Installing Sisense in an Offline Environment

You can install Sisense in an offline environment with no outside access.

An offline, or air-gapped, environment provides higher security than online, connected environments. As the offline environment has no outside communication, the only method to install Sisense in this environment is by using removable media, such as USB drives.

Your system must have the following in place to complete an offline installation:

  • A Bastion host with Docker installed (Recommended)
    Note:

    For a single node installation, you must have an additional disk space for local storage, see Mounting on a Dedicated Disk for Sisense Single Nodes.

  • A secured Docker registry that is accessible to the offline environment

As Sisense is installed offline, some features will not work as they require internet access:

  • Scatter Map widgets will not load
  • All email connections and notifications including reporting, user creating, dashboard sharing are not supported
  • All services that require internet connection will be blocked
  • External monitoring is not supported

Sisense Offline Installation

You can install Sisense in offline environments with the Sisense's offline installation package. The package includes the following components:

  • Major offline bootstrap script
  • Base Docker image for installation bootstrap
  • RKE Docker images for Kubernetes cluster installation.
  • Sisense pods Docker images
  • Monitoring pods Docker images
  • Logging pods Docker images

As part of the installer, Sisense supports Rancher Kubernetes cluster installation. If your Kubernetes cluster is already configured and running, Sisense will skip the cluster installation.

You can obtain the Sisense offline installation package from your Sisense Customer Support Manager.

Once you have the installation package, you must transfer it to a bastion machine in your offline environment that is connected internally to a local Docker registry and your Kubernetes cluster.

The offline installation package includes the Sisense installer. The installer must be configured to point to your Docker registry. When you run the installer, Sisense pushes Sisense-related Docker images to your local registry, which are then pulled by your K8S cluster when Sisense is installed on the cluster.
The process for installing Sisense requires you to complete two procedures:

  • Uploading the Sisense Docker images to the Docker registry
  • Executing the Sisense installer

Prerequisites

You must have the following prepared on your system before you install Sisense:

  • A prepared environment for the Sisense installation.
  • An installed Docker platform to run the offline installer container (Note: iptables for Docker must be enabled).
  • A configured secure Docker registry must be available for the Sisense offline installation.
  • A kubectl client must be installed on the bastion host, and configured to work with the target cluster (relevant when using the existing cluster).

To install Sisense on an offline environment:

  1. Login to your bastion host.
    Note:

    You must have installed a supported Docker version. Also, for a single-node installation, you must login to the node.

  2. Verify connectivity to your local Docker registry.
    sudo docker login <registry-IP>
    user: <user name>
    pwd: <password>
  3. Contact your Sisense Customer Success Manager to obtain a link to download the Sisense offline installer.
  4. After you received the link from Sisense, download the Sisense offline installer with the command:
    wget {$PACKAGE_URL}
  5. Extract the Sisense package.
    tar zxf ${PACAKGE_NAME}
  6. Navigate to the Sisense directory and edit the relevant Sisense configuration file for your environment (see Installing Sisense on Linux):
    • For single-node, on-premises Kubernetes, use single_config.yaml
    • For multi-node, on-premises Kubernetes, use cluster_config.yaml

    Set the following parameters:

    • offline_installer: true
    • docker_registry: ${YOUR_DOCKER_REGISTRY}
    • private_docker_registry: true
  7. Upload Sisense images with the following command:
    bash ./kubespray/offline/offline_installer.sh upload ${CONFIG_FILE} <USERNAME>
    • Upload: Upload action flag (Available actions: upload / run / help)
    • ${CONFIG_FILE}: Edited cluster_config.yaml file
    • USERNAME/PASSWORD: Your Docker registry credentials
  8. After the Sisense images are uploaded, install Sisense, including the RKE Kubernetes cluster:
    bash ./kubespray/offline/offline_installer.sh run ${CONFIG_FILE}
  9. Inside the Docker container, navigate to the Sisense directory and run the following command to execute the installer:
    bash ./sisense.sh ${CONFIG_FILE}
  10. Once the installation is complete, activate Sisense according to the Activating Sisense on Linux instructions.