Install in an air-gapped environment

This guide describes how to install Charmed Kubeflow (CKF) in an air-gapped environment. An air-gapped environment is one that does not have internet access.

Requirements

Your environment should meet the following criteria:

  • A Kubernetes (K8s) cluster is running.
  • A container registry such as Artifactory is reachable from the K8s cluster over HTTPS.

MicroK8s DNS

If you are using MicroK8s, the DNS add-on should be configured to the host’s local nameserver. This can be done as follows:

microk8s enable dns:$(resolvectl status | grep "Current DNS Server" | awk '{print $NF}')

Process outline

  1. Artefact Generation
  2. Set up an air-gapped environment with a K8s cluster and HTTPS-enabled registry.
  3. Extract and load the images from images.tar.gz into their container registry.
  4. Extract all charms from charms.tar.gz.
  5. Setup Juju in the air-gapped cluster.
  6. Deploy CKF.

Artefact generation

The following artifacts must be generated: images.tar.gz, charms.tar.gz. To generate those tarballs you’ll need to utilise our helper scripts that scan a CKF release and gather all the charm and images files.

Clone the bundle-kubeflow repository:

git clone https://github.com/canonical/bundle-kubeflow.git

Change directory to the Airgap utility scripts one:

cd bundle-kubeflow/scripts/airgapped

Install the pre-requisites of the utility scripts:

pip3 install -r requirements.txt
sudo apt install pigz
sudo snap install docker
sudo snap install yq
sudo snap install jq

Get a list of all the images for the CKF bundle you are deploying. For example, to get the list of images for Charmed Kubeflow 1.8:

./scripts/airgapped/get-all-images.sh releases/1.8/stable/kubeflow/bundle.yaml > images.txt

Pull the images to your docker cache using the save-images-to-cache.py script:

python3 scripts/airgapped/save-images-to-cache.py images.txt

Rename the images in the docker cache to have the URL of the registry in your air-gapped envrionment:

python3 scripts/airgapped/retag-images-to-cache.py --new-registry=<your air-gap registry> images.txt

Save the images to images.tar.gz:

python3 scripts/airgapped/save-images-to-tar.py retagged-images.txt

Save the charms to charms.tar.gz:

BUNDLE_PATH=releases/1.8/stable/kubeflow/bundle.yaml

python3 scripts/airgapped/save-charms-to-tar.py $BUNDLE_PATH

Extracting artefacts

Both charms and OCI images must be extracted. Charms are extracted to the same machine as the Juju client. OCI images are pushed to the private container registry running in their air-gapped environment.

  1. Move charms.tar.gz to the air-gapped machine, then extract it to ~/charms directory. This directory will be used in the deployment step:

    mkdir charms
tar -xzvf charms.tar.gz --directory charms

  2. Move retagged-images.txt generated in the previous step to the air-gapped machine under the $HOME directory. This is also needed for the deployment step.

  3. Move images.tar.gz to the air-gapped machine, then load the images into the private registry. Here’s an example:

    # Extract the images from tar
mkdir images
tar -xzvf images.tar.gz --directory images
rm images.tar.gz

# Load the images into intermediate Docker client
for img in images/*.tar; do docker load < \$img && rm \$img; done
rmdir images

# Push the images from local docker to Registry
python3 scripts/airgapped/push-images-to-registry.py retagged-images.txt

Additionally you need to import the charms’ ubuntu base images to your private registry. The images are: docker.io/jujusolutions/charm-base:ubuntu-20.04 docker.io/jujusolutions/charm-base:ubuntu-22.04

Setup Juju

See Juju airgapped for details.

Deploying Kubeflow

To deploy Kubeflow, use our Air-gapped deployment script.

The script assumes the following:

  • a retagged-images.txt file exists in the home directory of you air-gapped machine. It contains a list of all the images needed for Charmed Kubeflow, where each image is defined with the air-gapped registry. Here’s a sample of retagged-images.txt:
    # retagged-images.txt
172.17.0.2:5000/argoproj/argocli:v3.3.10
172.17.0.2:5000/argoproj/workflow-controller:v3.3.10
172.17.0.2:5000/charmedkubeflow/api-server:2.0.5-63c48d5
172.17.0.2:5000/charmedkubeflow/argoexec:3.3.10-c88862f
172.17.0.2:5000/charmedkubeflow/dex:2.36.0-f262d95

In the example above, the air-gapped registry is 172.17.0.2:5000.

  • a charms directory exists in the home directory of your air-gapped machine. It contains all the charm files to be deployed in Charmed Kubeflow. Here’s a sample of ~/charms directory:
    ls ~/charms
admission-webhook_r301.charm   jupyter-ui_r858.charm           kfp-profile-controller_r1278.charm  knative-serving_r354.charm          minio_r278.charm               tensorboard-controller_r257.charm
argo-controller_r424.charm     katib-controller_r446.charm     kfp-schedwf_r1302.charm             kserve-controller_r523.charm        mlmd_r127.charm                tensorboards-web-app_r245.charm
dex-auth_r422.charm            katib-db-manager_r411.charm     kfp-ui_r1285.charm                  kubeflow-dashboard_r454.charm       mysql-k8s_r127.charm           training-operator_r347.charm
envoy_r194.charm               katib-ui_r422.charm             kfp-viewer_r1317.charm              kubeflow-profiles_r355.charm        oidc-gatekeeper_r350.charm
istio-gateway_r723.charm       kfp-api_r1283.charm             kfp-viz_r1235.charm                 kubeflow-roles_r187.charm           pvcviewer-operator_r30.charm
istio-pilot_r827.charm         kfp-metadata-writer_r334.charm  knative-eventing_r353.charm         kubeflow-volumes_r260.charm         resource-dispatcher_r93.charm
jupyter-controller_r849.charm  kfp-persistence_r1291.charm     knative-operator_r328.charm         metacontroller-operator_r252.charm  seldon-core_r664.charm

Once you meet the requirements above, you can add the kubeflow model and run the deploy script:

juju add-model kubeflow
  
bash deploy-1.8.sh

Gateway service type

In deploy-1.8.sh script, the gateway_service_type for the Istio Gateway configuration is set to LoadBalancer. However, if you don’t have a load balancer within your cluster, you can configure the service to NodePort by adding --config gateway_service_type="NodePort" to the istio-ingressgateway deploy command. The changes in the deploy-1.8.sh script are as follows:

-juju deploy --trust --debug ./$(charm istio-gateway) istio-ingressgateway --config kind=ingress --config proxy-image=$(img istio/proxyv2)
+juju deploy --trust --debug ./$(charm istio-gateway) istio-ingressgateway --config kind=ingress --config proxy-image=$(img istio/proxyv2) --config gateway_service_type="NodePort"

Example

Every setup may be different depending on the K8s choice (Charmed K8s, EKS, GKE, AKS, microK8s, etc.), cloud provider (GCP, AWS, Azure etc.) and container registry (Docker, Artifactory etc.).

Air-gapped environment setup

In this example, the air-gapped setup is as follows:

  • MicroK8s runs inside a single node VM.
  • The VM has cut-off internet connection (default Gateway has been removed).
  • The Docker daemon is running on the VM, alongside MicroK8s, and the Docker CLI is available to those logged into the VM.
  • A Docker registry is deployed as a container inside that VM (not inside Microk8s cluster). See Deploying a Registry Server from Docker documentation.
  • The Docker registry has HTTPS enabled, using a TLS cert that we created, with domain air-gapped.registry.com.
  • The VM has been configured to trust our TLS cert for HTTPS traffic and recognise the domain name for our registry.
  • The MicroK8s cluster can reach the Docker registry container via its domain name air-gapped.registry.com, to fetch images.

Extract and load images

It is up to you how to extract and load the images provided to them in images.tar.gz. This example just focuses on how the process might look for one image. Within the overall tarball, there will be a sub-tarball per image. For example, the tarball jupyter-web-app.tar will contain the jupyter-web-app image.

The extraction process might look like this:

  1. The main archive is extracted to retrieve all the sub-tarballs: tar -xzvf images.tar.gz. Inside this extracted archive will be jupyter-web-app.tar.
  2. docker load < jupyter-web-app.tar - this will pull the image from the tarball into Docker.
  3. The image pulled will have the default name assigned to it in production: docker.io/kubeflownotebookswg/jupyter-web-app:v1.8.0. Note that this image name implies that it lives in the docker.io public registry.
  4. A new name is given to the image to specify its new home in our air-gapped registry: docker tag docker.io/kubeflownotebookswg/jupyter-web-app:v1.8.0 air-gapped.registry.com/kubeflownotebookswg/jupyter-web-app:v1.8.0. Note: At this point there should be 2 names for the same image, in the docker cache, as can be seen with docker image ls.
  5. The image is pushed to the air-gapped registry with docker push air-gapped.registry.com/kubeflownotebookswg/jupyter-web-app:v1.8.0.

A similar process would then be followed for all images. The new names of the images, as they appear in the air-gapped registry, should be noted, as they will be needed in the bundle configuration step.

Last updated a day ago.

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