Tkg on The IT Hollow

Configure a Private Registry for Tanzu Kubernetes Clusters

Wed, 22 Sep 2021 13:31:53 +0000

A really common task after deploying a Kubernetes cluster is to configure it to use a container registry where the container images are stored. A Tanzu Kubernetes Cluster (TKC) is no exception to this rule. vSphere 7 with Tanzu comes with an embedded harbor registry that can be used, but in many cases you all ready have your own container registry and so you’d like to continue using that instead.

Resizing Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Cluster Nodes

Wed, 09 Dec 2020 15:05:00 +0000

Have you ever missed when trying to properly size an Kubernetes environment? Maybe the requirements changed, maybe there were wrong assumptions, or maybe the project took off and it just needs more resources. Under normal circumstances, I might suggest to you to build a new Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) cluster and re-deploy your apps. Unfortunately, as much as I want to treat Kubernetes clusters as ephemeral, they can’t always be treated this way. If you need to resize your TKG nodes without re-deploying a new cluster, then keep reading.

Non-Interactive Logins to vSphere 7 with Tanzu Clusters

Tue, 01 Dec 2020 15:00:00 +0000

You’ve deployed your first Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Clusters in vSphere 7 and are beyond the learning phase. You’re now ready to start automating your Kubernetes cluster builds, and application deployments.

Typically you’d login to your TKG clusters through the kubectl cli with a command like:

kubectl vsphere login ...

Normally, you’d be right, but that command requires an interactive login, meaning for you to wait for a second prompt to enter a password. The current version of the vSphere plugin doesn’t have an option for non-interactive logins so we need to get creative until this feature is added.

Using YTT to Customize TKG Deployments

Mon, 09 Nov 2020 15:05:00 +0000

If you’ve worked with Kubernetes for very long, you’ve surely run into a need to manage YAML files. There are a bunch of options out there with their own benefits and drawbacks. One of these tools is called ytt and comes as part of the Carvel tools (formerly k14s).

If you’re working with the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid product from VMware, you’re likely to be using ytt to mange your TKG YAML manifests. This post aims to help you get started with using ytt for your own customizations.

Deploying Tanzu Kubernetes Clusters on vSphere 7

Wed, 09 Sep 2020 14:15:00 +0000

This post will focus on deploying Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) clusters in your vSphere 7 with Tanzu environment. These TKG clusters are the individual Kubernetes clusters that can be shared with teams for their development purposes.

I know what you’re thinking. Didn’t we already create a Kubernetes cluster when we setup our Supervisor cluster? The short answer is yes. However the Supervisor cluster is a unique Kubernetes cluster that probably shouldn’t be used for normal workloads. We’ll discuss this in more detail in a follow-up post. For now, let’s focus on how to create them, and later we’ll discuss when to use them vs the Supervisor cluster.

Deploying Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Management Clusters - vSphere

Mon, 06 Apr 2020 14:00:00 +0000

VMware recently released the 1.0 release of Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) which aims at decreasing the difficulty of deploying conformant Kubernetes clusters across infrastructure. This post demonstrates how to use TKG to deploy a management cluster to vSphere.

If you’re not familiar with TKG yet, you might be curious about what a Management Cluster is. The management cluster is used to manage one to many workload clusters. The management cluster is used to spin up VMs on different cloud providers, and lay down the Kubernetes bits on those VMs, thus creating new clusters for applications to be build on top of. TKG is built upon the ClusterAPI project so this post pretty accurately describes the architecture that TKG uses.