vSphere with Kubernetes on VCF 4.0 Consolidated Architecture

Since the release of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 4.0 over 1 month ago, I have been asked one question repeatedly – when can I run vSphere with Kubernetes (formerly known as Project Pacific) on a VCF 4.0 Consolidated Architecture? In other words, when can I deploy vSphere with Kubernetes on the Management Domain rather than building a separate VI Workload Domain to run it. The main reason for this request is because this reduces the number of ESXi hosts required to run vSphere with Kubernetes from 7 down to 4. So I am delighted to announce that we now have…

Deploy a Tanzu Kubernetes (TKG) cluster in vSphere with Kubernetes (Video)

This video will show the steps involved in deploying a fully functional Tanzu Kubernetes Grid cluster (TKG) via vSphere with Kubernetes. We will see how to build and sync a content library for the TKG control plane and worker node images. We will walk through the creation of a new namespace, and review the manifest file used for the creation of the cluster. Once deployed, we will switch contexts from the namespace used to build the cluster and place ourselves in the context of the new TKG cluster. From there, we will run some kubectl commands to query the cluster.…

vSphere with Kubernetes – Namespaces, Harbor and PodVMs (Video)

This short video will show you some of the initial steps that one might take once vSphere with Kubernetes has been successfully deployed via VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 4.0 and SDDC Manager. And FYI, as I know a number of reader have been asking this question, VCF 4.0 is now officially GA. In this short video, I will introduce you to the namespace concept in vSphere with Kubernetes as a way of allocating vSphere resources between multiple tenants. As well, we will see how to enable and use Harbor as a Container Image Registry. Finally we will deploy a StatefulSet…

Deploying vSphere with Kubernetes via VCF 4.0 SDDC Manager (Video)

In this post, I am going to share another short video that I made which highlights the main steps involved when deploying vSphere with Kubernetes from VCF 4.0 SDDC Manager. You can find the complete steps here in this previous post which shows how to deploy vSphere with Kubernetes in a Workload Domain. The video will talk you through the validation steps that are done in SDDC Manager, and then show you the complete vSphere with Kubernetes deployment in the vSphere UI. We will see the configuration changes that are made to NSX-T during the process as well. At the…

Automated NSX-T 3 Edge Cluster deployment in VCF 4.0 (Video)

A little while back, I wrote a post about what steps are involved in automatically deploying an NSX-T 3 Edge Cluster in VMware Cloud Foundation 4.0. I also though that it might be useful to show the steps involved in a very short video (less than 4 minutes in length). Automatic deployment of NSX-T 3 Edge clusters in VCF 4.0 is a really nice new feature, and those of us who have gone through the manual process of creating NSX-T Edge clusters can testify. Check out the video on YouTube here:

Getting started with VCF 4.0 Part 3 – vSphere with Kubernetes in a Workload Domain

At this point, we have a fully configured workload domain which includes an NSX-T Edge deployment. Check here for the previous VCF 4.0 deployment steps. We are now ready to go ahead and deploy vSphere with Kubernetes, formerly known as Project Pacific. Via SDDC Manager in VMware Cloud Foundation 4.0, we ensure that an NSX-T Edge is available, and we also ensure that the the Workload Domain is sufficiently licensed to enable vSphere with Kubernetes. Disclaimer: “To be clear, this post is based on a pre-GA version of the VMware Cloud Foundation 4.0. While the assumption is that not much…

Getting started with VCF 4.0 Part 2 – Commission hosts, Create Workload Domain, Deploy NSX-T Edge

Now that a VCF 4.0 Management Domain has been deployed, we can move onto creating our very first VCF 4.0 Virtual Infrastructure Workload Domain (VI WLD). We will require a VI WLD with an NSX-T Edge cluster before we can deploy Kubernetes on vSphere (formerly known as Project Pacific). Not too much has changed in the WLD creation workflow since version 3.9. We still have to commission ESXi hosts before we can create the WLD. But something different to previous versions of VCF is that today in VCF 4.0 we can automatically provision NSX-T Edge clusters from SDDC Manager to…