IKO Plus: Launching Airgapped IrisClusters with Hauler

In many enterprise environments, security is paramount. This often means running in “airgapped” environments—networks with no direct access to the public internet. But how do you deploy a modern, containerized data platform like InterSystems IRIS when you can’t reach containers.intersystems.com?

Enter Hauler.

What is Hauler?

Hauler is a tool designed to simplify the process of gathering and distributing artifacts (images, charts, files) for airgapped environments. It allows you to “haul” your dependencies from the internet into a local registry that your Kubernetes cluster can reach.

The Workflow

1. Define: List the images and Helm charts you need.
2. Haul: Fetch them to a local machine with internet access.
3. Save: Package them into a portable bundle.
4. Serve: Transport the bundle to the airgapped environment and serve them via a local registry.

Step 1: Defining Artifacts

We define our InterSystems artifacts in a simple YAML manifest.

# hauler-manifest.yaml
apiVersion: hauler.cattle.io/v1
kind: Manifest
metadata:
  name: iko-airgap
spec:
  images:
    - name: containers.intersystems.com/intersystems/iris-operator-amd:3.8.42.100
    - name: containers.intersystems.com/intersystems/irishealth-community:2025.1

Step 2: Hauling the Data

Run the haul command to fetch everything.

hauler store sync -f hauler-manifest.yaml

Step 3: Serving the Local Registry

Once inside the airgapped environment, we use Hauler to serve these artifacts.

hauler store serve registry

Step 4: Deploying with IKO

Now we just point our values.yaml and IrisCluster.yaml to our local registry IP (in this case, 172.17.0.1:31337).

# values.yaml
operator:
  image:
    registry: 172.17.0.1:31337
    repository: intersystems/iris-operator-amd
    tag: 3.8.42.100

# iriscluster.yaml
spec:
  topology:
    data:
      image: 172.17.0.1:31337/intersystems/irishealth-community:2025.1

The Result

And just like that, we have a running IrisCluster and Operator that were provisioned from a local, airgapped Hauler registry!

kubectl get pods -o jsonpath='{range .items[*]}{.metadata.name}{" => "}{range .spec.containers[*]}{.image}{" "}{end}{"\n"}{end}'

airgapped-iris-data-0 => 172.17.0.1:31337/intersystems/irishealth-community:2025.1 
iko-iris-operator-amd-5d679956db-pkbmg => 172.17.0.1:31337/intersystems/iris-operator-amd:3.8.42.100 

🙌 Mission accomplished. Airgap is no longer a barrier to using the InterSystems Kubernetes Operator.