Installing Sisense in an Offline Environment

Last updated: October 21, 2026

Tier Deployment
Enterprise On-Prem

Note:

An existing deployment whose Kubernetes cluster still runs RKE (RKE1) cannot be upgraded in place to RKE2. You must backup Sisense, install the new version of Sisense, and then restore Sisense.

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 Linux machine with containerd installed, from which you run the offline installer. This can be a bastion host (recommended) or, for a single-node installation, the node itself.
    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 container registry (for example, a 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:

  • The offline installer script, installer/offline/offline_installer.sh
  • The installer container image, which contains the tools that the installer needs (such as kubectl and helm) and the RKE2 installation files
  • RKE2 container images for the Kubernetes cluster installation
  • Sisense pods container images
  • Monitoring pods container images
  • Logging pods container images

As part of the installer, Sisense supports RKE2 Kubernetes cluster installation on your on-premises servers. To install on a Kubernetes cluster that is already configured and running, use the configuration file for that cluster type (for example, cloud_config.yaml); the installer then does not install Kubernetes.

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 machine in your offline environment that is connected internally to your container registry and to the servers of your Kubernetes cluster.

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

  • Uploading the Sisense container images to the 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 Containerd version 1.7.24 or newer, to run the offline installer container. The offline installer uses the ctr command to load, push, and run the images. This can be verified with the following command:
    • Copy 
    ubuntu@node1:~$ ctr --version
    ctr containerd.io 1.7.24
  • A regular (non-root) Linux user with passwordless sudo on the machine that runs the offline installer and on every server in the cluster (the installer prepares the OS and installs RKE2 on each server over SSH). The offline installer runs ctr with sudo, and checks the user's sudo rules before it starts.
  • A configured secure container registry must be available for the Sisense offline installation.

  • Because the servers cannot download packages, install the following on every server of the cluster in advance (on-premises installation):

    • gawk

    • On Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Rocky Linux, or Oracle Linux 10: kernel-modules-extra for the running kernel (sudo dnf install kernel-modules-extra-$(uname -r))

    • For storage_type: nfs or efs: nfs-common (Ubuntu) or nfs-utils (Red Hat-based)

    • For storage_type: rook-ceph: lvm2

    The installer checks for these packages and stops with an error if one is missing.

  • When installing on an existing cluster, a kubeconfig file for the target cluster in ~/.kube/config of the user that runs the offline installer. The installer container uses the kubectl client that it contains.

To install Sisense on an offline environment:

  1. Login to the machine from which you run the offline installer.
    Note:

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

  2. Contact your Sisense Customer Success Manager to obtain a link to download the Sisense offline installer.
  3. After you received the link from Sisense, download the Sisense offline installer with the command:
    wget ${PACKAGE_URL}
  4. Extract the Sisense package.
    tar zxf ${PACKAGE_NAME}
  5. 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_REGISTRY} - The registry address, with an optional path (for example, registry.example.com:5000/sisense). The images are pushed to this location, and the RKE2 images to its rancher sub-path.

    • docker_username: ${YOUR_REGISTRY_USER}

    • docker_password: ${YOUR_REGISTRY_PASSWORD}

    • private_docker_registry: true - The cluster servers pull the RKE2 and Sisense images from your registry.

    • docker_registry_protocol: https - Add this parameter if your registry is served over HTTPS. When it is not set, the offline installer pushes the images, and the cluster pulls them, over plain HTTP.

    • delete_local_images: <true/false> - Default: false. When setting delete_local_images: true, then when uploading images to your private registry (command bash ./installer/offline/offline_installer.sh upload ${CONFIG_FILE}),
      after each successful upload, it will delete the image from your local registry on your server and will also remove the .tar of that image from the installation dir in your local file system, thereby saving a lot of space on your server.

  6. Upload Sisense images with the following command:
    bash ./installer/offline/offline_installer.sh upload ${CONFIG_FILE} [USERNAME] [PASSWORD]
    • upload: Upload action (Available actions: upload / run / help)
    • ${CONFIG_FILE}: Your edited configuration file (for example, cluster_config.yaml)
    • USERNAME/PASSWORD: Your registry credentials. If you omit them, the values of docker_username and docker_password in the configuration file are used, and if the password is still empty, you are prompted for it.
  7. After the Sisense images are uploaded, install Sisense, including the RKE2 Kubernetes cluster:
    bash ./installer/offline/offline_installer.sh run ${CONFIG_FILE}
    This command starts the installer container and runs ./sisense.sh ${CONFIG_FILE} inside it. Confirm the displayed configuration to start the installation. The installation log is written to sisense-installer.log in the Sisense directory.
  8. Once the installation is complete, activate Sisense according to the Activating Sisense on Linux instructions.