Tag Archives: provisioned cluster

Tanzu Mission Control Header

Tanzu Mission Control – TKG Management support and provisioning new clusters

VMware, Kubernetes, , , , , ,

In this blog post, I am going to cover the new support for Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Management clusters on both VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) and Azure VMware Solution (AVS). This functionality also allows the provisioning of new Tanzu Kubernetes workload clusters (TKC) to the relevant platform, provisioned by the lifecycle management controls within Tanzu Mission Control.

Below are the other blog posts I’ve wrote covering Tanzu Mission Control.

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
Release Notes

Below are the relevant release notes for the features I’ll cover. In this blog post, I’ll just be showing screenshots for a VMC environment, however the same applies to AVS as well.

What's New May 26, 2021

New Features and Improvements

    (New Feature update): Tanzu Mission Control now supports the ability to register Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (1.3 & later) management clusters running in vSphere on Azure VMware Solution.

What's New April 30, 2021

New Features and Improvements

    (New Feature update): Tanzu Mission Control now supports the ability to register Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (1.2 & later) management clusters running in vSphere on VMware Cloud on AWS. For a list of supported environments, see Requirements for Registering a Tanzu Kubernetes Cluster with Tanzu Mission Control in VMware Tanzu Mission Control Concepts.
Prerequisites

This first management cluster deployment is not supported by TMC, nor is it supported for a management cluster to deploy workload clusters across platforms. For example, a management cluster running in AWS does not have the capability to deploy workload clusters to VMC or AVS or Azure.

The following requirements are from the product documentation.

  • The management cluster must be deployed as a production cluster with multiple control plane nodes
    • However, in my demo lab I was able to successfully run this using a development deployment.
  • Tanzu Kubernetes Grid workload clusters need at least 4 CPUs and 8 GB of memory
    • Again, I deployed a small instance type (2 vCPU, 4GB RAM) and this didn’t seem to be an issue.
  • Tanzu Kubernetes Grid management clusters (version 1.3 or later) running in vSphere on Azure VMware Solution (AVS).
  • Tanzu Kubernetes Grid management clusters (version 1.2 or later) running in vSphere, including vSphere on VMware Cloud on AWS (version 1.12 or 1.14).
  • Do not attempt to register any other kind of management cluster with Tanzu Mission Control.
  • Tanzu Mission Control does not support the registration of Tanzu Kubernetes Grid management clusters prior to version 1.2.
Registering our Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Management Cluster
  • Go to Administration> Management Clusters > Register Management Cluster > Tanzu Kubernetes Grid

Tanzu Mission Control - Administration - Register Management Cluster - Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Continue reading Tanzu Mission Control – TKG Management support and provisioning new clusters →

vRealize Operations Tanzu Mission Control Header

vRealize Operations integration with Tanzu Mission Control for auto cluster discovery

VMware, Kubernetes, , ,

A while ago I wrote about the vRealize Operations Kubernetes Management pack which works for all CNCF conformant Kubernetes platforms.

One of the best features of this management pack is the Tanzu Mission Control (TMC) integration it offers with vRealize Operations (vROPs).

This means when you use TMC to provision Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) clusters, currently on AWS or on vSphere, they will be automatically registered within vROPs as well.

Install the Management Pack
  1. Download the management pack pak file.
  2. Within vROPs go to Administration
  3. Click on Repository
  4. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and select “Add/Upgrade”
  5. Select the pak file for installation and follow the wizard.
Create a CSP API Token

For the vROPs management pack adapter to be able to communicate with TMC, we need an API token.

  1. Log into https://console.cloud.vmware.com
  2. Change to correct organisation that contains your TMC instance
  3. Click your name in the top right hand corner and select “My Account”vROps TMC Integration - creating a CSP Token - Select my account
  4. Select the “API Tokens” tab, and then “Generate a new API Token” button.vROps TMC Integration - creating a CSP Token - API Tokens
  5. Set your API Token name, expiry, and access control as required. Then click the generate button. vROps TMC Integration - creating a CSP Token - Generate a new api token
  6. You will be shown a dialog box with your generated token. Save this in a safe space we will use it later on. vROps TMC Integration - creating a CSP Token - Token Generated
Connect vRealize Operations management pack adapter to Tanzu Mission Control
  1. In vROPs UI go to Administration > Under Solutions, choose “Other Accounts” and click the “Add account” button. vROps TMC Integration - Add Account in vROPs
  2. From the account type list, choose Tanzu Mission Control. vROps TMC Integration - Add Account in vROPs - Account Type Tanzu Mission Control
  3. Fill out the necessary details on the New Account screen.
    1. For the credential click the + symbol, add in a name for the credential, and the CSP token you created earlier.
    2. Select your newly created credential.
  4. Select the validate button.vROps TMC Integration - Add Account in vROPs - New Account
  5. Hopefully you get a successful message. vROps TMC Integration - Add Account in vROPs - New Account - Test Connection Successful
  6. You will see the account object in the Other Accounts view. vROps TMC Integration - Add Account in vROPs - New Account - Newly created account
Auto-Discovering Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Clusters

Now you have your account added, whenever you provision a new cluster using Tanzu Mission Control, cAdvisor will be configured in the Kubernetes cluster and a Kubernetes account type will be created in vROps automatically for you.

Below I’ve created a cluster in AWS, and we can see the object has been created in vROPs.

vROps TMC Integration - Provisioned cluster auto discovered

And finally, here is my cluster showing in the one of the Kubernetes Dashboards. vROps TMC Integration - Kubernetes Dashboard

This is a simple to implement feature but can make a massive difference in your ability to monitor your TKG clusters from the infrastructure view that vROPs provides. As your users create clusters via TMC, they don’t need to interact with the monitoring platform to ensure visibility.

Regards

Dean Lewis