Perform Offline MATLAB Online Server Installation

This topic explains the steps you must perform to set up MATLAB^® Online Server™ on a single machine in a restricted or air-gapped environment.

MATLAB Online Server installer provides a way to bootstrap a single-node Kubernetes^® cluster on a node. However, this method pulls many third-party applications, for example, libraries, container images, and configuration files. This workflow might not work when network security measures meant to physically isolate the server from unsecure networks are employed.

Note the following:

The MATLAB Online Server single-machine installer assumes that the operating system is one of the Supported Platforms.
After MATLAB Online Server is installed, individual MATLAB instances are hosted by a container management tool, and the MATLAB Online Server stack is managed by Kubernetes.

Note

These instructions include sudo for commands that by default require administration privileges. Depending on how your environment is configured, sudo might not be required in some cases.

Verify Installation Prerequisites

Before beginning the installation, verify the following:

Your system is running one of the supported operating systems and meets the minimum hardware and software requirements described in MATLAB Online Server System Requirements.
In this workflow, you build the offline installer on a separate node with internet access and transfer the installer to the offline machine. This online node must have the same configuration and OS version as the offline machine. The node requires internet access so that the installer can download Linux^® packages for Kubernetes libraries specific to your installation, common Kubernetes Helm^® charts and containers, and MathWorks^® Helm charts and containers for MATLAB Online Server.
The offline machine is running in an air-gapped environment.
Your operating system is hosted at a static IP address. Kubernetes requires a static IP address to function properly. With dynamic IP addresses, when the IP address changes, the Kubernetes server fails and must be reinstalled.

Install Network License Manager

Follow the Linux instructions for installing on an offline machine described in Install License Manager on License Server in the Help Center. Configure the server to be accessed over the network.

MathWorks requires two license servers: one for MATLAB Online Server and one for MATLAB.
You can use existing network license servers or create a new installation.
MATLAB workers must have access to their MathWorks licenses. Those licenses can be either co-located on the same license server or on independent servers.
Specify the MATLAB and MATLAB Online Server license hostnames and ports using the <port>@<host>[,<port>@<other-host>] format. The hostname and port must be accessible from inside the Kubernetes cluster.
On each license server, add these lines to your license file to fix communication with the network license manager and the MLM daemon to ports 27000 and 27001, respectively.
```
SERVER <HOSTID> ID=0 27000
DAEMON MLM "<FLEXLM_INSTALL_LOCATION>/etc/MLM" port=27001
```
By default, the MATLAB Online Server network policy enables access to these ports. Running the network license manager and MLM daemon on different ports is supported, but this configuration requires additional updates to your MATLAB Online Server network policy.
If you are restricting access to toolboxes or licenses by username, you must allow mwuser, the username of the license service that runs in the Kubernetes cluster, to check out licenses for MATLAB Online Server. In the etc folder of the network license manager for MATLAB Online Server, add this line to your MLM.opt options file:
```
INCLUDE MATLAB_Online_Server USER mwuser
```
Depending on how your organization configures accounts, you might need to create an mwuser account to enable the license options file.

If the license server is configured correctly, then the license service running in the Kubernetes cluster runs without any errors and checks out the license when it starts. If the license is invalid or the license server cannot be reached, then the license service exits and Kubernetes automatically attempts to restart the license service periodically until it succeeds.

The other services require that the license server is running, but if the license is temporarily unavailable, they continue to run. After an approximately two-hour grace period, the services go into a hibernation state and then reject requests with a failed status. The logs of the services indicate when they enter or exit this hibernation or grace period state.

If you encounter any issues with the license service, see Resolve License Service Issues.

Download and Install MATLAB on Offline Machine

Download MATLAB for offline installation, install the software on the offline server, and install the documentation in the support package root folder of MATLAB.

Install MATLAB to the /MATLAB folder of the offline machine. See Install MathWorks Products on Offline Computer.
After installation, create the support package root folder.
```
mkdir /MATLAB/SupportPackages
```
Open MATLAB from the /MATLAB/bin folder.
```
/MATLAB/bin/matlab
```

In MATLAB, set the support package root.

matlabshared.supportpkg.setSupportPackageRoot('/MATLAB/SupportPackages')

Restart MATLAB.
Install the documentation to the support package root folder. See Install Documentation on Offline Machines.

Download MATLAB Online Server Installer

Follow these steps to download and then extract the MATLAB Online Server installer and files.

Go to the Downloads page on mathworks.com.
Under Select Release, select the current release, for example R2023b.
Expand the Get MATLAB Online Server section. This section appears only if your account has a license for MATLAB Online Server software.
Click Download to download the ZIP file.
In the download folder or folder of your choice, extract the installation files. For example, this command downloads the ZIP file to your home directory (~/).
```
unzip R2023b_matlab_online_server.zip -d ~/
```
The unzipped matlab_online_server folder is the root folder of your MATLAB Online Server installation. Navigate into this folder. For example, if you unzipped the folder into your home directory, run this command.
```
cd ~/matlab_online_server
```
Confirm that this folder contains the following files and subfolders.
```
ls
```
- attributions.txt — Third-party software license attributions file, which is also included in each release container image.
- data — Folder that stores MATLAB Online Server data.
- install.config — File containing properties used to configure your MATLAB Online Server installation.
- mosadm — Command-line executable used to install and configure MATLAB Online Server.
- thirdpartylicenses.txt — Third-party software license file, which is also included in each release container image.
The mosadm command is the main utility to perform the remaining installation steps. You must run this command from your MATLAB Online Server installation folder. For details on the various operations it can perform, run this command.
```
./mosadm help
```

Configure MATLAB Online Server

Edit the install.config file, located in the folder where you unzipped the installer, using a text editor such as nano.

nano install.config

Before editing this file, consider creating a backup of install.config so that you have a record of the default settings.

At a minimum, set these parameter values.

Configuration Parameter	Value
`DOMAIN_BASE`	Fully qualified domain name of the target offline machine
`ML_PASSWORD`	Administrator password you want to use to log in to MATLAB Online™. The default is `password`.
`MOS_LICENSE_SERVER`	Port and hostname of your MATLAB Online Server license server. Use the `port@host` format. Example: `27000@myhostname`
`MATLAB_LICENSE_SERVER`	Port and hostname of your MATLAB Online Server license server. Use the `port@host` format. Example: `27000@myhostname`
`OFFLINE_MODE`	`true`

Specify additional properties for your deployment as needed. For example, you can update the namespace to use for the deployment or enable TLS security. For a complete list of parameters, see Installation Configuration Properties.

Build Offline Installer

Next, on the same machine, build the installer for MATLAB Online Server with the following command:

sudo ./mosadm build-offline-installer

This command downloads all the required artifacts for building the installer:

Kubernetes repo (for Kubernetes executables)
Yum repos configured on your system (RHEL^® repos)
Docker^® registry
- Docker hub
- gcr.io
Helm charts
- GitHub^®

Refer to the "Installed Utilities" section of Bootstrap Node for Ubuntu Systems for more details on these artifacts.

After the build command completes, check that the following folders are present:

matlab_online_server/data/kubepacker-direct-install-baseimage-x.x.x/files/opt/mw/offlineinstaller/
matlab_online_server/data/com.3p.*

Output from the build can be viewed in the terminal. If the build was not successful, try rebuilding, and if it fails again, contact MathWorks Support.

Copy MATLAB Online Server and MATLAB to Air-Gapped Machine

Copy the matlab_online_server folder to the offline server where you want to host MATLAB Online Server. For example:
```
scp -r matlab_online_server 
username@server.com/home/rheluser/matlab_online_server
```
Copy your local MATLAB folder to the /MATLAB folder of the offline server. For example:
```
scp -r matlab/R2023b username@server.com/MATLAB
```
Log off of the first machine and log in to the air-gapped machine.

Note

To continue with the installation, the OFFLINE_MODE parameter of the install.config file must be set to true, as described in the Configure MATLAB Online Server section.

Install Kubernetes and MATLAB Online Server

Download and install the required Kubernetes components, and install MATLAB Online Server on the installed Kubernetes cluster.

Create a single-node Kubernetes architecture.
```
sudo ./mosadm bootstrap-node
```
This command downloads and installs dependencies and the Kubernetes components. It then initializes a single-node Kubernetes cluster on the machine and customizes the cluster for MATLAB Online Server. It can take several minutes for the installation to finish.
If you are using Docker as your container management tool, the Docker daemon is configured using the properties in the file /etc/docker/daemon.json, and the bootstrap-node command overwrites any customizations. See mosadm bootstrap-node for more details on the bootstrap process.
To preserve existing customizations, use the following command instead.
```
sudo ./mosadm bootstrap-node --preserve-docker-config
```
At this step, you are asked to accept the terms and conditions for installing MATLAB Online Server. If you agree, answer "Y." If you do not, answer "N," which closes the installer. If you do not agree, you cannot install MATLAB Online Server.
To verify successful installation, confirm the existence of the /etc/kubernetes/admin.conf file. This file exists only after the cluster is created successfully.
```
ls /etc/kubernetes/admin.conf
```

Check that the pods are in the ready state. Each pods should have a READY state of 1/1 containers with a STATUS of Running. If you do not see the correct list of pods, check the version number for the install files. It can take several minutes for all pods to come online.

sudo kubectl --kubeconfig /etc/kubernetes/admin.conf get pods --all-namespaces

The command returns a display similar to the following.

NAMESPACE     NAME                                       READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
kube-system   coredns-78fde67838-m2spd                   1/1     Running   0          51s
kube-system   etcd-ip-174-32-36-164                      1/1     Running   1          65s
kube-system   kube-apiserver-ip-174-32-36-164            1/1     Running   1          65s
kube-system   kube-controller-manager-ip-174-32-36-164   1/1     Running   1          68s
kube-system   kube-router-w2mk4                          1/1     Running   0          52s
kube-system   kube-scheduler-ip-174-32-36-164            1/1     Running   1          65s

Merge the kube-config file into your home folder so that you can execute the kubectl command without having to specify the --kubeconfig /etc/kubernetes/admin.conf flag going forward.
```
sudo ./mosadm merge-kube-config
```

Install NGINX Ingress Controller

The NGINX ingress controller processes incoming requests to the Kubernetes cluster and acts as a load balancer for MATLAB Online Server.

If you are using your own ingress controller, skip this step and see Configure NGINX Ingress Controller instead.

Install the controller and display the configuration options used for the controller.

./mosadm install-ingress

# Config file for a ingress-nginx helm deploy
rbac:
  create: true

controller:
  hostNetwork: true
  ...

Verify that the controller is installed correctly. mathworks is the default namespace used for the installation. You can customize this name in a later step.

kubectl get pods --namespace mathworks

NAME                                                  READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
mathworks-ingress-nginx-controller-7fdcd49d74-zngv4   1/1     Running   0          54s

Load Docker Images

Load the Docker images from the built installer into the local Docker cache.
```
sudo ./mosadm load-docker-images
```
(Optional) Verify that you have enough disk space to build and load the MATLAB image by checking the size of your /MATLAB folder. Use the du (disk usage) command. For example:
```
du /MATLAB --summarize --human-readable
```
From the local installation of MATLAB that you installed in the Download and Install MATLAB on Offline Machine step, build an image containing MATLAB. This step can take several minutes.
Note
To build this image, your machine must have a TMPDIR environment variable that specifies a writable temporary directory mounted in exec mode. For details on applying this configuration, see Tips in the mosadm build-matlab-image documentation.
```
sudo ./mosadm build-matlab-image /MATLAB
```
Here, /MATLAB is the path to the folder containing your installation of MATLAB.

Configure Overrides

With the cluster and Docker images ready to use, before the deploying the services, load the configuration overrides.

Create the chart configuration files for the deployments. This command creates the YAML override files that you can use to configure the server in the overrides/cluster/namespace folder of your MATLAB Online Server installation, where:
- cluster is the name of your cluster (matlab-online-server for single-node installations).
- namespace is the value of the NAMESPACE parameter in your install.config file (default = mathworks).
```
sudo ./mosadm generate-overrides
```
Confirm that overrides/cluster/namespace contains the following files and subfolders.
```
ls ./overrides/cluster/namespace
```
- all.yaml
- authnz.yaml
- core-ui.yaml
- gateway.yaml
- license.yaml
- matlab-pool.yaml
- namespace.yaml
- resource.yaml

The YAML files enable you to override the default configuration and customize the server. For example, you can configure storage and authentication. To customize the server before deployment, see Setup and Configuration. Otherwise, proceed to the next step.

Deploy MATLAB Online Server

To install all the MATLAB Online Server components, run the mosadm deploy command:
```
./mosadm deploy
```
This command uses Helm to install all the charts, customized with any overrides that you generate in the previous step.

Check that the services are all running with kubectl, replacing namespace with the namespace you used for MATLAB Online Server (default = mathworks). Depending on how you configured the server and the platform on which you installed the server, the exact pods you see might differ from the ones shown here.

kubectl get pods --namespace namespace

NAME                                                     READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
namespace-authnz-7994c9866d-675fb                   1/1     Running   0          10m
namespace-core-ui-cfdcccc4c-5bhrc                   1/1     Running   0          10m
namespace-gateway-88ffd446d-mbf2l                   1/1     Running   0          10m
namespace-gateway-proxy-6f85db9cbb-8ftbr            1/1     Running   0          10m
namespace-gateway-proxy-6f85db9cbb-mdhr7            1/1     Running   0          10m
namespace-license-5cc85b97cd-zg4vd                  1/1     Running   0          10m
namespace-matlab-pool-9cc6b6465-9rdz8               2/2     Running   0          6m54s
namespace-matlab-pool-9cc6b6465-t7wp2               2/2     Running   0          3m40s
namespace-matlab-pool-helpsearch-8479fbdc88-4r6sd   1/1     Running   0          6m54s
namespace-matlab-pool-ui-8484bbbd4d-t6777           1/1     Running   0          6m54s
namespace-resource-78f9b97745-fzwlq                 1/1     Running   0          10m

The pods running MATLAB can take several minutes to fully start (2/2 containers). It is important to wait until the pods are in the ready state. If any of the containers do not start running, check the license server and the install.config settings. See Resolve MATLAB Pod Issues.

Verify MATLAB Online Server Installation

Make sure the address in the DOMAIN_BASE parameter defined in install.config is registered and can be routed to the IP address of the host machine. Run this command, replacing DOMAIN_BASE with the value of the DOMAIN_BASE parameter.
```
ping -c 1 DOMAIN_BASE
```
This command returns the IP address of the host machine. In some types of installation, the ping does not receive packets. If you have such an installation, this command returns the IP address of the server you ping.
Open a browser on another machine and then go to the address where you are hosting MATLAB Online:
```
DOMAIN_BASE/matlabonline
```
Your browser window displays the MATLAB Online login screen. For a single-machine installation, use the username admin and the password you specified in the ML_PASSWORD parameter of install.config (the default is password).

If you can now access your internal version of MATLAB Online, installation is complete. If you cannot access MATLAB Online, or you run into any other technical error, contact MathWorks Support.

Set Up Server

With the installation process and initial configuration complete, you must now complete additional tasks to set up the server for use in your organization. For example, you need to:

Configure user authentication by specifying your identity provider details.
Configure the installed MATLAB versions and specify which user groups can access them.
Configure persistent storage and which directories, drives, and files users can access.
Customize the MATLAB Online sign-in screen.

To get started setting up the server, see Set Up MATLAB Online Server After Installation.