Category Archives: Kubernetes

VMware Tanzu Header

Deploying Tanzu Kubernetes Grid to AWS fails with ‘InstanceProvisionFailed’

VMware, Kubernetes, , , ,
The issue

When deploying Tanzu Kubernetes Grid to AWS, the deployment was failing with the following output:

unable to set up management cluster, : unable to wait for cluster and get the cluster kubeconfig: error waiting for cluster to be provisioned (this may take a few minutes): cluster creation failed, reason:'InstanceProvisionFailed @ Machine/tkg-aws-mgmt-control-plane-dqb4v', message:'1 of 2 completed'
The Cause

When we reviewed the CAPA logs (Cluster API AWS provider) we found the following errors logged: Continue reading Deploying Tanzu Kubernetes Grid to AWS fails with ‘InstanceProvisionFailed’ →

vRA EKS Tanzu Mission Control Header

Using vRA to deploy AWS EKS Clusters and register with Tanzu Mission Control

VMware, Kubernetes, , , , ,

This walk-through will detail the technical configurations for using vRA Code Stream to deploy AWS EKS Clusters, register them as Kubernetes endpoints in vRA Cloud Assembly and Code Stream, and finally register the newly created cluster in Tanzu Mission Control.

Requirement

Tanzu Mission Control has some fantastic capabilities, including the ability to deploy Tanzu Kubernetes Clusters to various platforms (vSphere, AWS, Azure). However today there is no support to provision native AWS EKS clusters, it can however manage most Kubernetes distributions.

Therefore, when I was asked about where VMware could provide such capabilities, my mind turned to the ability to deploy the clusters using vRA Code Stream, and provide additional functions on making these EKS clusters usable.

High Level Steps
  • Create a Code Stream Pipeline
    • Create a AWS EKS Cluster
    • Create EKS cluster as endpoint in both Code Stream and Cloud Assembly
    • Register EKS cluster in Tanzu Mission Control
Pre-Requisites
  • vRA Cloud access
    • The pipeline can be changed easily for use with vRA on-prem
  • AWS Account that can provision EKS clusters
  • A Docker host to be used by Code Stream
  • Tanzu Mission Control account that can register new clusters
  • VMware Cloud Console Tokens for vRA Cloud and Tanzu Mission Control API access
  • The configuration files for the pipeline can be found in this GitHub repository
Creating a Code Stream Pipeline to deploy a AWS EKS Cluster and register the endpoints with vRA and Tanzu Mission Control
Create the variables to be used

First, we will create several variables in Code Stream, you could change the pipeline tasks to use inputs instead if you wanted. Continue reading Using vRA to deploy AWS EKS Clusters and register with Tanzu Mission Control →

Tanzu Mission Control Header

Tanzu Mission Control – Upgrading Kubernetes for a provisioned cluster

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Now we understand how to deploy a Tanzu Kubernetes Cluster using Tanzu Mission Control, let’s look at the next lifecycle step, how to upgrade the Kubernetes version of the cluster.

Below are the other blog posts in the series.

Tanzu Mission Control 
- Getting Started Tanzu Mission Control 
- Cluster Inspections 
- Workspaces and Policies  
- Data Protection 
- Deploying TKG clusters to AWS 
- Upgrading a provisioned cluster 
- Delete a provisioned cluster 
- TKG Management support and provisioning new clusters
- TMC REST API - Postman Collection
- Using custom policies to ensure Kasten protects a deployed application

When a cluster which has been provisioned by TMC, and therefore managed by TMC, has an available upgrade, you will see an “i” icon next to the version on the clusters UI view, hovering over this will tell you there is an upgrade ready.

TMC - Clusters - Upgrade Available

Click the cluster name to take you into the cluster object to see the full details,

  1. click the actions button
  2. and select upgrade.

TMC - Cluster - Actions - Upgrade

The Upgrade Cluster dialogue will appear. Select the version you want to upgrade to and click upgrade.

TMC - Cluster - Upgrade Cluster - Select Version

On both the Cluster list and Cluster Detailed view, the status will change to upgrading.

TMC - Cluster Upgrading 2TMC - Cluster Upgrading

Once the upgrade has completed, the cluster will change back to ready and show the updated version.

TMC - Cluster upgrade complete

Wrap-up and Resources

In this quick blog post, we used Tanzu Mission Control to upgrade a provisioned Tanzu Kubernetes Grid cluster which was running in AWS. All the steps provided in this blog post can be replicated using the TMC CLI as well.

As a reminder, to take real advantage of TMC I recommend you read the follow posts:

Tanzu Mission Control 
- Getting Started Tanzu Mission Control 
- Cluster Inspections 
- Workspaces and Policies  
- Data Protection 
- Deploying TKG clusters to AWS 
- Upgrading a provisioned cluster 
- Delete a provisioned cluster 
- TKG Management support and provisioning new clusters
- TMC REST API - Postman Collection
- Using custom policies to ensure Kasten protects a deployed application

You can get hands on experience of Tanzu Mission Control yourself over on the VMware Hands-on-Lab website, which is always free!

Regards

Dean Lewis

 

VMware Tanzu Header

Tanzu Mission Control – Delete a provisioned cluster

VMware, Kubernetes, , , ,

In this blog post we are going to cover off how to delete a Tanzu Kubernetes Grid cluster that has been provisioned by Tanzu Mission Control. We will cover the following areas:

Below are the other blog posts in the series.

Tanzu Mission Control 
- Getting Started Tanzu Mission Control 
- Cluster Inspections 
- Workspaces and Policies  
- Data Protection 
- Deploying TKG clusters to AWS 
- Upgrading a provisioned cluster 
- Delete a provisioned cluster 
- TKG Management support and provisioning new clusters
- TMC REST API - Postman Collection
- Using custom policies to ensure Kasten protects a deployed application

We are going to use the cluster I created in my last blog post.

Below are my EC2 instances that make up my TMC provisioned cluster, here I have filtered my view using the field “tmc.cloud.vmware.com/cluster” + cluster name.

Tanzu Mission Control - AWS Consoles - Instances - Filtered tmc.cloud.vmware.com

Deleting a Provisioned cluster in the TMC UI

In the TMC UI, going to the clusters view, you can click the three dots next to the cluster you want to remove and select delete.

Tanzu Mission Control - Clusters - Delete cluster

Alternatively, within the cluster object view, click actions then delete.

Tanzu Mission Control - Cluster Object - Delete cluster

Both options will bring up the below confirmation dialog box.

You select one of the following options:

  • Delete and remove agent (recommended)
    • Remove from TMC and delete agent extensions
  • Manually delete agent extensions
    • A secondary option whereby a manual removal is needed if a cluster delete fails

Enter the name of the cluster you want to delete, to confirm the cluster deletion.

Tanzu Mission Control - Cluster Object - Delete cluster - Confirm Continue reading Tanzu Mission Control – Delete a provisioned cluster →

VMware Tanzu Header

Tanzu Mission Control – Deploying TKG Clusters to AWS

Kubernetes, VMware, , , ,

This blog post will cover a technical walk-through on using Tanzu Mission Control to deploy Tanzu Kubernetes clusters to AWS.

The follow up blog posts in this series are:

Tanzu Mission Control 
- Getting Started Tanzu Mission Control 
- Cluster Inspections 
- Workspaces and Policies  
- Data Protection 
- Deploying TKG clusters to AWS 
- Upgrading a provisioned cluster 
- Delete a provisioned cluster 
- TKG Management support and provisioning new clusters
- TMC REST API - Postman Collection
- Using custom policies to ensure Kasten protects a deployed application
Using the AWS Hosted Management Cluster

In this example, we will use the default provided AWS Hosted Management cluster.

Alternatively, you can use the Tanzu CLI to provision a TKG Management cluster into AWS and attach this to Tanzu Mission Control.

Currently it is not supported to have a Management Cluster manage clusters across platforms.

  • I.e. Management Cluster in AWS that manages workload clusters in Azure.

To get started:

  1. Go to Administration
  2. Click the Management Clusters Tab
  3. Click on the “aws-hosted” cluster object name

TMC - Administration - Management Clusters

Create a provisioner

The default tab when selecting the “aws-hosted” management cluster object is the provisioner tab.

  • Click create provisioner

TMC - aws-hosted - provisioners - create provisioner

  • Provide a name for the provisioner
  • Click confirm

TMC - aws-hosted - provisioners - create provisioner - provide name

You will be taken back to your provisioner object which is created. Using the radio button to select the object will allow you to delete it. No other action is available.

TMC - aws-hosted - provisioners - provisioner created

Create the AWS account
  1. Click on accounts tab
  2. Click the “Create Account Credential” Button

TMC - aws-hosted - accounts - create account credential Continue reading Tanzu Mission Control – Deploying TKG Clusters to AWS →