Tag Archives: TKG

Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 1.6 – Management Cluster deployment failure – unable to patch the cluster object

December 23, 2022VMware, Kubernetes1.6, Deployment, Error, Kubernetes, Tanzu, TKGDean

The Issue

When deploying a brand new Tanzu Kubernete Grid Management Cluster to a vSphere environment we kept hitting failures like the below. The deployment was very vanilla with the default settings, no extra metadata inputted into the build.

!! [1223 15:26:17.84239]: init.go:732] Failure while deploying management cluster, Here are some steps to investigate the cause:
!! [1223 15:26:17.84256]: init.go:733] Debug:
!! [1223 15:26:17.84262]: init.go:734] kubectl get po,deploy,cluster,kubeadmcontrolplane,machine,machinedeployment -A --kubeconfig /home/michael/.kube-tkg/tmp/config_Qd01VhPd
!! [1223 15:26:17.84272]: init.go:735] kubectl logs deployment.apps/ -n  manager --kubeconfig /home/michael/.kube-tkg/tmp/config_Qd01VhPd
!! [1223 15:26:17.84278]: init.go:738] To clean up the resources created by the management cluster:
!! [1223 15:26:17.84283]: init.go:739] tanzu management-cluster delete
✘ [1223 15:26:17.84291]: init.go:91] unable to set up management cluster, : unable to patch cluster object: unable to patch optional metadata under labels: unable to patch the management cluster object with optional metadata: unable to patch the cluster object: error while applying patch for "&TypeMeta{Kind:,APIVersion:,}" tkg-system/tkg-mgmt-vsphere-20221223151757: Cluster.cluster.x-k8s.io "tkg-mgmt-vsphere-20221223151757" is invalid: [metadata.labels: Invalid value: "": name part must be non-empty, metadata.labels: Invalid value: "": name part must consist of alphanumeric characters, '-', '_' or '.', and must start and end with an alphanumeric character (e.g. 'MyName', or 'my.name', or '123-abc', regex used for validation is '([A-Za-z0-9][-A-Za-z0-9_.]*)?[A-Za-z0-9]')]

The Cause

The tooling creates an erronous value in the cluster config file, which causes the build error.

The Fix

Search for the latest yaml file created in:

~/.config/tanzu/tkg/clusterconfigs/

and comment out the following line:

CLUSTER_LABELS: :,

# The line will now look like this:

#CLUSTER_LABELS: :,

Now re-run the creation of your cluster using the CLI

tanzu mc create --file {file_name.yaml}

Regards

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Dean Lewis

How to Deploy a Tanzu Kubernetes Grid cluster using the Cilium CNI

September 5, 2022VMware, KubernetesCilium, CNI, Deploy, Hubble, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, TKGDean

In this blog post I’m going to dive into how you can create a Tanzu Kubernetes Grid cluster and specify your own container network interface, for example, Cilium. Expanding on the installation, I’ll also cover installing a load balancer service, deploying a demo app, and showing some of the observability feature as well.

What is Cilium?

Cilium is an open source software for providing, securing and observing network connectivity between container workloads - cloud native, and fueled by the revolutionary Kernel technology eBPF

Let’s unpack that from the official website marketing tag line.

Cilium is a container network interface for Kubernetes and other container platforms (apparently there are others still out there!), which provides the cluster networking functionality. It goes one step further than other CNIs commonly used, by using a Linux Kernel software technology called eBPF, and allows for the insertion of security, visibility, and networking control logic into the Linux kernel of your container nodes.

Below is a high-level overview of the features.

And a high-level architecture overview.

Is it supported to run Cilium in Tanzu Kubernetes cluster?

Tanzu Kubernetes Grid allows you to bring your own Kubernetes CNI to the cluster as part of the Cluster bring-up. You will be required to take extra steps to build a cluster during this type of deployment, as described below in this blog post.

As for support for a CNI outside of Calico and Antrea, you as the customer/consumer must provide that. If you are using Cilium for example, then you can gain enterprise level support for the CNI, from the likes of Isovalent.

Recording

How to deploy a Tanzu Kubernete Cluster with Cilium

Before we get started, we need to download the Cilium CLI tool, which is used to install Cilium into our cluster.

The below command downloads and installs the latest stable version to your /usr/local/bin location. You can find more options here. Continue reading How to Deploy a Tanzu Kubernetes Grid cluster using the Cilium CNI →

VMware Cloud on AWS – Managed Tanzu Kubernetes Grid with Tanzu Mission Control

July 5, 2022VMware, KubernetesKubernetes, Tanzu, Tanzu Mission Control, TKG, TMC, VMCDean

In my previous blog post, I detailed a full end to end guide in deploying and configurating the managed Tanzu Kubernetes Service offering as part of VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC), finishing with some example application deployments and configurations.

In this blog post, I am moving on to show you how to integrate this environment with Tanzu Mission Control, which will provide fleet management for your Kubernetes instances. I’ve wrote several blog posts on TMC previous which you can find below:

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

Management with Tanzu Mission Control

The first step is to connect the Supervisor cluster running in VMC to our Tanzu Mission Control environment.

Connecting the Supervisor Cluster to TMC

Within the TMC console, go to:

Administration
Management Clusters
Register Management Cluster
- Select “vSphere with Tanzu”

On the Register Management Cluster page:

Set the friendly name for the cluster in TMC
Select the default cluster group for managed workload clusters to be added into
Set any description and labels as necessary

Proxy settings for a Supervisor Cluster running in VMC are not supported, so ignore Step 2.

Copy the registration URL.

Log into your vSphere with Tanzu Supervisor cluster.
Find the namespace that identifies your cluster and is used for TMC configurations, “kubectl get ns”
- It will start “svc-tmc-xx”
- Copy this namespace name

Continue reading VMware Cloud on AWS – Managed Tanzu Kubernetes Grid with Tanzu Mission Control →

Tanzu Kubernetes Grid – Upgrading a Management and Workload Cluster deployed to vSphere

June 28, 2022VMware, KubernetesCluster, management, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, TKG, Upgrade, vSphere, workloadDean

In this blog post, I am going to walk through how to upgrade both your Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Management and Workload clusters. I’ll cover the Tanzu CLI options, as well as how you can leverage the features of Tanzu Mission Control for upgrades as well.

For my example use cases, I’ll be upgrading from TKG 1.4.2 to 1.5.4. Although the process should be similar for other upgrade paths, I do recommend you consult the official documentation before attempting any upgrade in case there are any changes.

Caution: VMware recommends not installing or upgrading to Tanzu Kubernetes Grid v1.5.0-v1.5.3, due to a bug in the versions of etcd in the versions of Kubernetes used by Tanzu Kubernetes Grid v1.5.0-v1.5.3. Tanzu Kubernetes Grid v1.5.4 resolves this problem by incorporating a fixed version of etcd. For more information, see Resolved Issues in the TKG v1.5 Release Notes.

Pre-requisites

To upgrade Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG), you download and install the new version of the Tanzu CLI on the machine that you use as the bootstrap machine. You must also download and install base image templates and VMs, depending on whether you are upgrading clusters that you previously deployed to vSphere, Amazon EC2, or Azure.

Download the Tanzu CLI and Kubernetes OVAs

On the VMware Customer Portal download both the Tanzu CLI and OVA files as necessary.

https://customerconnect.vmware.com/downloads/details?downloadGroup=TKG-154&productId=988&rPId=88961

I’ve highlighted in the below screenshot; your Management Cluster will always need to run the latest Kubernetes version.

Upload Kubernetes OVAs to vCenter

Continue reading Tanzu Kubernetes Grid – Upgrading a Management and Workload Cluster deployed to vSphere →

Tanzu Kubernetes Grid – Manual Certificate Renewal

May 11, 2022VMware, KubernetesCertificate, Kubernetes, renewal, Tanzu, TKGDean

The Issue

Note: VMware has released a full in-depth KB Article that I'd advise you review along with this blog post. If you have any queries or concerns with the processes detailed, always open a support ticket!
- How to rotate certificates in a Tanzu Kubernetes Grid cluster (86251)

One day my Kubernetes cluster just stopped responding. I could no longer connect to the Kubernetes API.

I rebooted all the nodes (as it was a demo environment) to no luck, and still nothing. So I had to go off digging.

The Cause

I SSH’d into one of my control-plane nodes, and started to tail the kubelet logs. Continue reading Tanzu Kubernetes Grid – Manual Certificate Renewal →

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