Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Service, informally known as TKGS, lets you create and operate Tanzu Kubernetes clusters natively in vSphere with Tanzu. You use the Kubernetes CLI to invoke the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Service and provision and manage Tanzu Kubernetes clusters. The Kubernetes clusters provisioned by the service are fully conformant, so you can deploy all types of Kubernetes workloads you would expect. vSphere with Tanzu leverages many reliable vSphere features to improve the Kubernetes experience, including vCenter SSO, the Content Library for Kubernetes software distributions, vSphere networking, vSphere storage, vSphere HA and DRS, and vSphere security.

Harbor is an open source, trusted, cloud native container registry that stores, signs, and scans content. Harbor extends the open source Docker Distribution by adding the functionalities usually required by users such as security, identity control and management. so lets go ahead and deploy harbor.I have already provisioned an TKG cluster and you can login to TKG cluster by using below command:

#kubectl vsphere login --server=<supervisor-cluster-ip> --tanzu-kubernetes-cluster=<namespace-name> --tanzu-kubernetes-cluster-name=<cluster-name>

Set the correct context as you might have many clusters by using below command:

#kubectl config use-context <cluster-name01>

Add Harbor Helm repository

Now lets install Harbor, you can use various Helm repositories.

Harbor –  https://github.com/goharbor/harbor-helm or also the one from

Bitnami –  https://github.com/bitnami/charts/tree/master/bitnami/harbor which I’m going to use.

Add the repository of your choice to your client…

#helm repo add harbor https://helm.goharbor.io

#helm repo add bitnami https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami

…and update Helm subsequently.

#helm repo update

Installing Harbor

We will deploy Harbor in a new Kubernetes Namespace which we will name “tanzu-system-registry”. Create the Namespace with kubectl create ns harbor and start the deployment process by executing the following helm command with some corresponding options:

helm install harbor bitnami/harbor \
--set harborAdminPassword=admin \
--set global.storageClass=tkgontkgs \
--set service.type=LoadBalancer \
--set externalURL=harbor.tanzu.zpod.io \
--set service.tls.commonName=harbor.tanzu.zpod.io \
-n tanzu-system-registry

Go and check the pods status by using this command:

#kubectl get pods -n tanzu-system-registry

lets check the services running inside “tanzu-system-registry” namespace, this will give us external IP of the service.

#kubectl get svc -n tanzu-system-registry

Above command will give us an “External IP” which got auto configured in NSX-T, Lets browse using external IP using user name as “admin” and password which we set in the helm command

Now we can successfully browse and access the registry successfully

You can push images to the Harbor registry to make them available to all clusters that are running in the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid instance. for me this i have deployed for my “Tanzu Build Service” installation as TBS needs registry as pre-requisite.