Why you should be using portable zero-touch provisioning on the edge

Why you should be using portable zero-touch provisioning on the edge Challenges of provisioning air-gapped edge environments Portable edge ZTP architecture pattern How to design an air-gapped zero-touch provisioning solution Embracing container-native OS with RHEL image mode Laptop deployment Edge device image deployment Modern application distribution for edge Day 2 management evolution Automated zero-touch deployment Red Hat Device Edge | Product Trial About the author Silvio Pérez Torres More like this Blog post Blog post Blog post Keep exploring Browse by channel Automation Artificial intelligence Open hybrid cloud Security Edge computing Infrastructure Applications Virtualization Share Being connected is important, but for a dispersed, global, and mobile organization that works with increasingly sensitive data, sometimes it's better to stay disconnected for security, safety, operational, and other technical concerns. This type of deployment is often referred to as air-gapped. Common air-gapped environments include ships, vehicles, aircraft, remote industrial sites, nuclear facilities, and emergency field operations. These are locations where traditional network connectivity is unavailable or undesired, but where critical decision-making, predictive maintenance, resource estimation, safety monitoring, intrusion detection, and anomaly detection are essential. To address the challenges of operating in air-gapped environments (including lack of connectivity, limited hardware resources, manual update procedures, and the need for secure, autonomous systems) where agility in deployment and redeployment is critical, a portable edge zero touch provisioning (ZTP) solution can be adopted. Across various industry use cases, several essential requirements consistently emerge, which can be integrated into the ZTP solution: Self-contained: No dependency on cloud API or external data sources Long-lived: Must run for weeks or months without updates Secure by default: Threat models assume local tampering or sabotage Hardware-aware: Limited compute, storage, power, and rugged devices Manually updatable: Updates over USB, SD cards, or other physical media Network-constrained: Low, intermittent, or no connectivity (GSM, satellite, or fully offline) With common characteristics of air-gapped and resource-constrained environments identified, a portable edge ZTP architecture pattern can now be defined: Immutable infrastructure Description: The system, including operating system and services, is deployed as read-only, signed images. Benefits: Helps prevent drift and unauthorized changes, ensuring system integrity and security, which is crucial in an isolated environment. Description: The system, including operating system and services, is deployed as read-only, signed images. Benefits: Helps prevent drift and unauthorized changes, ensuring system integrity and security, which is crucial in an isolated environment. Hybrid workload: Description: Combine OCI-compliant containers with traditional package-based or virtualized workloads using Image Builder to enable seamless coexistence, with locally-hosted registries or USB transfers for modular, isolated deployment Benefits: Simplifies deployment, scalability, and management of applications, allowing for isolated updates without affecting other components. Description: Combine OCI-compliant containers with traditional package-based or virtualized workloads using Image Builder to enable seamless coexistence, with locally-hosted registries or USB transfers for modular, isolated deployment Benefits: Simplifies deployment, scalability, and management of applications, allowing for isolated updates without affecting other components. Offline, physical media, and network-isolated updates Description: Updates are delivered by physical media (USB, SD card) or through local network-restricted methods (DHCP/HTTP boot) using formats such as OSTree or container images.