Air-Gapped Install

For environments that are connected to the Internet, one needs access to three repositories to install Veeam Kasten:

The Helm repository that contains the Veeam Kasten chart
The container registry that contains the Veeam Kasten container images
Upstream repositories to install Veeam Kasten dependencies (e.g., Prometheus)

However, if an air-gapped installation is required, it is possible to use your own private container registry to install Veeam Kasten. While this can always be done manually, the k10tools image command makes it easier to automate the process.

Air-Gapped Veeam Kasten Installation 

If the Veeam Kasten container images are already available in a private repository, the below instructions can be used to install in an air-gapped environment. If needed, support for uploading images to a private image registry is documented below.

Fetching the Helm Chart for Local Use 

To fetch the most recent Veeam Kasten Helm chart for local use, run the following command to pull the latest Veeam Kasten chart as a compressed tarball (.tgz) file into the working directory.

$ helm repo update && \
    helm fetch kasten/k10

If you need to fetch a specific version, please run the following command:

$ helm repo update && \
    helm fetch kasten/k10 --version=<k10-version>

Installing Veeam Kasten with Local Helm Chart and Container Images 

If the Veeam Kasten container images were uploaded to a registry at repo.example.com, an air-gapped installation can be performed by setting global.airgapped.repository=repo.example.com as shown in the below command:

$ kubectl create namespace kasten-io
$ helm install k10 k10-7.5.2.tgz --namespace kasten-io \
    --set global.airgapped.repository=repo.example.com

Installing Veeam Kasten with Disconnected OpenShift Operator 

To install Veeam Kasten with an OpenShift operator in an air-gapped cluster, follow the steps under offline operator install.

Running Veeam Kasten Within a Local Network 

To run Veeam Kasten in a network without the ability to connect to the internet, Veeam Kasten needs to be installed in an air-gapped mode with the helm value metering.mode=airgap as shown in the command below:

$ kubectl create namespace kasten-io
$ helm install k10 k10-7.5.2.tgz --namespace kasten-io \
    --set metering.mode=airgap

Note

If metering.mode=airgap is not set in an offline cluster, some functionality will be disabled. A message warning that Veeam Kasten is "Unable to validate license" will be displayed in the web based user interface. Errors containing messages "Could not get google bucket for metrics", "License check failed" and "Unable to validate license" will be logged.

If the metering service is unable to connect to the internet for 24 hours, the metering service will restart.

Providing Credentials if Local Container Repository is Private 

If the local repository that has been provided as the value of global.airgapped.repository is private, credentials for that repository can be provided using secrets.dockerConfig and global.imagePullSecret flags, as below, with the helm install command.

--set secrets.dockerConfig=$(base64 -w 0 < ${HOME}/.docker/config.json) \
--set global.imagePullSecret="k10-ecr"

Note

Our Helm chart creates a secret with the name k10-ecr with the value that has been provided for secrets.dockerConfig. That's why we are providing secret name k10-ecr as value of global.imagePullSecret.

Preparing Veeam Kasten Container Images for Air-Gapped Use 

There are multiple ways to use a private repository including setting up a caching or proxy image registry that points to the Veeam Kasten image repositories using tools such as JFrog Artifactory. However, if images need to be manually uploaded or an automated upload pipeline is required to add Veeam Kasten images into your private repository, the following documentation should help.

To see all available commands and flags for running k10tools image please run the following:

$ docker run --rm gcr.io/kasten-images/k10tools:7.5.2 image --help

The following commands operate against the latest version of Veeam Kasten (7.5.2).

Warning

k10tools image is only supported for versions 7.5.0+ of Veeam Kasten and must match the version you're installing.

For older version, please refer to their documentation: https://docs.kasten.io/<version>/install/offline.html.

List Veeam Kasten Container Images 

The following command will list all images used by the current Veeam Kasten version (7.5.2). This can be helpful if there is a requirement to tag and push Veeam Kasten images into your private repository manually instead of using the Kasten provided tool documented below.

$ docker run --rm gcr.io/kasten-images/k10tools:7.5.2 image list

Copy Kasten Images into a Private Repository 

The following command will copy the Veeam Kasten container images into your specified registry. If the destination image tag should be different than the Veeam Kasten version, then the --dst-image-tag can be used to specify a new image tag.

The following example uses a repository located at repo.example.com.

$ docker run --rm -v $HOME/.docker:/home/kio/.docker gcr.io/kasten-images/k10tools:7.5.2 image copy --dst-registry repo.example.com

Note

This command will use your local docker config if the private registry requires authentication.

The credsStore field in the $HOME/.docker/config.json is used to specify the credential store. This is typically an external credential store requiring an external helper and it may not be usable from within the docker container. Please refer to the docker documentation for more information.

Alternatively, k10tools image provides authentication mechanisms such as passing a username and password (--dst-username and --dst-password flags) or a bearer token (--dst-token flag). Please refer to the help flag for more information.

After running the previous command, use the instructions above to install Veeam Kasten via images uploaded to repo.example.com.

Copy Kasten Images to/from a Filesystem Directory 

Network limitations may limit the ability to directly copy images into a private repository. Alternatively, images can be copied to the local filesystem and then pushed to a repository separately. This requires downloading the k10tools binary.

The following example copies the images to a directory images. This directory can then be used to upload to a private repository located at repo.example.com.

$ k10tools image copy --dst-path images

$ k10tools image copy --src-path images --dst-registry repo.example.com

Using Iron Bank Veeam Kasten Container Images 

If you want to use the Iron Bank hardened Veeam Kasten images in an air-gapped environment, execute the above commands but replace image with ironbank image:

$ docker run --rm gcr.io/kasten-images/k10tools:7.5.2 ironbank image list
$ docker run --rm -v $HOME/.docker:/home/kio/.docker gcr.io/kasten-images/k10tools:7.5.2 ironbank image copy --dst-registry repo.example.com

This ensures the images are pulled from Registry1.

Warning

You must be logged in to the docker registry locally for this process to function correctly. Use docker login registry1.dso.mil --username "${REGISTRY1_USERNAME}" --password-stdin with your Registry1 CLI secret as the password to login.

Alternatively, provide credentials using the methods described above.