Preparing your cluster for an air-gapped (offline) deployment on OCP

If your cluster is not connected to the internet, you can install FileNet® Content Manager in an air-gap environment with the IBM Catalog Management Plug-in. Use either a bastion host, or a portable compute/storage device to transfer the images to your air-gap environment.

About this task

The IBM Catalog Management Plug-in or ibm-pak for short, uses standard tooling for registry and cluster access. A CASE (Container Application Software for Enterprise) package specifies the composition of the product and the images that must be copied into an air-gapped environment.

The following diagram shows the steps that are involved in installing with an air-gap environment on OCP.

Installation with an air gap environment
Important: When you install an air-gap, you do not need to complete the instructions in Option 1: Installing an online deployment.

It is common in production to have a cluster that cannot access the internet. In these cases, you can still install FileNet Content Manager and OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) in an air-gapped (otherwise known as offline or disconnected) environment. An air-gapped installation uses the IBM operator catalog to mimic a typical online installation except that the images are in your own registry. You can use a bastion host or a compute device (like a laptop), with or without portable storage (like an external hard disk drive) to transfer the images to an air-gapped network.

All of these scenarios use 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.

The following diagram provides an overview of the air-gapped installation options.

Air gap scenarios

What to do next

Use the following steps to prepare your air-gapped installation. Follow the steps in order and use the What to do next sections to help you move to the next step.