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InstallationAir-gapped considerations

Air-gapped considerations

CIQ Enterprise Linux Manager (ELM) can run without internet access and does not send telemetry. A fresh installation still requires the elm-server RPM and every ELM container image to be staged inside the isolated environment before the service can start. Work with CIQ to obtain and transfer the entitled artifacts.

Offline content ingestion

An air-gapped ELM server ingests content two ways:

  • ISO upload. Upload an installation ISO through the web interface; ELM extracts it into a local source. This is the simplest way to seed a full distribution, and the extracted tree remains bootable for provisioning.
  • Rsync from an internal mirror. If your environment maintains an internal package mirror reachable over rsync, create an rsync source to mirror content from it.

Both source types behave like any other: they feed content views, produce versioned snapshots, and serve packages to hosts.

What works without internet access

  • Sources from ISO upload and internal rsync mirrors.
  • Content views, snapshots, rollback, and dependency checks.
  • Host registration, the agent, and network provisioning, provided all required RPMs and images are available internally.
  • Local, LDAP, and SAML authentication against internal directories.

What requires connectivity

  • Remote HTTP(S) sources need to reach the upstream repository URL.
  • CIQ Depot sources need to reach the Depot service with your Portal/Depot credentials. See Integrations.
  • Installation and upgrades need the entitled server RPM and container images staged in the isolated environment.
  • Prepare storage and install the server: Installation
  • Create sources from ISOs and rsync mirrors: Sources
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