Deploy Plane Commercial in an Airgapped Kubernetes Environment

IMPORTANT
Airgapped deployments are available exclusively for Business plan customers. Contact our sales team for pricing and licensing information.

This guide walks you through deploying Plane Commercial in an airgapped Kubernetes environment using Helm charts and pre-packaged Docker images.

What you’ll need

Before starting, ensure you have:

• Kubernetes cluster (v1.31 - v1.33)
• Helm 3.x installed
• kubectl configured to access your cluster
• cert-manager available in the cluster
• A valid and working ingress controller (nginx, traefik, etc)
• Required ports opened to access the application (80, 443)
• SMTP ports opened if using email intake (25, 465, 587)

While Kubernetes can run stateful services with persistent volumes, and Plane’s Helm chart supports deploying PostgreSQL, MinIO, RabbitMQ, and Redis, we strongly recommend using external managed services for better reliability in backup/restore operations and disaster recovery.

Consider these alternatives:

• MinIO: Replace with AWS S3, Google Cloud Storage, or any S3-compatible service
• Redis: Replace with Valkey or a managed Redis service
• PostgreSQL: Use a managed PostgreSQL service
• RabbitMQ: Use a managed message queue service
• OpenSearch: Use a managed OpenSearch or Elasticsearch service

Install Plane

1. Download Plane Enterprise Helm chart

   Get the Plane Enterprise Helm chart from the official release. Check for the latest version at Artifact Hub.

   # Using wget
   wget https://github.com/makeplane/helm-charts/releases/download/plane-enterprise-1.6.4/plane-enterprise-1.6.4.tgz
   
   # Using curl
   curl -L -O https://github.com/makeplane/helm-charts/releases/download/plane-enterprise-1.6.4/plane-enterprise-1.6.4.tgz
   

2. Prepare Docker images for airgapped environment

   Refer to this document to download the Docker images from the public repository to your internal repository.

   Important
   This process will NOT download or clone these infrastructure images:

   • valkey:7.2.5-alpine
   • postgres:15.7-alpine
   • rabbitmq:3.13.6-management-alpine
   • minio/minio:latest
   • minio/mc:latest
   • opensearchproject/opensearch:3.3.2

   If you’re using local_setup: true for any of these services, you’ll need to pull and transfer these images separately.

3. Configure custom values file

   a. Extract the default values from the Helm chart.

   helm show values plane-enterprise-1.6.4.tgz > custom-values.yaml
   

   b. Update Docker image references

   Edit the custom-values.yaml file to point to your local or private registry images and configure important settings.

   Basic configuration:

   # Specify the Plane version
   planeVersion: <plane-version>
   
   # Enable airgapped mode (REQUIRED)
   airgapped:
       enabled: true  # Must be TRUE for airgapped installations
       # If using custom root CA for S3 storage
       s3SecretName: "s3-custom-ca"
       s3SecretKey: "s3-custom-ca.crt"
   

   Service images:

   services:
       web:
           image: /web-commercial
       
       api:
           image: /backend-commercial
       
       space:
           image: /space-commercial
       
       admin:
           image: /admin-commercial
       
       live:
           image: /live-commercial
       
       monitor:
           image: /monitor-commercial
       
       email_service:
           enabled: true
           image: /email-commercial
       
       silo:
           enabled: true
           image: /silo-commercial
       
       iframely:
           enabled: true
           image: /iframely:v1.2.0
   

   Infrastructure services:

   Configure whether to use local (in-cluster) or external services:

   services:
   # Database and infrastructure images
   redis:
       local_setup: true  # Set to false if using external service
       image: valkey/valkey:7.2.11-alpine
   
   postgres:
       local_setup: true  # Set to false if using external service
       image: postgres:15.7-alpine
   
   rabbitmq:
       local_setup: true  # Set to false if using external service
       image: rabbitmq:3.13.6-management-alpine
       external_rabbitmq_url: ''  # Required only if using remote RabbitMQ
   
   minio:
       local_setup: true  # Set to false if using external service
       image: minio/minio:latest
       image_mc: minio/mc:latest
   

   Environment variables:

   env:
   storageClass: ''
   remote_redis_url: ''  # Required only if using remote Redis
   pgdb_remote_url: ''  # Required only if using remote PostgreSQL
   # Required if MinIO local_setup is false
   aws_access_key: ''
   aws_secret_access_key: ''
   aws_region: ''
   aws_s3_endpoint_url: ''
   

   c. Configure integrations and importers

   To set up integrations with external systems like Slack, GitHub, and GitLab, configure these values in custom-values.yaml:

   services:
   silo:
       enabled: true
       connectors:
       slack:
           enabled: false
           client_id: ''
           client_secret: ''
       github:
           enabled: false
           client_id: ''
           client_secret: ''
           app_name: ''
           app_id: ''
           private_key: ''
       gitlab:
           enabled: false
           client_id: ''
           client_secret: ''
   
   env:
   silo_envs:
       batch_size: 100
       mq_prefetch_count: 1
       request_interval: 400
       hmac_secret_key: ''
       aes_secret_key: 'dsOdt7YrvxsTIFJ37pOaEVvLxN8KGBCr'
   

   d. Configure intake email

   The email intake feature in Plane lets you capture incoming emails. Before or after setting up the application, configure DNS settings following this guide.

   Add these required values to custom-values.yaml:

   ingress:
       enabled: true
       ingressClass: 'nginx'  # Or as per your cluster
       ingress_annotations: {}
   
   ssl:
       tls_secret_name: ''  # If you have a custom TLS secret name
       # If you want to use Let's Encrypt, set createIssuer and generateCerts to true
       createIssuer: false
       issuer: http  # Allowed: cloudflare, digitalocean, http
       token: ''  # Not required for http
       server: https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory
       email: [e-mail]  # A valid email address
       generateCerts: true
   
   services:
       email_service:
           enabled: true
           replicas: 1
           memoryLimit: 1000Mi
           cpuLimit: 500m
           memoryRequest: 50Mi
           cpuRequest: 50m
           image: /email-commercial:
           pullPolicy: Always
           nodeSelector: {}
           tolerations: []
           affinity: {}
           labels: {}
           annotations: {}
   
   env:
       email_service_envs:
           smtp_domain: ''
   

4. Install or upgrade with custom values

   Install Plane Enterprise using your customized values file:

   helm upgrade plane-app plane-enterprise-1.6.4.tgz \
       --install \
       --create-namespace \
       --namespace plane \
       -f custom-values.yaml \
       --timeout 10m \
       --wait \
       --wait-for-jobs
   

5. Verify installation

   Check that all components are running:

   # Check all pods
   kubectl get pods -n plane
   
   # Check services
   kubectl get services -n plane
   
   # Check ingress
   kubectl get ingress -n plane
   
   # Check persistent volumes
   kubectl get pv,pvc -n plane
   
   # Get the ingress URL
   kubectl get ingress -n plane -o wide
   

   You now have Plane running in your air-gapped environment. If you run into any issues, check the logs using the commands above, or reach out to our support team for assistance.

6. Activate your license key.

Additional configuration

For more advanced Plane configuration options, refer to the Kubernetes documentation.