Preparing for offline (air-gapped) installation

If your cluster is not connected to the internet, you can complete a production installation of the IBM® z/OS Connect Server in your cluster by using a bastion host. 

zosConnect-3.0 Applies to zosConnect-3.0.

Overview

It is common in production to have a cluster that does not have internet access. In these cases, you can still install z/OS Connect Server in an air-gapped (otherwise known as offline or disconnected) environment. Unlike online installations, air-gapped installations require you to enable the z/OS Connect Operator Catalog to mimic a typical online installation by using images in your own registry.

The following diagram provides an overview of an air-gapped installation that uses a bastion host with a Red Hat® OpenShift® Container Platform cluster:

Image of an air-gapped installation that uses a bastion host with a Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform cluster. The flow starts with the bastion host fetching the image from the online image registry. The image is then pushed from the bastion host to the local image registry in the air-gapped environment where the configured Container Platform cluster can pull the image.

Bastion host uses Container Application Software for Enterprises (CASE) files to mirror content from a source to a target. CASE is a specification that defines metadata and structure for packaging, managing, and unpacking containerized applications.

You can store the product code and images to a bastion host and then transfer them to a local air-gapped network. Make sure that there is enough storage space on the bastion host for the images.

Bastion host - the local registry and the bastion host must each have at least 120 GB of storage space.

What is a bastion host

A bastion server is a device that has access to both the public internet and the local intranet where a local registry and Container Platform clusters are located. Examples of Container Platforms are Red Hat OpenShift and IBM z/OS Container Platform. Using the bastion server, you can replicate your images through the bastion server directly to the local, intranet registry behind the firewall.

From a high level, an air-gapped installation of z/OS Connect Server consists of five steps:
  • Set up your image registry access and mirroring environment (One-time action).
  • Set environment variables and download CASE files.
  • Mirror images on to your air-gapped environment.
  • Configure storage.
  • Install the z/OS Connect Server with the z/OS Connect Operator.