--- title: "Working Offline" menu: main: parent: "user" identifier: "working-offline" weight: 3 description: |- This guide covers how to work with KIND in an offline / airgapped environment. You should first [install kind][installation documentation] before continuing. [installation documentation]: https://kind.sigs.k8s.io/docs/user/quick-start#installation --- ## Using a pre-built [node image][node image] KIND provides some pre-built images, these images contain everything necessary to create a cluster and can be used in an offline environment. You can find available image tags on the [releases page][releases page]. Please include the `@sha256:` [image digest][image digest] from the image in the release notes. You can pull it when you have network access, or pull it on another machine and then transfer it to the target machine. ``` ➜ ~ docker pull kindest/node:v1.17.0@sha256:9512edae126da271b66b990b6fff768fbb7cd786c7d39e86bdf55906352fdf62 sha256:9512edae126da271b66b990b6fff768fbb7cd786c7d39e86bdf55906352fdf62: Pulling from kindest/node cc5a81c29aab: Pull complete 81c62728355f: Pull complete ed9cffdd962a: Pull complete 6a46f000fce2: Pull complete 6bd890da28be: Pull complete 0d88bd219ffe: Pull complete af5240f230f0: Pull complete Digest: sha256:9512edae126da271b66b990b6fff768fbb7cd786c7d39e86bdf55906352fdf62 Status: Downloaded newer image for kindest/node@sha256:9512edae126da271b66b990b6fff768fbb7cd786c7d39e86bdf55906352fdf62 docker.io/kindest/node:v1.17.0@sha256:9512edae126da271b66b990b6fff768fbb7cd786c7d39e86bdf55906352fdf62 ``` You can [save node image][docker save] to a tarball. ``` ➜ ~ docker save -o kind.v1.17.0.tar kindest/node:v1.17.0@sha256:9512edae126da271b66b990b6fff768fbb7cd786c7d39e86bdf55906352fdf62 # or ➜ ~ docker save kindest/node:v1.17.0@sha256:9512edae126da271b66b990b6fff768fbb7cd786c7d39e86bdf55906352fdf62 | gzip > kind.v1.17.0.tar.gz ``` When you transport image tarball to the machine, you can load the node image by [`docker load`][docker load] command. ``` ➜ ~ docker load -i kind.v1.17.0.tar Loaded image ID: sha256:ec6ab22d89efc045f4da4fc862f6a13c64c0670fa7656fbecdec5307380f9cb0 # or ➜ ~ docker load -i kind.v1.17.0.tar.gz Loaded image ID: sha256:ec6ab22d89efc045f4da4fc862f6a13c64c0670fa7656fbecdec5307380f9cb0 ``` And [create a tag][docker tag] for it. ``` ➜ ~ docker image tag kindest/node:v1.17.0@sha256:9512edae126da271b66b990b6fff768fbb7cd786c7d39e86bdf55906352fdf62 kindest/node:v1.17.0 ➜ ~ docker image ls kindest/node REPOSITORY TAG IMAGE ID CREATED SIZE kindest/node v1.17.0 ec6ab22d89ef 3 weeks ago 1.23GB ``` Finally, you can create a cluster by specifying the `--image` flag. ``` ➜ ~ kind create cluster --image kindest/node:v1.17.0 Creating cluster "kind" ... ✓ Ensuring node image (kindest/node:v1.17.0) 🖼 ✓ Preparing nodes 📦 ✓ Writing configuration 📜 ✓ Starting control-plane 🕹️ ✓ Installing CNI 🔌 ✓ Installing StorageClass 💾 Set kubectl context to "kind-kind" You can now use your cluster with: kubectl cluster-info --context kind-kind Have a question, bug, or feature request? Let us know! https://kind.sigs.k8s.io/#community 🙂 ``` ## Building the [node image][node image] In addition to using pre-built node image, KIND also provides the ability to build [node image][node image] from Kubernetes source code. Please note that during the image building process, you need to download many dependencies. It is recommended that you build at least once online to ensure that these dependencies are downloaded to your local. See [building the node image][building the node image] for more detail. The node-image in turn is built off the [base image][base image]. ### Prepare Kubernetes source code You can clone Kubernetes source code. ```sh ➜ ~ mkdir -p $GOPATH/src/k8s.io ➜ ~ cd $GOPATH/src/k8s.io ➜ ~ git clone https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes ``` ### Building image ```sh ➜ ~ kind build node-image --image kindest/node:main $GOPATH/src/k8s.io/kubernetes Starting to build Kubernetes ... Image build completed. ``` When the image build is complete, you can create a cluster by passing the `--image` flag. ```sh ➜ ~ kind create cluster --image kindest/node:main Creating cluster "kind" ... ✓ Ensuring node image (kindest/node:main) 🖼 ✓ Preparing nodes 📦 ✓ Writing configuration 📜 ✓ Starting control-plane 🕹️ ✓ Installing CNI 🔌 ✓ Installing StorageClass 💾 Set kubectl context to "kind-kind" You can now use your cluster with: kubectl cluster-info --context kind-kind Have a question, bug, or feature request? Let us know! https://kind.sigs.k8s.io/#community 🙂 ``` ## HA cluster If you want to create a control-plane HA cluster then you need to create a config file and use this file to start the cluster. ```sh ➜ ~ cat << EOF | kind create cluster --config=- kind: Cluster apiVersion: kind.x-k8s.io/v1alpha4 # 3 control plane node and 1 workers nodes: - role: control-plane - role: control-plane - role: control-plane - role: worker EOF ``` Note that in an offline environment, in addition to preparing the node image, you also need to prepare HAProxy image in advance. You can find the specific tag currently in use at [loadbalancer source code][loadbalancer source code]. [installation documentation]: https://kind.sigs.k8s.io/docs/user/quick-start#installation [node image]: https://kind.sigs.k8s.io/docs/design/node-image [releases page]: https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/kind/releases [image digest]: https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/pull/#pull-an-image-by-digest-immutable-identifier [docker save]: https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/save/ [docker load]: https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/load/ [docker tag]: https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/tag/ [base image]: https://kind.sigs.k8s.io/docs/design/base-image/ [building the node image]: https://kind.sigs.k8s.io/docs/user/quick-start/#building-images [loadbalancer source code]: https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/kind/blob/main/pkg/cluster/internal/loadbalancer/const.go#L20