Using the VCF Download Tool in an air-gapped environment with no internet access

Products

• VMware SDDC Manager / VCF Installer

Issue/Introduction

In VCF environments that are air-gapped with no internet access, you may need to leverage a physical device medium to copy and install binaries into your environment. 

In the above visualization, we can see we are using a machine with internet access to download the binaries, a physical media device to copy the binaries to and a machine within the air-gapped environment that we can copy the binaries to. 

Environment

VCF 9.x

Cause

In air-gapped environments with no internet connectivity, you may not be able to copy the binaries directly from a machine with internet connectivity. Due to this, you will need to leverage a physical device medium and a machine within the air-gapped environment to copy the binaries to, which you can then leverage to upload the binaries to the software depot. 

Resolution

To start, ensure that you have the following:

• A Windows or Linux computer with Internet connectivity (either directly or through a proxy) for downloading the binaries and other required files.
• A Windows or Linux computer within the air-gapped environment.
  • It is recommended to configure TCP keepalive in your SSH client to prevent socket connection timeouts for long-running operations.
• Physical media such as a USB drive or CD.

Complete steps 1-5 from the following article: Download Binaries to Software Depot in Disconnected Mode by Using the VCF Download Tool

On step 6, instead of uploading the binaries directly from the machine with internet access, you will need to copy the binaries to a physical media device and then proceed with step 6 from the machine within the air-gapped environment.