Proxy & Air-Gapped Environments

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Network Operator Deployment in a Proxy Environment
Network Operator Deployment in an Air-gapped Environment

Network Operator Deployment in a Proxy Environment

This section describes how to successfully deploy the Network Operator in clusters behind an HTTP Proxy. By default, the Network Operator requires internet access for the following reasons:

Container images must be pulled during the NVIDIA Network Operator installation.

The driver container must download several OS packages prior to the driver installation.

To address these requirements, all Kubernetes nodes, as well as the driver container, must be properly configured in order to direct traffic through the proxy.

This section demonstrates how to configure the NVIDIA Network Operator, so that the driver container could successfully download packages behind an HTTP proxy. Since configuring Kubernetes/container runtime components for proxy use is not specific to the Network Operator, those instructions are not detailed here.

Warning

If you are not running OpenShift, please skip the section titled HTTP Proxy Configuration for OpenShift, as Openshift configuration instructions are different.

Prerequisites

Kubernetes cluster is configured with HTTP proxy settings (container runtime should be enabled with HTTP proxy).

HTTP Proxy Configuration for Openshift

For Openshift, it is recommended to use the cluster-wide Proxy object to provide proxy information for the cluster. Please follow the procedure described in Configuring the Cluster-wide Proxy via the Red Hat Openshift public documentation. The NVIDIA Network Operator will automatically inject proxy related ENV into the driver container, based on the information present in the cluster-wide Proxy object.

HTTP Proxy Configuration

Specify the ofedDriver.env in your values.yaml file with appropriate HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY, and NO_PROXY environment variables (in both uppercase and lowercase).

ofedDriver:
   env:
   - name: HTTPS_PROXY
     value: http://<example.proxy.com:port>
   - name: HTTP_PROXY
     value: http://<example.proxy.com:port>
   - name: NO_PROXY
     value: <example.com>
   - name: https_proxy
     value: http://<example.proxy.com:port>
   - name: http_proxy
     value: http://<example.proxy.com:port>
   - name: no_proxy
     value: <example.com>

Network Operator Deployment in an Air-gapped Environment

This section describes how to successfully deploy the Network Operator in clusters with restricted internet access. By default, the Network Operator requires internet access for the following reasons:

The container images must be pulled during the Network Operator installation.

The OFED driver container must download several OS packages prior to the driver installation.

To address these requirements, it may be necessary to create a local image registry and/or a local package repository, so that the necessary images and packages will be available for your cluster. Subsequent sections of this document detail how to configure the Network Operator to use local image registries and local package repositories. If your cluster is behind a proxy, follow the steps listed in Network Operator Deployment in Proxy Environments.

Local Image Registry

Without internet access, the Network Operator requires all images to be hosted in a local image registry that is accessible to all nodes in the cluster. To allow Network Operator to work with a local registry, users can specify local repository, image, tag along with pull secrets in the values.yaml file.

Pulling and Pushing Container Images to a Local Registry

To pull the correct images from the NVIDIA registry, you can leverage the fields repository, image and version specified in the values.yaml file or in the NicClusterPolicy Custom Resource Example section.

There is one caveat with regards to the DOCA driver image. The version field must be appended by the OS name and Architecture running on the worker node.

For example for DOCA driver version 25.01-0.3.9.0-0, the tag for Ubuntu 24.04 with X86 architecture is “25.01-0.3.9.0-0-ubuntu24.04-amd64”. Available DOCA driver image tags can be found at NGC.

Local Package Repository

Warning

The instructions below are provided as reference examples to set up a local package repository for NVIDIA Network Operator.

The OFED driver container deployed as part of the Network Operator requires certain packages to be available for the driver installation. In restricted internet access or air-gapped installations, users are required to create a local mirror repository for their OS distribution, and make the following packages available:

ubuntu:
   linux-headers-${KERNEL_VERSION}
   linux-modules-${KERNEL_VERSION}
   pkg-config
rhel, rhcos:
   kernel-headers-${KERNEL_VERSION}
   kernel-devel-${KERNEL_VERSION}
   kernel-core-${KERNEL_VERSION}
   createrepo
   elfutils-libelf-devel
   kernel-rpm-macros
   umactl-libs
   lsof
   pm-build
   patch
   hostname

For RT kernels following packages should be available:

kernel-rt-devel-${KERNEL_VERSION}
kernel-rt-modules-${KERNEL_VERSION}

For Ubuntu, these packages can be found at archive.ubuntu.com, and be used as the mirror that must be replicated locally for your cluster. By using apt-mirror or apt-get download, you can create a full or a partial mirror to your repository server.

For RHCOS, dnf reposync can be used to create the local mirror. This requires an active Red Hat subscription for the supported OpenShift version. For example:

dnf --releasever=8.4 reposync --repo rhel-8-for-x86_64-appstream-rpms --download-metadata

Once all the above required packages are mirrored to the local repository, repo lists must be created following distribution specific documentation. A ConfigMap containing the repo list file should be created in the namespace where the NVIDIA Network Operator is deployed.

Following is an example of a repo list for Ubuntu 20.04 (access to a local package repository via HTTP):

custom-repo.list:

deb [arch=amd64 trusted=yes] http://<local pkg repository>/ubuntu/mirror/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal main universe
deb [arch=amd64 trusted=yes] http://<local pkg repository>/ubuntu/mirror/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates main universe
deb [arch=amd64 trusted=yes] http://<local pkg repository>/ubuntu/mirror/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security main universe

Following is an example of a repo list for RHCOS (access to a local package repository via HTTP):

cuda.repo (a mirror of https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/rhel8/x86_64):

[cuda]
name=cuda
baseurl=http://<local pkg repository>/cuda
priority=0
gpgcheck=0
enabled=1

redhat.repo:

[baseos]
name=rhel-8-for-x86_64-baseos-rpms
baseurl=http://<local pkg repository>/rhel-8-for-x86_64-baseos-rpms
gpgcheck=0
enabled=1
[baseoseus]
name=rhel-8-for-x86_64-baseos-eus-rpms
baseurl=http://<local pkg repository>/rhel-8-for-x86_64-baseos-eus-rpms
gpgcheck=0
enabled=1
[rhocp]
name=rhocp-4.10-for-rhel-8-x86_64-rpms
baseurl=http://<local pkg repository>/rhocp-4.10-for-rhel-8-x86_64-rpms
gpgcheck=0
enabled=1
[apstream]
name=rhel-8-for-x86_64-appstream-rpms
baseurl=http://<local pkg repository>/rhel-8-for-x86_64-appstream-rpms
gpgcheck=0
enabled=1

ubi.repo:

[ubi-8-baseos]
name = Red Hat Universal Base Image 8 (RPMs) - BaseOS
baseurl = http://<local pkg repository>/ubi-8-baseos
enabled = 1
gpgcheck = 0
[ubi-8-baseos-source]
name = Red Hat Universal Base Image 8 (Source RPMs) - BaseOS
baseurl = http://<local pkg repository>/ubi-8-baseos-source
enabled = 0
gpgcheck = 0
[ubi-8-appstream]
name = Red Hat Universal Base Image 8 (RPMs) - AppStream
baseurl = http://<local pkg repository>/ubi-8-appstream
enabled = 1
gpgcheck = 0
[ubi-8-appstream-source]
name = Red Hat Universal Base Image 8 (Source RPMs) - AppStream
baseurl = http://<local pkg repository>/ubi-8-appstream-source
enabled = 0
gpgcheck = 0

Create the ConfigMap for Ubuntu:

kubectl create configmap repo-config -n <Network Operator Namespace> --from-file=<path-to-repo-list-file>

Create the ConfigMap for RHCOS:

kubectl create configmap repo-config -n <Network Operator Namespace> --from-file=cuda.repo --from-file=redhat.repo --from-file=ubi.repo

Once the ConfigMap is created using the above command, update the values.yaml file with this information to let the Network Operator mount the repo configuration within the driver container and pull the required packages. Based on the OS distribution, the Network Operator will automatically mount this ConfigMap into the appropriate directory.

ofedDriver:
  deploy: true
  repoConfg:
    name: repo-config

If self-signed certificates are used for an HTTPS based internal repository, a ConfigMap must be created for those certifications and provided during the Network Operator installation. Based on the OS distribution, the Network Operator will automatically mount this ConfigMap into the appropriate directory.

kubectl create configmap cert-config -n <Network Operator Namespace> --from-file=<path-to-pem-file1> --from-file=<path-to-pem-file2>

ofedDriver:
  deploy: true
  certConfg:
    name: cert-config