As as a service provider, you must perform the necessary steps to set up a VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension air-gapped environment, and create a local container registry for tenant users that contains the dependencies that VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension requires to operate.

Prerequisites

  • Ensure you have Docker engine or cli, and imgpkg installed on your local machine.
  • Ensure the VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension server, and the desired tenant data centers have access to the VMware Cloud Director public end point. This is necessary as the Bootstrap VM, Kubernetes Cloud Provider for VMware Cloud Director, Kubernetes Cluster API Provider for VMware Cloud Director, and Kubernetes Container Storage Interface driver for VMware Cloud Director make calls to it.
  • DNS server to resolve registry and VMware Cloud Director end point.
  • Provide a Local Container Registry URL for the Bootstrap VM and all other control plane or worker VM can pull images from. For more information, see Local Container Registry.
  • If the private registry is using self-signed certificates, update the Bootstrap VM and the Cluster Certificate section with the self-signed certificates. This step allows cluster virtual machines like Bootstrap VM and node VMs to trust the private registry. For more information, see Server Details.

    The following screenshot details the workflow to configure the container registry settings and certificates in Kubernetes Container Clusters plug-in for VMware Cloud Director:

    This screenshot details the container registry settings in the Kubernetes Container Cluster UI plug-in.
  • Ensure you have access to the Internet to download the VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension binaries from http://projects.registry.vmware.com to your local machine.

Procedure

  1. Open Docker, and run the following command to pull the getting-started_airgapped image from http://projects.registry.vmware.com.
    • For 4.2:
      docker pull projects.registry.vmware.com/vmware-cloud-director/getting-started-airgapped:v0.1.2
    • For 4.2.1:
      docker pull projects.registry.vmware.com/vmware-cloud-director/getting-started-airgapped:v0.1.3
    • For 4.2.2:
      docker pull projects.registry.vmware.com/vmware-cloud-director/getting-started-airgapped:v0.1.4
    • For 4.2.3:
      docker pull projects.registry.vmware.com/vmware-cloud-director/getting-started-airgapped:v0.1.5
  2. Expand the image to gain access to the scripts and create a local directory.
    • For 4.2:
      docker create --name "temp_container" projects.registry.vmware.com/vmware-cloud-director/getting-started-airgapped:v0.1.2
docker export "temp_container" -o temp_container.tar
docker container rm "temp_container"
mkdir -p temp_container_fs
tar xvf temp_container.tar -C temp_container_fs
cd ./temp_container_fs/src/artifact
    • For 4.2.1:
      docker create --name "temp_container" projects.registry.vmware.com/vmware-cloud-director/getting-started-airgapped:v0.1.3
docker export "temp_container" -o temp_container.tar
docker container rm "temp_container"
mkdir -p temp_container_fs
tar xvf temp_container.tar -C temp_container_fs
cd ./temp_container_fs/src/artifact
    • For 4.2.2:
      docker create --name "temp_container" projects.registry.vmware.com/vmware-cloud-director/getting-started-airgapped:v0.1.4
docker export "temp_container" -o temp_container.tar
docker container rm "temp_container"
mkdir -p temp_container_fs
tar xvf temp_container.tar -C temp_container_fs
cd ./temp_container_fs/src/artifact
    • For 4.2.3:
      docker create --name "temp_container" projects.registry.vmware.com/vmware-cloud-director/getting-started-airgapped:v0.1.5
docker export "temp_container" -o temp_container.tar
docker container rm "temp_container"
mkdir -p temp_container_fs
tar xvf temp_container.tar -C temp_container_fs
cd ./temp_container_fs/src/artifact
  3. In this directory, run the following script to publish the dependencies to an organization's local container registry. There is a strict dependency on the path of the registry as displayed below. 
    ./getting_started.sh "dependencies.txt" base.myregistry.company.com
    Note:
    • The default dependencies.txt inside the getting-started-airgapped image contains the complete list of containers that are necessary to use VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension in an air-gapped environment for the supported versions of Tanzu Kubernetes Grid. For supported versions of Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, see the Compatibility section.
    • You can edit the dependencies.txt file to customize what components you want to download. You can supress the processing of an air-gapped component by inserting a # in front of the corresponding line in dependencies.txt.
  4. It is necessary to upload Tanzu Core Packages from projects.registry.vmware.com to the local container registry. To do this, use the instructions from the appropriate Tanzu Kubernetes Grid release below.
  5. If Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 2.3.1, 2.4, and 2.5 clusters need to be created, it is necessary to upload the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 2.3.1, 2.4, and 2.5 CLI plugin to the registry path <registry_url>/tanzu_cli/plugins/plugin-inventory:latest. For detailed instructions, see Move the Tanzu CLI and CLI Plugins to Your Internet-Restricted Environment.
    Note: With VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension 4.2 and later, there is a strict dependency on the path where the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid images are uploaded.
    • If the registry base is base.myregistry.company.com, the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid content should be uploaded into base.myregistry.company.com/tkg.
    • If the registry base is base.myregistry.company.com, the VMware Cloud Director images should be uploaded into base.myregistry.company.com/vmware-cloud-director.
    • If the registry base is base.myregistry.company.com, the Tanzu CLI plugin for TKG 2.3.1, TKG 2.4, and TKG 2.5 should be uploaded into base.myregistry.company.com/tanzu_cli/plugins/plugin-inventory:latest.
    This implies that the sub-paths tkg, vmware-cloud-director and tanzu_cli must reside next to eachother.

Results

An air-gapped environment is now set up so the organization can use VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension without the requirement of Internet access with all the required resources in a local container registry.