XO documentation

# Airgap support and deployment

TIP

This page is relevant only to official XO Appliances and does not cover XO built from sources.

We are considering two types of air-gapped deployments:

  • Physical air gap (completely offline)
  • Logical air gap with limited connectivity, or physical air gap with a connected pre-production/QA environment available

# Logical Air Gap

In this scenario, you will need a QA/pre-production XCP-ng pool with Internet access. This pool will serve as a temporary zone for registering and upgrading the XOA, before physically exporting it to the disconnected environment.

# Deployment

Follow the standard procedure (opens new window) to deploy the XOA on your pool with Internet access.

Make sure that your appliance is properly registered (opens new window) and up-to-date (opens new window).

It's also good to take a quick look at the XOA check (opens new window) to detect issues early.

When everything is good, you can shutdown your XOA and export it:

$ xe vm-shutdown uuid=$uuid
$ xe vm-export compress=true uuid=$uuid filename=xoa.xva
Export succeeded

$uuid should be replaced by the UUID of your XOA.

Now you need to move the xoa.xva file from your connected pool to your airgapped one.

And the last step is to import it in your airgapped pool and start it:

$ xe vm-import filename=xoa.xva
c87a6dc3-9889-acf0-a680-79de3780c08f
$ xe vm-start uuid=c87a6dc3-9889-acf0-a680-79de3780c08f

You can now delete the XOA on your connected pool, it is no longer necessary.

# Upgrade

To upgrade your XOA, you need to:

  1. shutdown the XOA on your airgapped pool
  2. export it to an XVA file
  3. move it to your connected pool and import it
  4. start it, run the upgrade process (opens new window)
  5. shutdown this XOA
  6. export it to an XVA file
  7. move it to your airgapped pool and import it
  8. start it and check that everything appears correct
  9. delete the XOA on your connected pool and the previous XOA on your airgapped pool

For details on the steps, refer to the Deployment section.

# Physical air gap only

In this scenario, you are deploying directly without any prior Internet access. Vates can provide you with pre-registered XOAs that can be deployed directly in your offline environment, eliminating the need for any initial Internet connection. If you have an air gap subscription, our team will build it on-demand for you and provide a dedicated link for download.

Please contact us (opens new window) if you need more details.

# Deploy Your Air-Gap XOA

After downloading the dedicated air-gap XOA provided by our support team, follow these steps to deploy it:

  1. Obtain the Deployment Script: On a machine with internet access (or any non-air-gap machine), run the following command to download the deployment script:

    curl https://xoa.io/deploy > deploy.sh

    Alternatively, you can manually copy the content from https://xoa.io/deploy into a file named deploy.sh.

  2. Transfer Files to Your XCP-ng Host: Copy both the deploy.sh script and the XOA appliance file (XOA.xva) to your air-gapped XCP-ng host.

  3. Make the Script Executable: On your XCP-ng host, ensure the deploy.sh script is executable by running:

    chmod +x deploy.sh

    Then, execute the following command to deploy the XOA appliance:

    ./deploy.sh XOA.xva

  4. Follow the Script Instructions: During the deployment, the script will prompt you for essential network settings such as IP configuration, DNS, and NTP. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the setup.