A short video explaining the role of the vSphere CSI (Container Storage Interface) driver and CNS (Cloud Native Storage) in both the vSphere with Kubernetes/Tanzu Supervisor Cluster and in the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) Guest Cluster. This video discusses the role of the CSI driver in the Supervisor cluster, and the pvCSI driver (para-virtual CSI driver) in the TKG guest cluster. We also look at how the pvCSI communicates CNS control plane in the vCenter Server via the CSI driver in the Supervisor Cluster to request Persistent Volume operations on behalf of the Guest Cluster.
In this post, I have two short videos demonstrating how to (1) deploy the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid multi-cloud (TKGm) management cluster using the “tkg” command line tool, and then once the TKG management cluster has been deployed, I show how to (2) very simply deploy a subsequent TKG workload cluster using the same “tkg” command. Note that at I have updated this post to use the TKGm acronym, as this is now how we are marketing this particular product. Previously, the term standalone was used. If you wish to know more detail, check out my full post on how to…
In many of my recent posts about vSphere with Kubernetes, I use a single user (administrator@vsphere.local) to do all of my work. This allows me to carry out a range of activities without worrying about permissions. This vSphere Single Sign-On (SSO) administrator has “edit” permissions on all of the vK8s namespaces. In this post, I want to look at how to assign some different vSphere SSO users and permissions to different namespaces, and also how these permissions are implemented in the vK8s platform (through the Kubernetes ClusterRole and RoleBinding constructs). Let’s start with a view of what a namespace looks…
VMware recently announced that availability of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 4.0.1. I was particularly interested in this release as it introduced some enhancements around vSphere with Kubernetes deployments on the VCF Management Domain. We refer to the deployment of an application onto the management domain as a VCF consolidated architecture. Whilst we were able to deploy vSphere with Kubernetes on the management domain in VCF version 4.0, it was not seamlessly integrated. In particular, it was not possible to select the management domain to do the necessary vSphere for Kubernetes validation tests. In VCF 4.0.1, it is now possible to…
After spending quite a bit of time looking at vSphere with Kubernetes, and how one could deploy a Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) “guest” cluster in a namespace with a simple manifest file, I thought it was time to look at other ways in which customers could deploy TKG clusters on top of vSphere infrastructure. In other words, deploy TKG without vSphere with Kubernetes, or VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) for that matter. This post will look at TKG multi-cloud (TKGm) version 1.1.2 and in particular the tkg command line tool to first deploy a TKG management cluster, and once that is…
I was recently asked to participate in the Gestalt IT podcast. The format was a little different to what I am used to. In the podcast, Stephen Foskett suggests a premise and the participants are asked to share their opinions on it. Essentially, pick a side. Do you agree or disagree with the premise? In this podcast, the premise was Orchestration is the reason enterprises haven’t adopted containers. During the conversation, I had the opportunity to talk about a number of initiatives that are on-going at VMware related to Kubernetes. Have a listen and let me know what you think.
A number of readers have hit me up with queries around how they can use the integrated Harbor image repository (that comes integrated with vSphere with Kubernetes) for applications that are deployed on their Tanzu Kubernetes Grid clusters, sometimes referred to as guest clusters. Unfortunately, there is no defined workflow on how to achieve this. The reason for this is that there are a number of additional life-cycle management considerations that we need to take into account before we can fully integrate these components. This includes adding new TKG nodes to the image registry as a TKG cluster is scaled.…