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Introduction to hosted control planes in a disconnected environment

In the context of hosted control planes, a disconnected environment is an OKD deployment that is not connected to the internet and that uses hosted control planes as a base. You can deploy hosted control planes in a disconnected environment on bare metal or OKD Virtualization.

Hosted control planes in disconnected environments function differently than in standalone OKD:

  • The control plane is in the management cluster. The control plane is where the pods of the hosted control plane are run and managed by the Control Plane Operator.

  • The data plane is in the workers of the hosted cluster. The data plane is where the workloads and other pods run, all managed by the HostedClusterConfig Operator.

Depending on where the pods are running, they are affected by the ImageDigestMirrorSet (IDMS) or ImageContentSourcePolicy (ICSP) that is created in the management cluster or by the ImageContentSource that is set in the spec field of the manifest for the hosted cluster. The spec field is translated into an IDMS object on the hosted cluster.

You can deploy hosted control planes in a disconnected environment on IPv4, IPv6, and dual-stack networks. IPv4 is one of the simplest network configurations to deploy hosted control planes in a disconnected environment. IPv4 ranges require fewer external components than IPv6 or dual-stack setups. For hosted control planes on OKD Virtualization in a disconnected environment, use either an IPv4 or a dual-stack network.

Hosted control planes in a disconnected environment on a dual-stack network is a Technology Preview feature only. Technology Preview features are not supported with Red Hat production service level agreements (SLAs) and might not be functionally complete. Red Hat does not recommend using them in production. These features provide early access to upcoming product features, enabling customers to test functionality and provide feedback during the development process.

For more information about the support scope of Red Hat Technology Preview features, see Technology Preview Features Support Scope.