file “values.yaml” add a new line below the line beginning with “instance” with the content

    • Replace the placehoder “<content of file registrylogin.txt>“ with the content of the file “registrylogin.base64”

    • Make sure that the indentation at the beginning of the line is exactly the same as in the line above

  • delet the files “registrylogin.txt” and “registrylogin.base64”

Provide container images without a container registry

In this scenario you will download the container images manually and copy it to the server.

  • Call up the web page for downloading the container images. The link to the web page contains the chart version. It has the following format:
    https://cp.mid.de/releases/smartfacts-air-gapped/smartfacts_air_gapped_<HELM_CHART_VERSION>.html

    • Make sure to replace the placeholder <HELM_CHART_VERSION> with the version of the helm chart you downloaded. You should now see the download page.

  • Download all files to your client PC

  • Create a new directory ~/download/smartfacts on the Smartfacts server

  • Copy the downloaded files to ~/download/smartfacts on the Smartfacts server

  • Download the script to load the images from https://cp.mid.de/releases/smartfacts-air-gapped/loadimages.sh and copy it to ~/download/smartfacts on the Smartfacts server

Load the container images into k3s

On the Smartfacts server

  • Change into the directory ~/download/smartfacts

  • Make the script “loadimages.sh” executeable and execute it

The script checks wether all files are present and correct. If this is the case, it will load the container images from the files. To save disk space, you can delete the image- and sha256-files the directory after loading.

You can view the loaded images with the following command.

Install Smartfacts

Execute the Installation

In the user's home directory, enter the following command to execute the Installation:

Watch Deployment events (in a new Session)

Open a second session on the server and enter the following command:

Enter the following command to show the URLs (please make sure to prefix it with “https://” in your browser):

Prepare the Smartfacs Model Warehouse

A note on Smartfacts PoC Test Users

For the Smartfacts PoC you can use the generated test users “poc1”…”poc50”. All poc-users have the same password “poc”. For managing the test users in the CAMP use the account administrator user “acm” which has the password “acm”.

Setting-Up the CAMP (Customer Accounts for MID Products)

This section is used to add the users who will be authorized to use the instance and to assign the licenses. When you open https://camp.<yoursmartfactsdomain>, and log in with the user “acm” (password “acm”) you will be taken to this page:

  1. In section 1, upload the license file MID has provided in step 4 by clicking the  upload button in the upper right-hand corner and by selecting the license file.

  2. In section 2, set an account name.

  3. In section 3, synchronize the users from OpenLDAP to CAMP by clicking UPDATE USERS AND GROUPS.

  4. Assign licenses to users and groups in the CAMP.

    Check all users and/or groups that should have a license and assign licenses by clicking ASSIGN LICENSES.

The creation of the account is now complete and licenses are assigned to the users.

Create a Smartfacts Model Warehouse

  1. Open the Smartfacts URL in your browser: https://smartfacts.<yoursmartfactsdomain> and log-in with the account manager credentials (user “acm”, password “acm”).

  2. You will now be asked to create a Model Warehouse.

    1. Click on CREATE A NEW MODEL WAREHOUSE.

    2. In the create dialog, first select the previously created account.

    3. Provide a name for the Model Warehouse.

    4. Optionally, activate the check box Create Demo Models if you want some demo content to be added to the Model Warehouse.

Model Warehouse creation is the final step in the Smartfacts platform set-up process.

Install the Plug-Ins

It depends on which tools you want to use in connection with Smartfacts. Smartfacts provides a plug-in for every tool which is supported. You can download the plug-ins from the main menu via the command Get Plug-ins.

Troubleshooting

Display events

If the deployments don`t get healthy, you can display the event messages of the installation:

These events show some common error conditions (e.g. Images are not found; insufficient ressources)

How to Move k3s data to another partition or disk