Skip to main content

Deploy vCluster in an air-gapped environment using a private web server

Supported Configurations
Running the control plane as a container with:

For installing vCluster Standalone or Private Nodes in air-gapped environments, follow these tutorials:

The standard method for installing vCluster is using Helm with the LoftLabs charts repository. For air-gapped environments without internet access, you'll need to host the Helm chart locally. This guide demonstrates how to use a private GitLab instance as a web server to host the vCluster Helm chart.

Prerequisites​

  • A web server accessible through HTTP or HTTPS to store the Helm chart and index.yaml
  • A private GitLab instance (used in this example)
  • A machine with internet access that has the Helm CLI installed

Procedure​

Download and host the Helm chart​

  1. Add and update the Loft Helm repository on a machine with internet access:

    helm repo add loft https://charts.loft.sh
    helm repo update

  2. Download the Helm chart to your local disk:

    helm pull loft/vcluster --version 0.23.0

  3. Store the chart on your web server:

    git clone <gitlab-repo-url>
    cd <gitlab-repo>
    mkdir vcluster
    mv vcluster-0.23.0.tgz vcluster/

  4. Create an index.yaml file and push it to the GitLab repository:

    helm repo index vcluster --url https://your-private-server.com/your-username/your-private-project/path-to-vcluster-chart
    git add -A
    git commit -m "Add vCluster Helm chart"
    git push
    note

    Ensure the URL you specify points to the location where vcluster-0.23.0.tgz can be accessible to the target cluster.

Deploy vCluster using the private Helm chart​

After hosting the chart, deploy vCluster using either the Helm CLI or the vCluster platform

Use the Helm CLI​

helm upgrade --install my-vcluster vcluster \
  --values vcluster.yaml \
  --repo https://your-private-server.com/your-username/your-private-project/path-to-vcluster-chart-directory \
  --version 0.23.0 \
  --namespace my-namespace \
  --repository-config=''

Use the platform​

You can specify the private repository in your vCluster configuration:

Use a template​
kind: VirtualClusterTemplate
apiVersion: management.loft.sh/v1
metadata:
  name: my-template
spec:
  template:
    helmRelease:
      chart:
        repo: https://your-private-server.com/your-username/your-private-project/path-to-vcluster-chart-directory
        version: 0.23.0
Use directly in the VirtualClusterInstance CRD​
kind: VirtualClusterInstance
apiVersion: management.loft.sh/v1
metadata:
  name: my-vcluster
spec:
  template:
    helmRelease:
      chart:
        repo: https://your-private-server.com/your-username/your-private-project/path-to-vcluster-chart-directory
        version: 0.23.0

After creating the configuration, verify the deployment by creating the virtual cluster through the platform UI.