vSphere with Tanzu stateful application backup/restore using Velero vSphere Operator

Recently I wrote about our new Velero vSphere Operator. This new functionality, launched with VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 4.2, enables administrators to backup and restore objects in their vSphere with Tanzu namespaces. In my previous post, I showed how we could use the Velero vSphere Operator to backup and restore a stateless application (the example used was an Nginx deployment) to and from an S3 Object Store bucket. The S3 object store and bucket was provided by the Minio Operator that is also available in VCF 4.2 as part of the vSAN Data Persistent platform (DPp) offering. In this post,…

VCF 4.1.0.1 Update to VCF 4.2 – Step by Step

VMware recently announced the release of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) version 4.2. I was particular interested in this release as it allows me to try out the new vSAN Data Persistence platform (DPp). My good pal Myles has an excellent introduction to DPp here  and I plan to create a number of posts on it going forward. My VCF 4.1.0.1 environment is what we call a Consolidated Architecture , meaning that both the management domain and workload domain run on the same infrastructure. The primary application that I run in this environment is VCF with Tanzu (vSphere with Tanzu on…

TKG & vSAN File Service for RWX (Read-Write-Many) Volumes

A common question I get in relation to VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid  (TKG) is whether or not it supports vSAN File Service, and specifically the read-write-many (RWX) feature for container volumes. To address this question, we need to make a distinction into how TKG is being provisioned. There is the multi-cloud version of TKG, which can run on vSphere, AWS or Azure, and are deployed from a TKG manager. Then there is the embedded TKG edition where ‘workload clusters’ are deployed in Namespaces via vSphere with Tanzu / VCF with Tanzu. To answer the question about whether or not TKG…

A closer look at Antrea, the new CNI for vSphere with Tanzu guest clusters

I’ve spent quite a bit of time highlighting many of the new features of vSphere with Tanzu in earlier blog posts. In those posts, we saw how vSphere with Tanzu could be used to provision Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) guest clusters to provide a native, upstream-like, VMware supported Kubernetes. In this post, I want to delve into the guest cluster in more detail and examine the new, default Container Network Interface (CNI) called Antrea that is now shipping with the TKG guest cluster. Antrea provides networking and security services for a Kubernetes cluster. It is based on the Open vSwitch…

Creating developer users and namespaces (scripted) in TKG “Guest” Clusters

I’ve spent a lot of time recently on creating and building out vSphere with Tanzu environment, with the goal of deploying a Tanzu Kubernetes “guest” cluster. I frequently used the kubectl-vsphere command to logout of the Supervisor namespace context and login to the Guest cluster context. This allowed me to start deploying stateful and stateful apps in my Tanzu Kubernetes Guest cluster. I thought no more about this step until a recent conversation with my colleague Frank Denneman. He queried whether or not Kubernetes developers would actually have vSphere privileges to do this. It was a great question which led…

Virtually Speaking Podcast Episode #174: vSphere with Tanzu

I’m sure most readers are now aware that we now have 2 versions of what was initially called “Project Pacific” at VMworld 2019. Our initial release with vSphere 7.0 (vSphere with Kubernetes) was only available with VCF & NSX-T. However, with the release of vSphere 7.0U1, whilst we continue to have VCF with Tanzu, there is a new version outside of VCF called vSphere with Tanzu. I have written about how to get started with this new version, from covering the prerequisites, deploying a HA-Proxy, enabling vSphere with Tanzu Workload Management and deploying your first TKG ‘guest’ cluster. In this…

Deploying Tanzu Kubernetes “guest” cluster in vSphere with Tanzu

In this final installment of my “vSphere with Tanzu” posts, we are going to look at how to create our very first Tanzu Kubernetes (TKG) guest cluster. In previous posts, we have compared vSphere with Tanzu to VCF with Tanzu, and covered the prerequisites. Then we looked at the steps involved in deploying the HA-Proxy to provide a load balancer service to vSphere with Tanzu. In my most recent post, we looked at the steps involved in enabling workload management. Now that all of that is in place, we are finally able to go ahead and deploy a TKG cluster,…