In an air-gapped Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) deployment, the Konvoy bootstrap image must be made available to the local Docker daemon on the bastion host before initiating the bootstrap cluster creation. The docker load command is the standard and officially documented method for this task. It directly loads an image from a tar archive (.tar file) into the local image cache on the bastion host. This makes the image accessible for the konvoy up command, which creates the temporary bootstrap cluster.

B. docker image tag konvoy-bootstrap-image-.tar version docker.io/konvoy-bootstrap version: This command is syntactically incorrect. docker image tag is used to apply a new tag to an existing local image, not to load an image from a file archive.

C. nkp push bundle --bundle konvoy-bootstrap-image-.tar --to-registry=: This command is for pushing a complete NKP bundle (a collection of many images and addons) to a private registry, a step that the scenario states has already been completed.

D. nkp load image -f konvoy-bootstrap-image-.tar --to-registry=: While this command loads an image, its primary purpose is to immediately push it to a registry. The specific task is to make the image available on the bastion host for bootstrapping, for which docker load is the more direct and prescribed command.

1. Nutanix Kubernetes Platform 2.5 Documentation

Deploying NKP in an Air-Gapped Environment

Section: Preparing the Bastion Host. The documentation explicitly provides the command for this step: docker load -i konvoy-image-bundle-v.tar.

URL: https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Nutanix-Kubernetes-Platform-v25:ecm-air-gapped-deployment-bastion-host-prep-t.html

2. Docker Official Documentation

docker load. This documentation confirms that docker load restores images and tags from a tar archive.

URL: https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/load/