This session was selected by the VMware User Group (VMUG) for their Global Virtual Event which was held on June 27, 2023. As part of the session, some of the fundamentals of Kubernetes (K8s) are discussed. The talk then moves onto areas where vSphere Administrators can begin to onboard with Kubernetes, particularly when K8s control plane and worker nodes are deployed as a set of virtual machines on top of vSphere infrastructure. The two areas which are discussed in significant detail are the external Load Balancers and the vSphere CSI driver. The talk examines the options for different Load Balancers…
I’ve seen a number of queries around the behaviour of vSphere with Tanzu when it comes to querying Kubernetes objects on the Supervisor Cluster. More often than not, it is a question which arises when a user get an error similar to the following: Error from server (Forbidden): wcpnamespaces.appplatform.wcp.vmware.com is forbidden: \ User “sso:Administrator@vsphere.local” cannot list resource “wcpnamespaces” in API group \ “appplatform.wcp.vmware.com” in the namespace “cormac-ns” The reason for these errors is because the Supervisor Cluster is not treated as a general purpose Kubernetes cluster. The predominant role of the Supervisor Cluster is to provide services, such as the…
One of the key features of the TKG 2.0 on vSphere 8 announcement at VMware Explore 2022 is the consolidation of our the Tanzu Kubernetes offerings into a single unified Kubernetes runtime. This can be considered the second edition of VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid. It will still come in two flavors. One flavor is as a VM-based standalone management cluster whilst the other flavor will be Supervisor-based, integrated into vSphere with Tanzu. However, the important point is that both flavors now have the same APIs for cluster provisioning, same tooling for extension management, and the same model for release distribution.…
Following on from last week’s preview of multi-AZ in vSphere with Tanzu available in vSphere 8.0, I now turn my attention to another great feature. In this post, I will preview the new Pinniped integration to provide an easy and secure login to Tanzu Kubernetes clusters. I’ve discussed Pinniped a number of times on this site, but those previous posts relate to standalone TKG clusters (often referred to as TKGm). However, with vSphere 8.0, vSphere with Tanzu also has Pinniped integration. In a nutshell, vSphere Administrators can now federate an external Identity Provider (IDP) with the Supervisor cluster. This means…
One of the most interesting announcements for me at VMware Explore 2022 was around the introduction of vSphere Zones. This feature, when it becomes available with vSphere 8.0, enables vSphere with Tanzu deployments to be rolled out across geographically dispersed vSphere clusters placed in separate racks in a single physical datacenter, as per the release notes. This provides an extra level of availability that wasn’t previously possible. This extra availability is not just for the Supervisor Cluster, but also for the Tanzu Kubernetes clusters deployed by the TKG service. And indeed, it provides additional availability to the applications running on…
It is a long time since I wrote a post like this. However, I am thrilled to announce that I am back presenting at the VMware User Group conferences again this autumn. In October, I have been invited to speak at no fewer than four VMUG meetings around Europe. Without further ado, this is where you can hear me talk about some of our recent VMware Explore 2022 announcements regarding vSphere 8.0 and vSAN 8.0, vSphere+ and vSAN+, as well as Kubernetes on vSphere, and my thoughts around the vSphere Administrators journey towards managing Kubernetes platforms. I am delighted to…
VMware Explore 2022 kicked off this week. There are of course many announcements taking place across the whole suite of VMware products. In this post, I will focus primarily on the announcements related to the products that I work with on a regular basis. Those products are vSphere 8, vSphere Tanzu Standard (vSphere with Tanzu), and vSAN 8. vSphere 8 In the vSphere 8 space, the most significant announcement in my opinion is the fact that we are delivering on Project Monterey. We got our first technical preview of Project Monterey back in 2020 by the VMware CTO, Kit Colbert.…