Install in an Air-Gapped Cluster Environment#

For clusters where the head node does not have internet access, you need to install the ICE ClusterWare ™ software from a downloaded ISO file and include an argument pointing to a separate operating system ISO file when running the install script.

  1. Using a machine with an internet connection, download an ISO for the operating system (OS) you want to use for the DefaultImage from your distribution’s website or a mirror. For example, Rocky-9.5-x86_64-dvd.iso.

  2. Using a machine with an internet connection, download a pre-built ISO from the ClusterWare online repository.

    1. Log in to https://repo.ice.penguinsolutions.com/clusterware/<version>/.

    2. Navigate to your OS version /iso directory. For example, el9/iso/.

    3. Download the pre-built ISO file for your architecture. For example, clusterware-12.4.2-g0000.el9.x86_64.iso.

  3. Create a virtual machine to use as a head node. Be sure to bridge appropriate hypervisor network interfaces into the virtual machine to allow for PXE booting of the compute nodes. Install the OS using the downloaded OS ISO or an internal mirror of public repositories.

  4. Transfer the downloaded ISOs (OS ISO and pre-built ClusterWare ISO) to your head node.

  5. Mount the downloaded ClusterWare ISO on the head node. For example, in a directory called iso/.

  6. Construct a cluster.conf file appropriate for your cluster. See Execute the ICE ClusterWare Install Script for a description of the cluster.conf file.

  7. Run the ClusterWare install from the location where you mounted the ClusterWare ISO and use the --os-iso argument to point to the OS ISO. For example:

    ./iso/cw-install --config cluster.conf --os-iso Rocky-9.5-x86_64-dvd.iso

    Either of these arguments can be replaced with the word skip and that portion of the installation is skipped to allow for post install customization.

    • When using --config skip the installation does not load a cluster.conf file and therefore does not include a cluster network or any compute nodes. A cluster.conf file can be manually loaded via the cw-cluster-conf load command after installation is complete.

    • When executing the installation with --os-iso skip the installation does not call cw-add-boot-config to create the DefaultImage, DefaultBoot, or DefaultAttribs. This can be useful in air-gapped clusters that include a full mirror of the public installation repositories. After installation, you can create one or more repos and a single distro pointing to the mirror using the cw-clusterctl repos and cw-clusterctl distros commands. Then run the cw-add-boot-config --make-defaults command to create the DefaultImage, DefaultBoot, and DefaultAttribs.

Note

Multi-tenant clusters are not currently supported for air-gapped cluster environments. If you are interested in this functionality for your air-gapped cluster, contact Penguin Computing to discuss your requirements.