Step 1: Configuring the OCI-compliant registry for offline installations

In offline installations, you need a registry compliant with OCI (Open Container Initiative) to store the container images and deployment Helm charts. If you perform an online installation, skip this step.

Note:

We strongly recommend bringing your own registry. If you do not have one available, you can temporarily install an OCI-compliant registry on one of the server machines.

Uploading the Automation Suite artifacts to the external OCI-compliant registry

There are two ways to upload the Automation Suite artifacts to the external OCI-compliant registry:

• Option A: By mirroring your OCI-compliant registry with the UiPath® registry;
• Option B: By hydrating your OCI-compliant registry with the offline bundle.

The following table compares the two options to upload the artifacts to the registry so that you can choose the one that suits your needs:

Option A: Mirroring the registry	Option B: Hydrating the registry
Copies the artifacts from the UiPath® registry to any target registry.	Uses the offline tarball to untar and upload the artifacts to the target registry.
Requires Docker and Helm tools.	Requires Podman and Helm tools.
Requires internet access while copying the artifacts from the UiPath® registry to the target registry.	Requires internet access only to download the offline tarball to the jump server. Uploading the tarball does not require internet access.
Requires a temporary space to cache the images during the copying method. This space is usually configured during the Docker installation. The default location is /var/lib/docker.	Requires a temporary space to extract the tarball and a temporary space for Podman to load the images. Tarball extraction location must be provided during the hydration step. The Podman location can be /var/tmp, which must have adequate storage available.
The required storage capacity for the /var/lib/docker is around 128 GiB	The required storage capacity for the extraction is around 200 GiB, and /var/tmp must be 256 GiB.

Note: It is recommended to perform the mirroring or hydration operation from the management machine or jump box, instead of using the server nodes.

Option A: Mirroring the UiPath® registry to your registry

This method requires internet access on the jump machine from which you upload the Automation Suite artifacts onto your OCI-compliant registry.

Prerequisites for mirroring the UiPath® registry

To mirror the UiPath® registry, you need the following:

• a VM running a Linux distribution (recommended) or a laptop (not recommended);

• a Docker client authenticated with the private registry;

• Helm 3.8 or newer authenticated with the private registry;

• as-images.txt;
• as-helm-charts.txt;
• mirror-registry.sh;
• outbound connectivity to registry.uipath.com;
• 128 GiB of free disk space for Docker under the /var/lib/docker partition on the machine from which you upload the container images and charts.

Installing Docker and Helm

You must have Docker and Helm installed and authenticated on the machine from which you plan to upload the Automation Suite container images and charts to your registry.

• To download the Docker binaries, see the official documentation.

• To authenticate the Docker registry, see the official documentation. Alternatively, you can use the following command by replacing the sample credentials with your actual registry credentials:

  docker login my.registry.io:443 --username "admin" --password "secret"

• To download the Helm binaries, see the official documentation.

• To authenticate the Helm registry, see the official documentation. Alternatively, you can use the following command by replacing the sample credentials with your actual registry credentials:

  helm registry login my.registry.io:443 --username "admin" --password "secret"

Downloading as-images.txt

To download as-images.txt, see Downloading installation bundles.

Downloading as-helm-charts.txt

To download as-helm-charts.txt, see Downloading installation bundles.

Downloading the optional Document Understanding bundles

To download the optional Document Understanding bundles, see Document Understanding documentation.

Downloading mirror-registry.sh

To download the mirror-registry.sh script, see Downloading the installation packages.

Uploading the Automation Suite images to your registry

The mirror-registry.sh script requires outbound connectivity to the source (default registry.uipath.com) and target registries.

Note:

The mirror-registry.sh script does not perform authentication to the registry. It is assumed that you have already authenticated to the registry.

Flag	Environment variable	Description
--images-manifest	IMAGES_MANIFEST	Mandatory. Path to the image manifest file.
--helm-charts-manifest	HELM_CHARTS_MANIFEST	Mandatory. Path to the Helm chart manifest file.
--target-registry-url	TARGET_REGISTRY_URL	Mandatory. Pass the URL for the target registry.
--source-registry-url	SOURCE_REGISTRY_URL	Optional. Pass the URL for the source registry; the default is registry.uipath.com.

To upload the Automation Suite images to your registry:

1. Ensure that we have the necessary permissions to execute the shell script, by running the following command:

   chmod +x mirror-registry.sh

2. To upload the Automation Suite images to your registry, run the following command:

   ./mirror-registry.sh --target-registry-url my.registry.io:443 --source-registry-url registry.uipath.com --images-manifest /home/myuser/as-images.txt --helm-charts-manifest /home/myuser/as-helm-charts.txt

Option B: Hydrating the registry with the offline bundle

This method only requires internet access on the jump machine to download the offline bundle. Once the bundle is available, you can upload to your OCI-compliant registry without an internet connection.

Note:

This method may also require additional space on the machine to un-tar and upload to your registry. Aside from that, this method may take longer than the mirroring approach.

Prerequisites for hydrating the registry

To hydrate the registry, you need the following:

• a VM running a Linux distribution is preferred over running the script on a laptop;
• ability to download and copy or somehow propagate the offline bundle to the VM;
• Helm 3.8 or newer authenticated with the private registry;
• Podman installed, configured, and authenticated with the private registry;
• 150 GiB of free disk space for Podman under /var/lib/containers for loading the containers locally before pushing them to the remote registry. You can change the default path by updating the location of the graphRoot path in the output of the podman-info command.
• Set the TMP_DIR environment variable as described in Podman official documentation.
• as.tar.gz

Installing Podman and Helm

You must ensure you have Podman and Helm installed and authenticated on the machine from which you plan to upload the Automation Suite container images and charts to your registry.

• To download the Podman binaries, see the official documentation.
• To authenticate to the Podman registry, see the official documentation. Alternatively, you can use the following command by replacing the sample credentials with your actual registry credentials:

  podman login my.registry.io:443 --username "admin" --password "secret"

• To download the Helm binaries, see the official documentation.
• To authenticate the Helm registry, see the official documentation. Alternatively, you can use the following command by replacing the sample credentials with your actual registry credentials:

  helm registry login my.registry.io:443 --username "admin" --password "secret"

Downloading as.tar.gz

To download as.tar.gz, see Downloading installation bundles.

Downloading the optional Document Understanding bundles

To download optional Document Understanding bundles, see Document Understanding documentation.

Downloading hydrate-registry.sh

To download the hydrate-registry.sh script, see Downloading the installation packages.

Uploading the Automation Suite images to the registry

To upload the Automation Suite images to the registry, use the hydrate-registry.sh script.

The hydrate-registry.sh script does not require outbound connectivity except with the target registries.

Note:

The hydrate-registry.sh script does not perform authentication to the registry. It is assumed that you have already authenticated to the registry.

Flag	Description
--offline-bundle-path	Mandatory. Path to the offline bundle.
--target-registry-url	Mandatory. Pass the URL for the target registry.
--extract-path	The location to be used to untar the offline bundle. It can be either /var/lib/containers or a custom location. Ensure you have a minimum of 100 GiB of storage. It is recommended to have 256 GiB of storage.

To upload the Automation Suite images to the registry, run the following command:

./hydrate-registry.sh --target-registry-url registry.azurecr.io --offline-bundle-path ./as.tar.gz --extract-path /extract/to/path

Configuring the certificate for the external OCI-compliant registry

To properly configure your external OCI-compliant registry, you must update the trust store of all the machines on which you plan to install Automation Suite. For instructions on how to perfom this step post-installation, see Managing certificates.

To do that, take the following steps:

1. Add the CA file to the /etc/pki/ca-trust/source/anchors/ location.
2. Run update-ca-trust to update the trust store of the operating system. Once the trust store is updated, the extracted certificate file is merged in /etc/pki/ca-trust/extracted/ca-bundle.trust.crt.

Note:

You must provide the CA certificate during the Automation Suite installation. You must provide the certificate in the registry_ca_cert parameter in the cluster_config.json file. For details, refer to External OCI-compliant registry configuration.