---
title: Understanding our lab environment
exercise: 1
date: '2023-12-18'
tags: ['openshift','containers','kubernetes','disconnected']
draft: false
authors: ['default']
summary: "Let's get familiar with our lab setup."
---

Welcome to the OpenShift 4 Disconnected Workshop! Here you'll learn about operating an OpenShift 4 cluster in a disconnected network, for our purposes today that will be a network without access to the internet (even through a proxy or firewall). 

To level set, Red Hat [OpenShift](https://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/cloud-computing/openshift) is a unified platform to build, modernize, and deploy applications at scale. OpenShift supports running in disconnected networks, though this does change the way the cluster operates because key ingredients like container images, operator bundles, and helm charts must be brought into the environment from the outside world via mirroring.

There are of course many different options for installing OpenShift in a restricted network; this workshop will primarily cover one opinionated approach. We'll do our best to point out where there's the potential for variability along the way.

**Let's get started!**


## 1.1 - Creating an air gap

According to the [Internet Security Glossary](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4949), an Air Gap is an interface between two systems at which (a) they are not connected physically and (b) any logical connection is not automated (i.e., data is transferred through the interface only manually, under human control). 

In disconnected OpenShift installations, the air gap exists between the **Low Side** and the **High Side**, so it is between these systems where a manual data transfer, or **sneakernet** is required.

For the purposes of this workshop we will be operating within Amazon Web Services. You will be allocated an environment that already has AWS credentials configured and has some basic preparation completed. This will be a single VPC with 3 public subnets, which will serve as our **Low Side**, and 3 private subnets, which will serve as our **High Side**.

The diagram below shows a simplified overview of the networking topology:

<Zoom>
|![workshop](/workshops/static/images/disconnected/vpc-setup.svg)               | 
|:-----------------------------------------------------------------------------:|
| *Workshop network topology*                                                   |
</Zoom>


Let's review this setup by running the command below:

```bash
aws ec2 describe-subnets | jq '[.Subnets[].Tags[] | select(.Key=="Name").Value] | sort'
```

We should see output matching this example:

```bash
[
   "Private Subnet - disco",
   "Private Subnet 2 - disco",
   "Private Subnet 3 - disco",
   "Public Subnet - disco",
   "Public Subnet 2 - disco",
   "Public Subnet 3 - disco"
]
```