Setup Working Environment

As mentioned in Planning and Prerequisites that it is a good practice that you have a dedicated machine for managing infrastructure and perform installation.

This guide will assumed that you are working on the machine, called 🟫 Bastion Host.

Which will go through these setups:

Before You Begin

💡 Prerequisite: Ensure you are connected to your Bastion Host (via SSH or a console) before proceeding with these steps.

This setup guide is divided into logical steps to get your environment ready for Opstella.

Step 1: Install CLI Tools

You need the following tools installed on your Linux Bastion Host to manage the installation and interact with the clusters.

1a. Basic Utilities (curl, wget, zip, unzip, tar)

These are essential for downloading and extracting assets.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y curl wget zip unzip tar

1b. Container Engine (docker)

Used for managing container images and performing local operations.

Reference: Docker Installation Guide

# Install using the convenience script
curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh
sudo sh ./get-docker.sh
rm get-docker.sh

1c. Toolchain (kubectl, helm)

The primary tools for interacting with Kubernetes and managing deployments.

# Install kubectl
curl -LO "https://dl.k8s.io/release/$(curl -L -s https://dl.k8s.io/release/stable.txt)/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl"
sudo install -o root -g root -m 0755 kubectl /usr/local/bin/kubectl
rm kubectl

# Install Helm
curl -fsSL -o get_helm.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helm/helm/main/scripts/get-helm-3
chmod 700 get_helm.sh
sudo ./get_helm.sh
rm get_helm.sh

1d. Data Helpers (jq, yq, mc)

Utilities for manipulating JSON/YAML and interacting with S3 storage.

# Install jq & yq
sudo wget https://github.com/jqlang/jq/releases/latest/download/jq-linux-amd64 -O /usr/local/bin/jq
sudo wget https://github.com/mikefarah/yq/releases/latest/download/yq_linux_amd64 -O /usr/local/bin/yq
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/jq /usr/local/bin/yq

# Install mc (MinIO Client)
wget -O mc https://dl.min.io/client/mc/release/linux-amd64/mc
chmod +x mc
sudo mv mc /usr/local/bin/mc

Step 2: Initialize Workspace Directory

To keep your installation organized, we recommend working within a dedicated directory. This prevents configuration files and assets from cluttering your home folder.

mkdir -p $HOME/opstella-installation/{assets,shell-values,kubeconfigs,helm-charts,helm-values,images,opstella-configs}

Crucial Note

Following guides assume you are using this directory structure. If you choose a different path, you must update all subsequent commands accordingly.

Step 3: Gather Core Assets

Core assets include the scripts and Kubernetes manifests provided by the Opstella team.

1. Download the Assets Package: Visit the Releases page on git.opsta.io and download the latest .tar.gz release.

2. Extract to the Workspace:

   tar xzvf orion-assets-*.tar.gz -C $HOME/opstella-installation/assets --strip-components=1

Core Asset Structure

Once extracted, your assets directory should contain:

• files/: Logos and other static resources.
• kubernetes-manifests/: Pre-defined YAML configurations.
• scripts/: Initialization and helper scripts (e.g., opstella-core-init.sh).

Step 4: Prepare Resources for Air-gapped Environments

Online Installations

If you have internet access, you can skip this step. Helm charts and container images will be pulled automatically from their registries during installation.

In an Air-gapped Environment, you must manually prepare the following resources and place them in their respective directories.

4a. Container Images (Tarballs)

Pull and save required container images as .tar files.

• Path: $HOME/opstella-installation/images/

4b. Helm Charts (Tarballs)

Download charts from their respective repositories as .tgz files.

• Path: $HOME/opstella-installation/helm-charts/

4c. External Plugins & Files

Some tools (like SonarQube) require external plugins that are usually downloaded on-the-fly. For air-gapped environments, you must manually download these and host them on an Internal HTTP Static File Server (e.g., Nginx, Apache).

Example: SonarQube OIDC Plugin

• Original URL: https://github.com/vaulttec/sonar-auth-oidc/releases/download/v2.1.1/sonar-auth-oidc-plugin-2.1.1.jar
• Action: Download this file and upload it to your internal server. Update your variables to point to your internal link: https://your-internal-server/sonar-auth-oidc-plugin-2.1.1.jar.

Step 5: Configuration Storage

Finally, prepare the directories where you will store your custom configurations and cluster connection files.

Helm Values

Custom configuration files (values.yaml) for Helm releases.

• Path: $HOME/opstella-installation/helm-values/

Opstella Custom Configurations

Modified YAML files or scripts based on the downloaded assets.

• Path: $HOME/opstella-installation/opstella-configs/

Kubernetes Kubeconfigs

Kubeconfig files for accessing your Management, Non-Prod, and Prod clusters.

• Path: $HOME/opstella-installation/kubeconfigs/

Working Directory Summary

As you proceed throughout the guide, your directory should looks like this.

Note

This is a SAMPLE working directory structure to show you what it might look like. It is not the actual result you must have right now, but a reference for how files are organized.

• Directory~

  • Directoryopstella-installation

    • Directoryassets

      • Directoryfiles

        • …
        • opstella-logo.svg
      • Directorykubernetes-manifests

        • …
        • opstella.yaml
      • Directoryscripts

        • …
        • script.sh
    • Directoryhelm-charts (air-gapped)

      • …
      • postgresql-15.5.38.tgz
      • keycloak-21.8.0.tgz
    • Directoryhelm-values

      • …
      • postgresql-keycloak-full-values.yaml
      • keycloak-full-values.yaml
    • Directoryimages (air-gapped)

      • …
      • bitnami-postgresql-16.4.0-debian-12-r14.tar
      • bitnami-keycloak-24.0.5-debian-12-r8.tar
    • Directorykubeconfigs

      • management_cluster.yaml
      • nonprod_cluster.yaml
      • prod_cluster.yaml
    • Directoryopstella-configs

      • …
      • opstella-core-init.sh
      • opstella-backend-tag-on-premise.yaml