A first look at VKSM Data Protection (VKSM DP)

One of the new features in VCF Automation version 9.0.1 is a feature called vSphere Kubernetes Service Management, or VKSM for short. This gives users access to many additional capabilities, such as Data Protection, Policy Management and Add-on Management to improve the resiliency, security, and functionality of your VKS clusters. In this post, I wanted to take a look at the Data Protection capability (VKSM DP for short), as this is something I looked at quite closely in the past. To demonstrate, we will first configure a backup location, then enable Data Protection, then test a backup and restore of…

Using the VCF 9.x CLI to troubleshoot a DSM database running on VKS

As many readers are now aware, databases provisioned from DSM via VCF Automation have the option to create a vSphere Kubernetes Service cluster to host the database. The decision to use a VKS cluster or whether to use DSM’s own Kubernetes cluster is based on the Infrastructure Policy. If the Infrastructure Policy is built on traditional vSphere resources, then DSM’s own K8s is used. If the Infrastructure Policy points to a Supervisor Namespace, then VKS is used. In this post, I wanted to provide some tips and tricks on accessing and troubleshooting the DSM database and VKS cluster backing the…

VCF 9.0 Volume Service – Consuming static RWX volumes via VKS

Following on from my previous post on this topic, a number of people reached out to ask about how to add read-write-many (RWX) volumes to a Pod in VKS. Again, for dynamic volumes, this is quite simple to do. But what about some static volumes which were initially created by the Volume Service. This is a summary of what I posted in my previous blog in relation to RWX volumes. “Since RWX volumes are back by vSAN File Shares in VCF 9.0, you will need to have vSAN File Service enabled and configured. You will also have to tell the…

VCF 9.0 Volume Service – Consuming static volumes via VKS

I have been spending some time looking at the new Volume Service in VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0. Through VCF Automation, is is possible for tenants of VCF to provision their own volumes. These volumes can be consumed by the VM Service, something that has been a part of the Supervisor Services for many years. However, it is also possible for workloads running in VKS, the vSphere Kubernetes Service, to consume the static volumes provisioned via the Volume Service. In this post, I will show you the steps to create a static volume via the Volume Service, and then create…