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Offline Installation of Kubeapps

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Pre-requisites
  3. Step 1. Download the Kubeapps chart
  4. Step 2. Mirror Kubeapps images
  5. Step 3. [Optional] Prepare an offline Package Repository
  6. Step 4. Install Kubeapps

Introduction

Kubeapps provides a cloud-native solution to browse, deploy and manage the lifecycle of applications on a Kubernetes cluster. It is a one-time install that gives you many important benefits, including the ability to:

  • browse and deploy packaged applications from public or private repositories
  • customize deployments through an intuitive user interface
  • upgrade, manage and delete the applications that are deployed in your Kubernetes cluster
  • expose an API to manage your package repositories and your applications

This guide explains in detail how to install Kubeapps in an air-gapped environment.

Pre-requisites

To be able to able to install Kubeapps without an Internet connection, it's necessary to:

  • Kubernetes cluster (air-gapped).
  • Pre-download the Kubeapps Helm chart.
  • Mirror Kubeapps images so they are accessible within the cluster.
  • [Optional] Have one or more offline Package Repositories.

Note: Internet connection is necessary at this point to download charts and images for an offline installation

Step 1. Download the Kubeapps chart

First, download the tarball containing the Kubeapps chart from the publicly available repository maintained by Bitnami.

helm pull --untar oci://registry-1.docker.io/bitnamicharts/kubeapps --version x.y.z
helm dep update ./kubeapps

Notice x.y.z must be replaced by the latest version of the Kubeapps chart available at the Bitnami Chart Repository

Step 2. Mirror Kubeapps images

To be able to install Kubeapps, it's necessary to either have a copy of all the images that Kubeapps requires in each node of the cluster or push these images to an internal Docker registry that Kubernetes can access. You can obtain the list of images by checking the values.yaml file of the chart. For example:

registry: docker.io
repository: bitnami/nginx
tag: 1.19.2-debian-10-r32

The list of images to download includes (could change in time):

  • bitnami/nginx
  • bitnami/kubeapps-dashboard
  • bitnami/kubeapps-apprepository-controller
  • bitnami/kubeapps-asset-syncer
  • bitnami/oauth2-proxy
  • bitnami/kubeapps-pinniped-proxy
  • bitnami/kubeapps-apis
  • bitnami/postgresql

For simplicity, in this guide, use a single-node cluster created with Kubernetes in Docker (kind), using a namespace called "kubeapps". In this environment, the images have to be pre-loaded: - first, pull the images (docker pull), - next load them into the cluster (kind load docker-image).

docker pull bitnami/nginx:1.19.2-debian-10-r32
kind load docker-image bitnami/nginx:1.19.2-debian-10-r32

Note: tags must be updated according to the version of the images in the values.yaml file

In case you are using a private Docker registry, you need to re-tag the images and push them:

docker pull bitnami/nginx:1.19.2-debian-10-r32
docker tag bitnami/nginx:1.19.2-debian-10-r32 REPO_URL/bitnami/nginx:1.19.2-debian-10-r32
docker push REPO_URL/bitnami/nginx:1.19.2-debian-10-r32

Follow the same process for every image present in the values file.

Step 3. [Optional] Prepare an offline Package Repository

By default, Kubeapps install the bitnami Package Repository. Since, to sync that repository, it's necessary to have an Internet connection, you will need to mirror it or create your repository (e.g. using Harbor) and configure it when installing Kubeapps.

For more information about how to create a private repository, follow this how-to guide.

Step 4. Install Kubeapps

Now that you have everything pre-loaded in your cluster, it's possible to install Kubeapps using the chart directory from the first step:

helm install kubeapps [OPTIONS] ./kubeapps

NOTE: If during step 2), you were using a private docker registry, it's necessary to modify the global value used for the registry. This can be set by specifying --set global.imageRegistry=REPO_URL. If this registry, additionally, needs an ImagePullSecret, specify it with --set global.imagePullSecrets[0]=SECRET_NAME.