Choosing air-gapped

An air-gapped site is a deployment on the organisation’s own servers with no network path to LightHouse™. For such a site, LightHouse writes the stack in the engine’s offline mode, and the set-up mission counts the site as reporting once its first telemetry bundle has been imported.

Requirements

Requirement	Detail
Role	client_admin
Where agents run	Your own machines. A cloud deployment always has an outbound path and cannot be air-gapped
Deployment profile	Always-on. The offline relay keeps its spool on persistent disk

Selection

On Where agents run, choose Your own machines, then under How it reaches LightHouse:

Option	Meaning
Online (default)	One outbound connection to LightHouse, direct or through the organisation’s proxy. Telemetry and commands are live
Air-gapped	No network path to LightHouse. Data that would cross the network is transferred by hand as signed files

The choice is recorded in the tenant’s audit log. Through the API, PUT /api/v1/run-targets takes connectivity: online or air_gapped. A request for air-gapped with a cloud, or with a profile other than always-on, is refused.

Differences from an online site

Area	Air-gapped behaviour
Telemetry	Written to signed bundle files, transferred and imported in LightHouse
Commands	Exported from LightHouse as a signed command file; results return the same way
Images and models	Taken from Atlantic’s signed mirror and loaded into the organisation’s own registry and disk
Content	Not read in place. LightHouse shows records and metrics only, current to the last imported bundle

Air-gapped operation describes how each file is signed and verified; the integrity of a transfer does not depend on the person who carries it.

Stack contents

Get my stack for an air-gapped site writes the same Compose stack as for an online site, with these differences:

Component	Air-gapped configuration
Relay	Offline mode: makes no outbound requests, seals signed bundles into its spool, has no proxy setting
Content reader and live command channel	Not included
Command handler	File-based: applies a signed command file placed in ./carry/in and writes signed results to ./carry/out
.env	Takes images from the organisation’s own registry through one setting, which the mirror tooling rewrites; every digest is unchanged
Guide	lighthouse-air-gapped.md, with the round trip in the engine’s and the CLI’s commands, and the tenant and deployment filled in

Procedure

1. Once per release: pack the images and models on a connected machine, transfer them, verify them on the site, and load them into the registry and model directory.

   Result: the release’s images and models are available on the site with their digests verified.

2. Start the stack and run its check.

3. Telemetry out: export the bundles written since the last one LightHouse holds, verify them, transfer them and import them in LightHouse (on the deployment’s page, or with lighthouse-ai telemetry import).

   Result: the deployment’s page shows the time of the last imported bundle.

4. Commands in, results out: export the command file from LightHouse (or with lighthouse-ai commands export), transfer it to the site and apply it; return the results with the next bundles.

   Result: the command results appear in LightHouse when that bundle is imported.

Set-up mission

The See your stack report in step is complete for an air-gapped site once a telemetry bundle from it has been imported. See Organisation set-up.

Manual settings

Get my stack does not yet write two settings for a site with no internet access; they are added to the .env by hand: the offline profile for local inference, and the setting that loads retrieval’s models only from the installed mirror. Self-hosted models and Air-gapped operation describe both.