Tag Archives: Code Stream

vRealize Automation – Deploying a GKE Cluster with Code Stream, add to Tanzu Mission Control & Tanzu Service Mesh

July 26, 2022Kubernetes, VMwareCode Stream, Deploy, gke, Google Cloud, Tanzu Mission Control, Tanzu Service Mesh, vRA, vRealize AutomationDean

This walk-through will detail the technical configurations for using vRA Code Stream to deploy Google Kubernetes Clusters (GKE), register them as:

Kubernetes endpoints in vRA Cloud Assembly and Code Stream
An attached in Tanzu Mission Control
Onboard in Tanzu Service Mesh

This post mirrors my other blog posts following similar concepts:

Requirement

After covering EKS and AKS, I thought it was worthwhile to finish off the gang and deploy GKE clusters using Code Stream.

Building on my previous work, I also added in the extra steps to onboard this cluster into Tanzu Service Mesh as well.

High Level Steps

Create a Code Stream Pipeline
- Create a Google GKE Cluster
- Create GKE cluster as endpoint in both vRA Code Stream and Cloud Assembly
- Register GKE cluster in Tanzu Mission Control
- Onboard the cluster to Tanzu Service Mesh

Pre-Requisites

vRA Cloud access
- The pipeline can be changed easily for use with vRA on-premises
Google Cloud account that can provision GKE clusters
- The Kubernetes Engine API needs to be enabled
- Basic knowledge of deploying GKE
  - This is a good beginners guide if you need
- You will need to create a Service Account that the gcloud CLI tool can use for authentication
A Docker host to be used by vRA Code Stream
- Ability to run the container image: gcr.io/google.com/cloudsdktool/google-cloud-cli
Tanzu Mission Control account that can register new clusters
VMware Cloud Console Tokens for vRA Cloud, Tanzu Mission Control and Tanzu Service Mesh API access
The configuration files for the pipeline can be found in this GitHub repository

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

Continue reading vRealize Automation – Deploying a GKE Cluster with Code Stream, add to Tanzu Mission Control & Tanzu Service Mesh →

vRealize Automation 8.5 – Code Stream – Unexpected character (‘\\’ (code 92))

September 2, 2021VMware8.5, Code Stream, REST Task, Unexpected character, vRealize AutomationDean

The Issue

When running certain REST Tasks in Code Stream, the pipeline execution fails on this task with:

Unexpected character ('\\' (code 92)): was expecting double-quote to start field name \n at [Source: (io.netty.buffer.ByteBufInputStream); line: X, colume: X]"

The Workaround

Continue reading vRealize Automation 8.5 – Code Stream – Unexpected character (‘\\’ (code 92)) →

Deploying OpenShift clusters (IPI) using vRA Code Stream

June 30, 2021VMware, KubernetesCode Stream, Deploy, openshift, Tanzu Mission Control, vRADean

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

The deployment uses the Installer Provisioned Infrastructure method for deploying OpenShift to vSphere. Which means the installation tool “openshift-install” provisions the virtual machines and configures them for you, with the cluster using internal load balancing for it’s API interfaces.

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

Pre-reqs

Red Hat Cloud Account
- With the ability to download and use a Pull Secret for creating OpenShift Clusters
vRA access to create Code Stream Pipelines and associated objects inside the pipeline when it runs.
- Get CSP API access token for vRA Cloud or on-premises edition.
Tanzu Mission Control access with ability to attach new clusters
- Get an CSP API access token for TMC
vRA Code Stream configured with an available Docker Host that can connect to the network you will deploy the OpenShift clusters to.
- This Docker container is used for the pipeline
- You can find the Dockerfile here, and alter per your needs, including which versions of OpenShift you want to deploy.
SSH Key for a bastion host access to your OpenShift nodes.
vCenter account with appropriate permissions to deploy OpenShift
- You can use this PowerCLI script to create the role permissions.
DNS records created for OpenShift Cluster
- api.{cluster_id}.{base_domain}
- *.apps.{cluster_id}.{base_domain}
Files to create the pipeline are stored in either of these locations:
- https://github.com/saintdle/vRA-Deploy-OpenShift-Clusters
- https://code.vmware.com/samples?id=7635

High Level Steps of this Pipeline

Create an OpenShift Cluster
- Build a install-config.yaml file to be used by the OpenShift-Install command line tool
- Create cluster based on number of user provided inputs and vRA Variables
Register OpenShift Cluster with vRA
- Create a service account on the cluster
- collect details of the cluster
- Register cluster as Kubernetes endpoint for Cloud Assembly and Code Stream using the vRA API
Register OpenShift Cluster with Tanzu Mission Control
- Using the API

Creating a Code Stream Pipeline to deploy a OpenShift 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 Deploying OpenShift clusters (IPI) using vRA Code Stream →

Passing JSON into vRA Code Stream CI Task – MalformedJsonException

June 30, 2021GeneralCode Stream, JSON, Variable, vRADean

The Issue

Whilst working with a vRA Code Stream CI Task, I needed to build a YAML file in my container, which I would use to provide the values to my CLI Tool I was running. Within this YAML File, there is a section of JSON input (yep I know, it’s a Red Hat thing!!!).

I wanted to pass in this JSON section as a vRA variable, as it contains my authentication details to the Red Hat Cloud Website.

So my vRA variable would be as below:

{"auths":{"cloud.openshift.com":{"auth":"token-key","email":"[email protected]"},"registry.connect.redhat.com":{"auth":"token-key","email":"[email protected]"},"registry.redhat.io":{"auth":"token-key","email":"[email protected]"}}}

So my CI Task looked something like this:

cat << EOF > install-config.yaml
apiVersion: v1
baseDomain: simon.local
compute: 
- hyperthreading: Enabled 
  name: worker
  replicas: 1
  platform:
    vsphere: 
      cpus: 4
      coresPerSocket: 1
      memoryMB: 8192
      osDisk:
        diskSizeGB: 120
PullSecret: '${var.pullSecret}'
EOF

When running the Pipeline, I kept hitting an issue where the task would fail with a message similar to the below.

com.google.gson.stream.MalformedJsonException: Unterminated array at line 1 column 895 path $[39]

The Cause

This, I believe is because the tasks are passed to the Docker Host running the container via the Docker API using JSON format. The payload then contains my outer wrapping of YAML and within that more JSON. So the system gets confused with the various bits of JSON.

The Fix

To get around this issue, I encoded my JSON data in Base64. Saved this Base64 code to the variable. Then in my CI task I added an additional line before creating the file which creates a environment variable which decodes my base64 provided from a vRA variable.

Below is my new CI Task code.

export pullSecret=$(echo ${var.pullSecret} | base64 -d)

cat << EOF > install-config.yaml
apiVersion: v1
baseDomain: simon.local
compute: 
- hyperthreading: Enabled 
  name: worker
  replicas: 1
  platform:
    vsphere: 
      cpus: 4
      coresPerSocket: 1
      memoryMB: 8192
      osDisk:
        diskSizeGB: 120
PullSecret: '$pullSecret'
EOF

Regards

Follow @Saintdle

Dean Lewis

Walk through – Using vRA to deploy vSphere with Tanzu Namespaces & Guest Clusters

May 20, 2021VMware, KubernetesCloud Assembly, Code Stream, Deploy, guest cluster, Tanzu, VCF, vRA, vRealize AutomationDean

This walk through will detail the technical configurations for using vRA Code Stream to deploy vSphere with Tanzu supervisor namespaces and guest clusters.

Requirement

For a recent customer proof-of-concept, we wanted to show the full automation capabilities and combine this with the consumption of vSphere with Tanzu.

The end goal was to use Cloud Assembly and Code Stream to cover several automation tasks, and then offer them as self-service capability via a catalog item for an end-user to consume.

High Level Steps

To achieve our requirements, we’ll be configuring the following:

Cloud Assembly
- VCF SDDC Manager Integration
- Kubernetes Cloud Zone – Tanzu Supervisor Cluster
- Cloud Template to deploy a new Tanzu Supervisor Namespace
Code Stream
- Tasks to provision a new Supervisor Namespace using the Cloud Assembly Template
- Tasks to provision a new Tanzu Guest Cluster inside of the Supervisor namespace using CI Tasks and the kubectl command line tool
- Tasks to create a service account inside of the Tanzu Guest Cluster
- Tasks to create Kubernetes endpoint for the new Tanzu Guest Cluster in both Cloud Assembly and Code Stream
Service Broker
- Catalog Item to allow End-Users to provision a brand new Tanzu Guest Cluster in its own Supervisor Namespace

Pre-Requisites

In my Lab environment I have the following deployed:

VMware Cloud Foundation 4.2
- With Workload Management enabled (vSphere with Tanzu)
vRealize Automation 8.3
A Docker host to be used by Code Stream

For the various bits of code, I have placed them in my GitHub repository here.

Configuring Cloud Assembly to deploy Tanzu supervisor namespaces

This configuration is detailed in this blog post, I’ll just cover the high-level configuration below.

Configure an integration for SDDC manager under Infrastructure Tab > Integrations

Continue reading Walk through – Using vRA to deploy vSphere with Tanzu Namespaces & Guest Clusters →

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Tag Archives: Code Stream

vRealize Automation – Deploying a GKE Cluster with Code Stream, add to Tanzu Mission Control & Tanzu Service Mesh

Requirement

High Level Steps

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

vRealize Automation 8.5 – Code Stream – Unexpected character (‘\\’ (code 92))

The Issue

The Workaround

Deploying OpenShift clusters (IPI) using vRA Code Stream

Pre-reqs

High Level Steps of this Pipeline

Creating a Code Stream Pipeline to deploy a OpenShift Cluster and register the endpoints with vRA and Tanzu Mission Control

Create the variables to be used

Passing JSON into vRA Code Stream CI Task – MalformedJsonException

The Issue

The Cause

The Fix