Tag Archives: Azure

CloudFlare DNS delegation to Azure - Header

Configuring DNS Delegation from CloudFlare to Azure DNS

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A quick post, following on from my other post which covers DNS Delegation from CloudFlare to AWS Route53.

In this walkthrough, we are going to cover the same setup, but for Microsoft Azure DNS.

Create a Azure DNS Zone

Starting in your Microsoft Azure console, search and find the DNS Zones service.

CloudFlare DNS delegation to Azure - Azure DNS Zone Service

Click to create a new DNS Zone.

CloudFlare DNS delegation to Azure - Azure DNS Zone Service - Create DNS Zone

Fill out the necessary information:

  • Subscription
  • Resource group (create a new one if needed)
  • Instance Details
    • Name – FQDN for the DNS Zone you need to create, in this example, I want a subdomain “azure” being managed by my Azure DNS.
    • Resource group location – this is where the metadata for the service is stored, however DNS zones are distributed globally!

Click Review and Create. Continue reading Configuring DNS Delegation from CloudFlare to Azure DNS →

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Using vRA to deploy Azure AKS Clusters and register with Tanzu Mission Control

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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.

This post mirrors my original blog post on using vRA to deploy AWS EKS clusters.

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 Azure AKS 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 AKS clusters usable.

High Level Steps
  • Create a Code Stream Pipeline
    • Create an Azure AKS Cluster
    • Create AKS cluster as endpoint in both Code Stream and Cloud Assembly
    • Register AKS cluster in Tanzu Mission Control
    • Export the SSH keys for the AKS cluster to the docker host.
Pre-Requisites
Creating a Code Stream Pipeline to deploy a Azure AKS 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 Azure AKS Clusters and register with Tanzu Mission Control →

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Deploying Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Workload Cluster to Microsoft Azure

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Following on from my previous blog post;

We will now continue and deploy our first Workload (Guest) Cluster into Azure for us by our developers to deploy their applications into.

For this technical walkthrough, I am assuming you have followed the previous blog post and have the Tanzu CLI and Kubectl CLI installed, and a working management cluster.

As a reminder of the terminology;

  • Tanzu Kubernetes Workload Clusters

Once you have deployed your management cluster, you can deploy additional CNCF conformant Kubernetes clusters and manage their full lifecycle. These clusters are designed to run your application workloads, managed via your management cluster. These clusters canrun different Kubernetes versions as required. These clusters use Antrea networking by default.

These types of clusters are also referred to as “workload” clusters, or “guest” clusters, with the latter typically referring to the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Service running in vSphere.

Deploying a Guest Cluster

Login to your Tanzu environment Management Cluster with the following:

Tanzu login

Deploy Management cluster to Azure - Tanzu Login

First we need to create a cluster configuration YAML file. You can find a template here for Azure, or view the full available variables here.

Alternatively, we can use the existing YAML file in our ~/.tanzu/tkg/clusterconfigs folder used for the management cluster deployment and change a few settings to make it ready for our workload guest cluster.

This was my preferred method as it contained all my Azure settings already.

#Find existing cluster config file
# Tanzu 1.3 Location
ls -lh ~/.tanzu/tkg/clusterconfigs/

# Tanzu 1.4 location
ls -ls ~/.config/tanzu/tkg/clusterconfigs/

#Copy file to a new config

cp ~/.tanzu/tkg/clusterconfigs/6x4hl1wy8o.yaml tanzu-veducate-guest-azure.yaml

# Edit file = CLUSTER_NAME
# Workload cluster names must be 42 characters or less.

Deploy Tanzu Kubernetes Guest cluster to Azure - create cluster configuration yaml file Continue reading Deploying Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Workload Cluster to Microsoft Azure →

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Deploying Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Management Cluster to Microsoft Azure

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In this blog post, we will detail a full technical run through on how to deploy Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) into Microsoft Azure,

This will be using the new Tanzu CLI (version 1.3) (Previously TKG CLI) released in March 2021, to deploy  both a new Management Cluster and Guest Cluster.

Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Cluster Types

TKG has two types of clusters, for the full information of TKG Concepts, please read this post.

  • Management Cluster

This is the first architectural components to be deployed for creating a TKG instance. The management cluster is a dedicated cluster for management and operation of your whole TKG instance infrastructure. A management cluster will have Antrea networking enabled by default. This runs cluster API to create the additional clusters for your workloads to run, as well as the shared and in-cluster services for all clusters within the instance to use.

It is not recommended that the management cluster be used as a general-purpose compute environment for your application workloads.

  • Tanzu Kubernetes (Guest) Clusters

Once you have deployed your management cluster, you can deploy additional CNCF conformant Kubernetes clusters and manage their full lifecycle. These clusters are designed to run your application workloads, managed via your management cluster. These clusters can run different Kubernetes versions as required. These clusters use Antrea networking by default.

These clusters are referred to as Workload Clusters when working with the Tanzu CLI.

I sometimes use the term “Guest” for these clusters, as a cross-over with the vSphere with Tanzu architecture, which has similar concepts as above however uses the terms “Supervisor Cluster” and “Guest Cluster”.

Pre-Requisites

For this blog post, I’ll be deploying everything from my local Mac OS X machine. You will need the following:

  • Docker installed with Kubernetes enabled
    • For Windows and macOS Docker clients, you must allocate at least 6 GB of memory in Docker Desktop to accommodate the kind container. See Settings for Docker Desktop in the kind documentation.
  • Install the Tanzu CLI and the Kubectl tool > Instructions here.
    • If you have used the TKG CLI before, then this is now deprecated.
    • You can find a full command line reference for Tanzu CLI and a comparison of the TKG CLI commands in this documentation link.
  • Install the Azure CLI.
  •  Register a Tanzu Kubernetes Grid App on Azure
    • The full details in the VMware docs for deploying TKG to Azure can be found here.
Login to the Azure CLI and accept the VM EULA

Before we get started, we need to log into the Azure CLI and accept the EULA for the images used for TKG in Azure. These images are updated with each release of the Tanzu CLI (TKG CLI).

az login

az vm image terms accept --publisher vmware-inc --offer tkg-capi --plan k8s-1dot20dot4-ubuntu-2004 --subscription {subscription_id}
az loginaz vm image terms accept --publisher vmware-inc --offer tkg-capi --plan k8s-1dot20dot4-ubuntu-2004 --subscription
Deploying a Management Cluster using the UI

From your terminal, run the following command:

tanzu management-cluster create --ui

tanzu management-cluster create --ui Continue reading Deploying Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Management Cluster to Microsoft Azure →

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Veeam Backup For Azure – Integrating with Veeam Backup and Replication

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In this blog post we will cover the following topics;

- Adding your Azure Repository to Veeam Backup and Replication
- Viewing your protected data
- What can you do with your data?
- - Backup Copy to another repository
- - File Level Recovery
- - Veeam Explorer - Application Item restore
- - Instant Virtual Machine recovery to vSphere and Hyper-v
- - Restore to Amazon EC2 or Microsoft Azure

The follow up blog posts are;

- Getting started with Veeam Backup for Azure
- - Configuring the backup infrastructure
- - Monitoring
- - Protecting your installation
- - System and session logs
- Configuring a backup policy
- - Viewing and Running a Backup Policy 
- - Looking at Session logs
- Restoring a Backup 
- - Viewing protected data 
- - File Level Recovery 
- - Virtual Machine Disk Restore 
- - Full VM Restore

If you have an Veeam Backup and Replication install up and running, either on-premise to protect VMware or Hyper-V workloads, or even running in a Public cloud to provide resiliency to your infrastructure, then it’s simple enough to integrate that deployment with the data protected by Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure.

By linking your Veeam Backup for Azure repository (Azure Storage Account) to your Veeam Backup and Replication environment, you then get access to a whole host of options.

  • File level recovery via Veeam Backup and Replication console
  • Instant VM recovery to vSphere/Hyper-V
  • Restore VM to Amazon EC2
  • Restore VM to Microsoft Azure
  • Perform a Backup Copy to another location such as a Cloud Connect Partner.
Adding your Azure Repository to Veeam Backup and Replication

Open your Veeam Backup and Replication console > Go to the “Backup Infrastructure” tab, and right click on External Repositories > Click “Add external repositories”, this will open up the wizard.

Veeam Backup for Azure Integration with Veeam Backup and Replication Add external repository

Select “Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure”

Veeam Backup for Azure Integration with Veeam Backup and Replication Add external repository 2 Continue reading Veeam Backup For Azure – Integrating with Veeam Backup and Replication →