Deploy, Run, and Manage Any Application with VMware Cloud Director Content Hub

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Posted on August 22, 2023 by vmtechie

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, businesses require agile and scalable solutions to deploy and manage their applications efficiently. VMware Cloud Director Content Hub (VDCH) introduced in VMware Cloud Director 10.5, offers a robust platform for a simplified and automated way to deploy, run, and manage a wide range of applications. In this blog, we’ll explore the key features and benefits of VMware Cloud Director Content Hub and how it streamlines the application deployment process.

What is Content Hub ?

Content Hub, introduced in VMware Cloud Director 10.5, serves as a convenient tool that unifies the interface for accessing both VM and container-based content. This feature seamlessly integrates external content sources, such as VMware Marketplace and Helmchart Repositories, into the VMware Cloud Director environment.

By incorporating external sources, content can be seamlessly brought into the catalogs of VMware Cloud Director, ensuring its immediate availability for users. With the integration of Content Hub, VMware Cloud Director introduces an interface oriented towards applications, enabling users to effortlessly visualize and retrieve catalog content, thus elevating the overall content management experience.

As a result of these enhancements, catalog items are presented as “Application Images,” highlighting crucial application information like the application’s name, version, logo, screenshots, and other pertinent details necessary for the consumption of the application

Integration with VMware Marketplace

To integrate Marketplace with VMware Cloud Director, a Cloud Provider needs to create a Marketplace Connection and then share it with one or more tenant organisations. Here is the procedure:

Cloud Provider must be logged in as a system administrator.
Cloud Provider must have access to VMware Marketplace and there generated an API token. (see Generate API Tokens in the VMware Cloud Services Product Documentation)
From the left panel, select VMware Marketplace & Click New.
The New VMware Marketplace dialog opens, and there enter the following values:

Name	Some meaning full name
URL	vCD uses https://gtw.marketplace.cloud.vmware.com/api/v1 to connect to Marketplace. This URL cannot be changed.
Token ID	The API token ID of a valid VMware Marketplace token.

Integration with Helm Chart Repository

A Helm chart repository is a named resource that stores all the information required to establish a connection with a Helm chart repository, allows users to browse contents from a remote repository, and imports applications from the repository.

Cloud Providers and tenants both can create Helm chart repository content connections. Tenants need special RIGHTs that providers can assign to specific tenants based on requirements.

From the left panel, select Helm Chart Repository & Click New.
The New Helm Chart Repository dialog opens, and there enter the following values:

Name	Some Meaning Full Name
URL	URL of Helm chart repository
Authentication Type	Anonymous Basic

Password-protected Helm chart repositories are also supported.
You can create multiple Helm chart repository resources in VMware Cloud Director.

Share a VMware Marketplace/Helm Chart Repository Resource with tenants

As a service provider administrator, you can share the configured VMware Marketplace resources with other tenant organizations.

Inside VMware Marketplace/Helm Chat Repository, on the left of the name of the connection that you want to share, click the vertical ellipsis and select Share.
Share the resource.
Select the tenant organizations you want to share the resource with.
You can set the individual access level for the respective tenant organization only as Read Only.
Click Save.

NOTE: Since vCD does a DB caching of the helm chart repository items in vCD DB, you can click on Sync which will ensure the latest from the remote repository is cached in vCD DB.

Roles Required

A new set of User Roles has been introduced to facilitate users in accessing and managing the Content Hub. Assigning the appropriate user roles to individuals within the organization to grant them access and utilize the Content Hub feature effectively is crucial.

Right Bundles: A Rights Bundle is a collection of rights for the tenant organization and A Rights Bundle defines what a tenant organization has access to. Rights Bundles are always defined globally, and they can be applied to zero or more tenants.

Roles: A Role is a collection of rights for a user. A Role defines what an individual user has access to. Roles can either be tenant-specific–defined within a single organization and only visible to that organization, or global–defined globally and applied to zero or more tenants.

Putting all the pieces together looks something like this:

Following are the new RIGHTs introduced to manage CatalogContentSource entities:

View the Content Hub External Source	view “CatalogContentSource” entities
View Content Hub External Source ACL	view ACLs on “CatalogContentSource” entity
Change the Owner of the Content Hub External Source	change ownership of “CatalogContentSource” entity
Delete the External Source from Content Hub	To allow deletion of “CatalogContentSource” entity
Edit the External Source in Content Hub	To allow the creation/edit of “CatalogContentSource” entity NOTE – Tenants will not be allowed to create Marketplace type even with this RIGHT
Share the Content Hub External Source	To allow sharing of CatalogContentSource. NOTE – Only Cloud Provider can share across tenants. Tenants can only share among users.

Apply the Above Rights for organizations as well as the user, so that they have enough rights to add and deploy applications.

Content Hub Operator for Kubernetes Container Service Extention

To perform this operation, First, you need full control of the Kubernetes cluster, where you are deploying the container applications, and additionally the following VMware Cloud Director rights:

You must install a Kubernetes operator to allow tenant users to deploy container applications from external content sources. From the top navigation bar, select Content Hub, from the left panel, select Kubernetes Operator, and on the Kubernetes Operator page, select the Kubernetes cluster on which you want to install the Kubernetes operator, and click Install Operator.

The Install operator on cluster-name dialog opens, on this page Configure the source location of the Kubernetes operator package.

Select the type of source location for the Kubernetes operator package. VMware Registry location with anonymous access is selected by default.

(Optional) To configure a custom registry, first, you must clone the Content Hub Kubernetes operator package from the VMware container registry to your custom registry. The Content Hub Kubernetes operator package is in Carvel format and you must use the Carvel imgpkg tool for cloning the package.

Click Install Operator.

After a Few minutes it shows “Not Reachable”

And then finally it turns to “ready”, basically After the installation of the operator completes successfully, the system creates two namespaces under the Kubernetes cluster. In the first namespace, “vcd-contenthub-system”, the Content Hub Operator manager is installed. The second namespace, “vcd-contenthub-workloads”, is empty. This namespace is used to deploy container applications at a later stage.

Catalog Versioning

In the previous version of VMware Cloud Director, there was no concept of versioning in catalogs. For instance, when a user imports multiple versions of the same application from external sources into the catalog, each version of the VM or container will be stored and represented (listed) as an individual resource, but from VMware Cloud Director 10.5 onwards, a Virtual Machine application or Container application that was imported with multiple versions either at the same time or at different intervals, Content Hub is capable of managing and structure the versioning of that resource.

Let’s Deploy a Container Application

Upon launching an application image that has multiple versions, you will be prompted to choose the specific version of the image you wish to deploy.

If the Container application is launched, then the Container Application launcher window will open and then you need to provide the application Name, select the version to deploy and select the TKG Cluster.

(Optional) To customize the application parameters, click Show Advanced Settings.

Click Launch Application.

The system deploys the container application. After the deploy operation completes, on the card for the application, the status appears as Deployed. VMware Cloud Director deploys the container application as a Helm release under the vcd-contenthub-workloads namespace to the Kubernetes cluster.

Either clicking on Application Name or DETAILS, it takes user to details of the application, like Status, Pods Status, Access URLs etc..

User can use the access URL details to access the application easily

Deploy an Stateful Container Application

In this section we will deploy Casandra database using Cloud Director Content Hub, process is simple as we followed in above section, once deployed the application, check the details, here details are different like no access URL, it also created required Persistent Volumes automatically

it also give visibility to Stateful Set and its status, secrets if any, services and its type as well as other resources. this allow end user to not to check in K8s clusters vs this info is available in vCD GUI.

Deploy an Virtual Machine Application

A vApp consists of one or more virtual machines that communicate over a network and use resources and services in a deployed environment. A vApp can contain multiple virtual machines.If you have access to a catalog, you can use the vApp templates in the catalog to create vApps.

A vApp template can be based on an OVF file with properties for customizing the virtual machines of the vApp. The vApp inherits these properties. If any of those properties are user-configurable, you can specify their values.

Enter a name and, optionally, a description for the vApp.

Enter a runtime lease and a storage lease for the vApp, and click Next.

From the Storage Policy drop-down menu, select a storage policy for each of the virtual machines in the vApp, and click Next.

If the placement policies and the sizing policies for the virtual machines in the vApp are configurable, select a policy for each virtual machine from the drop-down menu.

If the hardware properties of the virtual machines in the vApp are configurable, customize the size of the virtual machine hard disks and click Next.

If the networking properties of the virtual machines in the vApp are configurable, customize them and click Next.

On the Configure Networking page, select the networks to which you want each virtual machine to connect.

(Optional) Select the check box to switch to the advanced networking workflow and configure additional network settings for the virtual machines in the vApp.

Review the vApp settings and click Finish.

You can see under Applications -> Virtual Applications, VM is getting deployed.

With Content Hub feature provide can offers centralized content management for application images, vApp and VM templates, and media. VMware Cloud Director now has full control over the deployed and listed images, storing all pertinent information in its database. Unlike the application images imported from App Launchpad, where VMware Cloud Director only listed the imported images and App Launchpad stored all the details and information in its own database as well as It offers ease of use since you won’t have to set up and configure App Launchpad, which would otherwise be an additional task.

Harness the Power of Cloud Director Data Solutions: Offer DBaaS using VMware SQL with MySQL

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Posted on June 14, 2023 by vmtechie

In the ever-evolving landscape of cloud technology, Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) play a crucial role in helping businesses unlock the potential of their data. Database as a Service (DBaaS) offerings have become essential tools for organizations looking to streamline their data management processes. This article will explore how our CSP is revolutionizing DBaaS with Cloud Director Data Solutions, powered by VMware SQL with MySQL. Discover how this powerful combination can transform CSP and customers’ data management experience.

VMware Cloud Director Extension for Data Solutions: An Introduction

The VMware Cloud Director Extension for Data Solutions is a game-changing plug-in for the VMware Cloud Director. By incorporating data and messaging services into the VMware Cloud Director portfolio, it enables cloud providers and their tenants to access and manage services such as VMware SQL with MySQL, VMware SQL with PostgreSQL, and the efficient messaging system, RabbitMQ.

The extension operates in conjunction with Container Service Extension 4.0 or later, facilitating the publication of popular data and messaging services to tenants. These services are deployed in a Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Cluster, which is managed by Container Service Extension 4.0 or later. This powerful combination simplifies the process of deploying and managing these services, while also offering data analytics and monitoring through Grafana and Prometheus.

How the VMware Cloud Director Extension for Data Solutions Functions

The VMware Cloud Director Extension for Data Solutions works hand-in-hand with the Container Service Extension 4.x to provide cloud providers with the ability to publish data and messaging services to their tenants. In turn, tenants can utilize these services for building new applications or maintaining existing ones.

Services are deployed within a Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Cluster, which is managed by the Container Service Extension 4.0 or later. This plays a crucial role in the deployment of services, with a service operator installed in a selected tenant Tanzu Kubernetes Cluster responsible for managing the entire lifecycle of a service, from inception to dissolution.

To better understand the architecture of the VMware Cloud Director Extension for Data Solutions, consider the high-level diagram provided below.

Use Cases for the VMware Cloud Director Extension for Data Solutions

Tenants can utilize the VMware Cloud Director Extension for Data Solutions for various purposes, such as creating database and messaging services at scale. Once these services are available in a tenant organization, authorized tenant users can create, upgrade, or delete PostgreSQL, MySQL, or RabbitMQ services. Advanced settings, such as enabling High Availability for VMware SQL with MySQL and VMware SQL with PostgreSQL, can be applied during the creation of a service.

In addition to creating database and messaging services, tenants can effortlessly manage their upgrades. When a newer version becomes available, the VMware Cloud Director Extension for Data Solutions interface will notify the user and prompt them to take action. Tenant administrators or users can then upgrade the chosen service with a single click, safeguarding the service against vulnerabilities and ensuring its stability.

Tenant self-service UI for the lifecycle management of VMware SQL with MySQL

Step:1 – Installing VMware Cloud Director Data Solutions operator

To run VMware SQL with MySQL in a Kubernetes cluster using the VMware Cloud Director extension for Data Solutions, you must install a VMware Cloud Director extension for the Data Solutions operator to a Kubernetes cluster. The VMware Cloud Director Data Solutions operator (DSO) is a backend service running within each tenant Kubernetes cluster. DSO manages the lifecycle of user resources in Kubernetes clusters upon user requests, sent through VMware Cloud Director Resource Defined Entities. The resources include both data solution operators like VMware RabbitMQ operators for Kubernetes and data solution instances like VMware RabbitMQ for Kubernetes. It deploys, upgrades, and updates various data solutions in Kubernetes clusters on behalf of the user.

Log in to VMware Cloud Director extension for Data Solutions from VMware Cloud Director.
Click Settings > Kubernetes Clusters.
Select the Kubernetes cluster where you want to run VMware Cloud Director extension for Data Solutions, and click Install Operator.

It takes a few minutes for the Operator Status of the cluster to change to Active.

Step:2 – Installing VMware SQL with MySQL

Log in to VMware Cloud Director extension for Data Solutions from VMware Cloud Director.
Click Instances > New Instance.
Enter the necessary details.
- Enter the instance name.
- Select the solution, for which you want to create an instance.
- Select the Kubernetes cluster for this instance.
- you must enter only a default passwordSelect a sizing template for this instance.
To customize more details click Show Advanced Settings

To connect to a MySQL instance from outside of your Kubernetes cluster, we must configure the Kubernetes service for the instance to be of type “Load Balancer”. Select “Expose Service by Load Balancer”

Click Create.
You can also track the progress of the deployment by running:

#kubectl get pods -n vcd-ds-workloads

After a few minutes, you should see MySQL status is “Running” in vCD GUI as well

You can continue to see progress in the vCD taskbar as well as the Monitor section of vCD GUI, it is automatically creating required persistent volumes as well as Network services like Load Balancer and NAT rules

Kubernetes will request and Cloud Director then allocate an external IP address (load balancer IP) to the service, which we can use to connect to the MySQL service from outside the cluster. You can view the Load Balancer IP by running:

#kubectl get svc -A

Take note of the External IP, which in this case is 172.16.2.6, we will use this IP to connect to the MySQL cluster from outside

Step:3 – Connecting to VMware SQL with MySQL

To connect to a MySQL service using Workbench, you can follow these steps:

Download and install MySQL Workbench from the official MySQL website if you haven’t already.
Launch MySQL Workbench on your computer.
In the Workbench home screen, click on the “+” icon next to “MySQL Connections” to create a new connection.
In the “Setup New Connection” dialog, enter a connection name of your choice.
Configure the following settings:

1-Connection Method: Standard TCP/IP
2-MySQL Hostname: External IP address of the MySQL server.in this case is 172.16.2.6
3-MySQL Server Port: Enter the port number(default is 3306).
4-Username: Enter the MySQL username as “mysqlappuser”
5-Password: Enter the MySQL password as you entered while deploying MySQL

Click on the “Test Connection” button to check if the connection is successful. If the test is successful, you should see a success message.
Click on the “OK” button to save the connection settings.

After following these steps, you should be connected to your MySQL service using MySQL Workbench. You can then use the Workbench interface to view this newly deployed instance, run queries, and perform various read-only database-related tasks, because:

When Tenant creates a MySQL deployment through VMware Cloud Director for Data Solutions extension, the MySQL instance gets a default DB user named “mysqlappuser”, This “mysqlappuser” user’s privilege is limited to the default DB instance. “mysqlappuser” user does not have enough permission to create a database, we need to create a new user which has enough permissions to create a database.

Step:4 – Enable a full-privileged DB user for your MySQL instance provisioned by the VMware Cloud Director Extension for Data Solutions

MySQL by default has a built-in “root” user with administrator privilege in every MySQL deployment, but it doesn’t support external access. We will use this user to create another full-privileged DB user.

Find DB root user’s password by using below commands:

# kubectl get secret -n vcd-ds-workloads

#kubectl get secret mysqldb01-credentials -n  vcd-ds-workloads -o jsonpath='{.data}'

Take note of “rootPassword” from the output of the above command and copy the full encrypted password, which in this case starts with “RE1n**********”

Decode the above “rootPassword” using below command

# echo "RE1nem90TmltZ2laQWdsZC1oqM0VGRw==" | base64 –decode

The output of the above command will be the root password, use this password to log in.
Enter the primary (writable) pod of your MySQL deployment by command: (Refer to this Link to identify Writable Pod )

# kubectl exec -it mysqldb01-2 -n vcd-ds-workloads -c mysql – bash

Now run the below command to connect to the MySQL instance:

1 - Login to SQL 
      #mysql -u root -p$ADMIN_PASSWORD -h 127.0.0.1 -P 3306
2 - Enter decoded password, once you successfully connected to the MySQL
3 - Create a local MySQL user using:
      #CREATE USER 'user01'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
      #GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON * . * TO 'user01'@'%';

That’s it, now we can connect to this SQL Instance and can create a new database as you can see below screenshot

NOTE: Thanks to the writer of this blog, https://realpars.com/mysql/, I am using this database for this blog article.

In Summary, by leveraging VMware Cloud Director Extension for Data Solutions, CSPs can unlock the power of DBaaS using VMware SQL with MySQL, offering customers a comprehensive and efficient platform for their data management needs. With simplified deployment and management, seamless scalability, enhanced performance optimization, high availability, and robust security and compliance features, CSPs can provide businesses with a reliable and scalable DBaaS solution. Embrace the potential of DBaaS with VMware Cloud Director Extension for Data Solutions and VMware SQL with MySQL, and empower your customers with streamlined data management capabilities in the cloud.

Assess Your Sovereign Cloud Stack for Compliance

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Posted on April 26, 2023 by vmtechie

VMware vRealize (ARIA) Operations Compliance Pack for Sovereign Cloud is a management pack available in the VMware Marketplace. You can download and install this management pack on an instance of vRealize (ARIA) Operations to automatically assess a Sovereign Cloud stack for compliance.

VMware vRealize (ARIA) Operations Compliance Pack for Sovereign Cloud is intended to be used by the VMware Cloud Service Partners who are part of the Sovereign Cloud Initiative. The following products in the Sovereign Cloud stack are currently supported for compliance assessment:

vSphere
NSX-T
VMware Cloud Director
VMware Cloud Director Availability

For every Sovereign Cloud instance, providers need one instance of vRealize (ARIA) Operations with the VMware vRealize (ARIA) Operations Compliance Pack for Sovereign Cloud installed and configured. The compliance score card is available in the Optimize > Compliance screen of vRealize (ARIA) Operations.

Compliance Pack for Sovereign Cloud Controls Rules

The compliance rules are based on a checklist that VMware vRealize (ARIA) Operations Compliance Pack for Sovereign Cloud utilizes to monitor the products in the Sovereign Cloud stack. The checklist is based on the Sovereign Cloud Framework which takes into consideration the following key principles:

Data Sovereignty and Jurisdictional Control

Data should reside locally.
The cloud should be managed and governed locally, and all data processing including API calls should happen within the country/geography.
Data should be accessible only to residents of the same country, and the data should not be accessible under foreign laws or from any outside geography.

Data Access and Integrity

Two data center locations.
File, Block, and Object store options
Backup services, Disaster Recovery
Low-latency connectivity, Micro segmentation

Data Security and Compliance

Industry recognized Security Controls (minimum ISO/IEC 27001 or equivalent)

Additional relevant industry or governmental certifications

Third-party audits & Zero Trust Security & Encryption

Catalog of trusted images using the sovereign repository

Support for air gapped zones/regions

Operating personnel requirements and security clearance

Data Independence and Interoperability

Workload migration with bi-directional workload portability

Modern application architecture using containers

Support for hybrid cloud deployments

Control Rules and Product Control Set for vSphere

The vSphere control set is available for version 7, and 6.5/6.7 separately and details can be Here

Control Rules and product control set for nsx-t

Control rules and product control set for NSX-T and details can be found Here. The NSX-T version supported is greater than or equal to 3.2.x.

Controls Rules and Product Control Set for VMware Cloud Director

Control rules and product control set for VMware Cloud Director and details can be found Here. The supported version of the VMware Cloud Directory management pack is 8.10.2.

Control Rules and Product Control Set for VMware Cloud Director Availability

Controls rules and product control set for VMware Cloud Director Availability and details can be found Here. The version of the VMware Cloud Director Availability management pack supported is 1.2.1.

Install the VMware vRealize (ARIA) Operations Compliance Pack for Sovereign Cloud

The VMware vRealize (ARIA) Operations Compliance Pack for Sovereign Cloud consists of a PAK file that contains default contains views, reports, alerts and symptoms for the VMware software in the Sovereign Cloud stack.

Download the PAK file for VMware vRealize Operations Compliance Pack for Sovereign Cloud from the VMware Marketplace, and save the file to a temporary folder on your local system.

Log in to the vRealize (ARIA) Operations user interface with administrator privileges. Installation of this management pack is to be done by VMware Cloud Provider Program Partners.
In the left pane of vRealize (ARIA) Operations, click Integrations under Data Sources.
In the Repository tab, click the ADD button.

The Add Solution dialog box opens , Click BROWSE to locate the temporary folder on your system, and select the PAK file.
Read and select the checkboxes if required, Click Upload. The upload might take several minutes

Read and accept the EULA, and click Next. Installation details appear in the window during the process.
When the installation is completed, click Finish.

in the vROps instance, go to Optimize > Compliance. In the VMware Cloud tab, you can see the VMware Sovereign Cloud Compliance card in the VMware Sovereign Cloud Benchmarks section. Click Enable.

When you click Enable, a list of policies appears. You must select a policy that you want to apply. i am selecting default policy here

With the vRealize (ARIA) Operations reporting functions, you can generate a report to view the compliance status of your Sovereign Cloud. You can download the report in a PDF or CSV file format for future and offline needs.

Accessing Compliance Reports

In the VMware vRealize (ARIA) Operations Compliance Pack for Sovereign Cloud two kinds of reports are available:

At a VMware Cloud Provider Program Partner level – This report considers all the infrastructure level resources and generates a report at the org level, showing non-compliance. The compliance data is for the org and associated child hierarchy. Includes compliance details for org, org-vdc, virtual machines, logical switches, and logical routers as per the hierarchy.

From the left menu, click Visualize > Reports and run the report – [vCloud Director] – VMware Sovereign Cloud – Non-Compliance Report.

From the Reports panel, click Generated Reports, To select a generated report from the list, click the vertical ellipsis against the [vCloud Director] – VMware Sovereign Cloud – Non-Compliance Report report and select options such as run and delete.

At a tenant level – The VMware Cloud Provider Program Partner generates a filtered report that the tenant can access. This report is at an org-VDC level. The compliance data is for the child hierarchy only. Includes compliance details for virtual machines, logical switches, and logical routers as per the hierarchy and Tenants can view the generated reports in the VMware Chargeback console by logging in and navigating to Reports > Tenant Reports and clicking the Generated Reports tab.

Custom Benchmarks

In case the CSP partner/customer requires they can create a custom compliance benchmark to ensure that objects comply with compliance alerts available in vRealize (ARIA) Operations, or custom compliance alert definitions. When a compliance alert is triggered on your vCenter instance, hosts, virtual machines, distributed port groups, or distributed switches, you investigate the compliance violation. You can add up to five custom compliance scorecards

This is the first version of the sovereign cloud compliance pack for ARIA Operations for our Cloud Providers brings a comprehensive compliance checklist that encompasses the sovereign framework as a benchmark and continuously validates applications and infrastructure to help partners maintain their sovereignty posture. This brings extended capabilities to ARIA Operations, which, now addition to the capacity, cost, and performance monitoring, will monitor and report compliance drifts to the right stakeholders to better manage their compliance structure.

Cloud Director Container Service Extension – Tanzu Contour, Prometheus and Grafana Install Guide

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Posted on February 15, 2023 by vmtechie

This post explains how to install and access Tanzu Contour, Promethous and Grafana on Tanzu clusters deployed by Cloud Director Container Service extension. so to get started first ensure TANZU CLI is installed on your local machine, if not then you can install by following documentation given Here

Next thing you need is the kubeconfig file of your target TKG cluster which is reachable from your local client machine on which you have installed Tanzu CLI, also make sure you run:

# tanzu init

Installation Steps

NOTE: CSE4 provisioned TKG cluster, cert-manager, kapp-controller, secretgren-controller and tanzu-standard package repository already have been installed. so you can skip step1,2 and 3.

Step:1- Install kapp-controller

kapp-controller gives us a flexible way to fetch, template, and deploy our applications to Kubernetes. It will also keep our apps continuously up to date when the configuration in our source repository changes. Install kapp-controller in the cluster using:

#kubectl apply -f https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/carvel-kapp-controller/releases/latest/download/release.yml

Step:2- Install secretgren-controller

In order to manage secrets across namespaces, Tanzu utilizes the carvel secret-gen-controller. you can install secretgren-controller in the cluster using:

#kubectl apply -f https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/carvel-secretgen-controller/releases/latest/download/release.yml

Step:3- Install cert-manager

Install cert-controller in the cluster using:

#kubectl apply -f https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.9.1/cert-manager.yaml

Verify Tanzu Packages

Using the Tanzu CLI, you can install packages from the built-in tanzu-standard package repository or from other package repositories that you add to your target cluster, such as the Tanzu Application Platform Repository. Install tanzu-standard package repository v1.6.0.

#tanzu package repository add tanzu-standard --url projects.registry.vmware.com/tkg/packages/standard/repo:v1.6.0

Verify that the Prometheus package is available in your Tanzu K8s cluster as well as retrieve the version of the available package:

#tanzu package available list prometheus.tanzu.vmware.com -A

Verify that the Contour package is available in your Tanzu K8s cluster as well as retrieve the version of the available package:

#tanzu package available list contour.tanzu.vmware.com -A

verify that the Grafana package is available in your Tanzu K8s cluster as well as retrieve the version of the available package:

#tanzu package available list grafana.tanzu.vmware.com -A

Step4:- Implement Ingress Control with Contour

Contour is a Kubernetes ingress controller that uses the Envoy edge and service proxy. Tanzu Kubernetes Grid includes signed binaries for Contour and Envoy, which you can deploy into Tanzu Kubernetes (workload) clusters to provide ingress control services in those clusters.

You must first create the configuration file that will be used when you install the Contour package and then install the package. you can generate config file using:

#tanzu package available get contour.tanzu.vmware.com/1.20.2+vmware.1-tkg.1 --values-schema

#tanzu package available get contour.tanzu.vmware.com/PACKAGE-VERSION -generate-default-values-file

I am using below using data-values.yaml for contour

envoy:
  service:
    type: LoadBalancer
  hostPorts:
    enable: false
  hostNetwork: false
certificates:
  useCertManager: true

Install the package as below:

#tanzu package install contour --package-name contour.tanzu.vmware.com --version 1.20.2+vmware.1-tkg.1 --values-file contour-data-values.yaml

Step 5:- Deploy Prometheus

Prometheus is an open-source systems monitoring and alerting toolkit. Tanzu Kubernetes Grid includes signed binaries for Prometheus that you can deploy on workload clusters to monitor cluster health and services.verify the configuration file using below commands, this file configures the Prometheus package.

#tanzu package available get prometheus.tanzu.vmware.com/2.36.2+vmware.1-tkg.1 --values-schema
#tanzu package available get prometheus.tanzu.vmware.com/PACKAGE-VERSION --generate-default-values-file

This command lists configuration parameters of the Grafana package and their default values. You can use the output to update your prometheus-data-values.yaml file, I have used below config file which is hosted on git, if you want you can download and use and in my config file ingress is enabled in the yaml which means it works with ingress.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/avnish80/prometheus/main/prometheus-data-values.yaml

Install/update/delete prometheus pkg using below commands..

#tanzu package install prometheus --package-name prometheus.tanzu.vmware.com --version 2.36.2+vmware.1-tkg.1 --values-file prometheus-data-values.yaml

#tanzu package installed update prometheus --values-file prometheus-data-values.yaml
 
#tanzu package installed delete prometheus

Step 6:- Deploy Grafana

Grafana is open-source software that allows you to visualize and analyze metrics data collected by Prometheus on your clusters. Tanzu Kubernetes Grid includes a Grafana package that you can deploy on your Tanzu Kubernetes clusters. verify the configuration file, this file configures the Grafana package..

#tanzu package available get grafana.tanzu.vmware.com/7.5.16+vmware.1-tkg.1 --values-schema

##tanzu package available get grafana.tanzu.vmware.com/PACKAGE-VERSION --generate-default-values-file

This command lists configuration parameters of the Grafana package and their default values. You can use the output to update your grafana-data-values.yml file, I have used below config file which is hosted on git, if you want you can download and use and in my config file ingress is enabled in the yaml which means it works with ingress.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/avnish80/grafana/main/grafana-data-values.yaml

#tanzu package install grafana --package-name grafana.tanzu.vmware.com --version 7.5.16+vmware.1-tkg.1 --values-file grafana-data-values.yaml
 
#tanzu package installed update grafana --values-file grafana-data-values.yaml
 
#tanzu package installed delete grafana

Access the Grafana Dashboard

After Grafana is deployed, the grafana package creates a Contour HTTPProxy object with a Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) of grafana.system.tanzu. To use this FQDN to access the Grafana dashboard, Use the IP address of the LoadBalancer for the Envoy service in the tanzu-system-ingress namespace.

In case FQDN to access the Grafana dashboard does not work

Create an entry in your local /etc/hosts file that points an IP address to this FQDN:
Use the IP address of the LoadBalancer for the Envoy service in the tanzu-system-ingress namespace.
Navigate to https://grafana.system.tanzu.

Another issue is because the site uses self-signed certificates, you might need to navigate through a browser-specific security warning before you are able to access the dashboard.

Getting Started with VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension 4.0

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Posted on December 8, 2022 by vmtechie

VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension brings Kubernetes as a service to VMware Cloud Director, offering multi-tenant, VMware supported, production ready, and compatible Kubernetes services with Tanzu Kubernetes Grid. As a service provider administrator, you can add the service to your existing VMware Cloud Director tenants. By using VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension, customers can also use Tanzu products and services such as Tanzu^® Mission Control to manage their clusters.

Pre-requisite for Container Service Extension 4.0

Provider Specific Organization – Before you can configure VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension server, it is must to create an organization to hosts VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension server
Organization VDC within Organization – Container Service extension Appliance will be deployed in this organization virtual data center
Network connectivity – Network connectivity between the machine where VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension is installed, and the VMware Cloud Director server. VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension communicates with VMware Cloud Director using VMware Cloud Director public API endpoint
CSE 4.0 CPI automatically creates Load balancer, you must ensure that you have configured NSX Advanced Load Balancer, NSX Cloud, and NSX Advanced Load Balancer Service Engine Group for tenants who need to create Tanzu Kubernetes Cluster.

Provider Configuration

With the release of VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension 4.0, service providers can use the CSE Management tab in the Kubernetes Container Clusters UI plug-in, which demonstrate step by step process to configure the VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension server.

Install Kubernetes Container Clusters UI plug-in for VMware Cloud Director

You can download the Kubernetes Container Clusters UI plug-in for the VMware Cloud Director Download Page and upload the plug-in to VMware Cloud Director.

NOTE: If you have previously used the Kubernetes Container Clusters plug-in with VMware Cloud Director, it is necessary to deactivate it before you can activate a newer version, as only one version of the plug-in can operate at one time in VMware Cloud Director. Once you activate a new plug-in, it is necessary to refresh your Internet browser to begin using it.

Once partner has installed plugin, The Getting Started section with in CSE Management page help providers to learn and set up VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension in VMware Cloud Director through the Kubernetes Container Clusters UI plug-in 4.0. At very High Level this is Six Step process:

Lets start following these steps and deploy

Step:1 – This section links to the locations where providers can download the following two types of OVA files that are necessary for VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension configuration:

NOTE- Do not download FIPS enabled templates

Step:2 – Create a catalog in VMware Cloud Director and upload VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension OVA files that you downloaded in the step:1 into this catalog

Step:3 – This section initiates the VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension server configuration process. In this process, you can enter details such as software versions, proxy information, and syslog location. This workflow automatically creates a Kubernetes Clusters rights bundle, CSE Admin Role role, Kubernetes Cluster Author role, and VM sizing policies. In this process, the Kubernetes Clusters rights bundle and Kubernetes Cluster Author role are automatically published to all tenants as well as following Kubernetes resource versions will be deployed

Kubernetes Resources	Supported Versions
Cloud Provider Interface (CPI)	1.2.0
Container Storage Interface (CSI)	1.3.0
CAPVCD	1.0.0

Step:4 – This section links to the Organization VDCs section in VMware Cloud Director, where you can assign VM sizing policies to customer organization VDCs. To avoid resource limit errors in clusters, it is necessary to add Tanzu Kubernetes Grid VM sizing policies to organization virtual data centers.The Tanzu Kubernetes Grid VM sizing policies are automatically created in the previous step. Policies created are as below:

Sizing Policy	Description	Values
TKG small	Small VM sizing policy	2 CPU, 4 GB memory
TKG medium	Medium VM sizing policy	2 CPU, 8 GB memory
TKG large	Large VM sizing policy	4 CPU, 16 GB memory
TKG extra-large	X-large VM sizing policy	8 CPU, 32 GB memory

NOTE: Providers can create more policies manually based on requirement and publish to tenants

In VMware Cloud Director UI, select an organization VDC, and from the left panel, under Policies, select VM Sizing and Click Add and then from the data grid, select the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid sizing policy you want to add to the organization, and click OK.

Step:5 – This section links to the Users section in VMware Cloud Director, where you can create a user with the CSE Admin Role role. This role grants administration privileges to the user for VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension administrative purposes. You can use this user account as OVA deployment parameters when you start the VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension server.

Step:6 – This section links to the vApps section in VMware Cloud Director where you can create a vApp from the uploaded VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension server OVA file to start the VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension server.

Create a vApp from VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension server OVA file.
Configure the VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension server vApp deployment lease
Power on the VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension server.

Container Service Extension OVA deployment

Enter a vApp name, optionally a description, runtime lease and storage lease (should be no lease so that it does not suspend automatically), and click Next.

Select a virtual data center and review the default configuration for resources, compute policies, hardware, networking, and edit details where necessary.

In the Custom Properties window, configure the following settings:
- VCD host: VMware Cloud Director URL
- CSE service account’s username The username: CSE Admin user in the organization
- CSE service account’s API Token: to generate API Token, login to provider session with CSE user which you created in Step:5 and then go to “User Preferences” and click on “NEW” in “ACCESS Tokens” section (When you generate an API Access Token, you must copy the token, because it appears only once. After you click OK, you cannot retrieve this token again, you can only revoke it. )

CSE service account’s org: The organization that the user with the CSE Admin role belongs to, and that the VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension server deploys to.
CSE service vApp’s org: Name of the provider org where CSE app will be deployed

In the Virtual Applications tab, in the bottom left of the vApp, click Actions > Power > Start. this completes the vApp creation from the VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension server OVA file. This task is the final step for service providers to perform before the VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension server can operate and start provisioning Tanzu Kubernetes Clusters.

CSE 4.0 is packed with capabilities that address and attract developer personas with an improved feature set and simplified cluster lifecycle management. Users can now build and upgrade versions, resize, and delete K8s clusters directly from the UI making it simpler and faster to accomplish tasks than before. This completes provider section of Container Service extension in next blog post i will write about Tenant workflow.

Multi-Tenant Tanzu Data Services with VMware Cloud Director

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Posted on November 29, 2022 by vmtechie

VMware Cloud Director extension for VMware Data Solutions is a plug-in for VMware Cloud Director (VCD) that enables cloud providers expand their multi-tenant cloud infrastructure platform to deliver a portfolio of on-demand caching, messaging and database software services at massive scale. This brings in new opportunity for our Cloud Providers to offer additional cloud native developer services in addition to the VCD powered Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS).

VMware Cloud Director extension for Data Solutions offers a simple tenant-facing self-service UI for the lifecycle management of below Tanzu data services with a single view across multiple instances, and with URL to individual instances for service specific management.

Tenant Self-Service Access to Data Solutions

Tenant users can access VMware Cloud Director extension for Data Solutions from VMware Cloud Director tenant portal

before tenant user can deploy any of the above solution, he/she must need to prepare their Tanzu K8s clusters deployed by CSE, basically when you click on Install Operator for a Kubernetes cluster for VMware Cloud Director extension for Data Solutions, Data Solutions operator is automatically installed to this cluster and this Data Solution Operator is for life cycle management of data services, to install operator simple log in to VMware Cloud Director extension for Data Solutions from VMware Cloud Director and then:

Click Settings > Kubernetes Clusters
Select the Kubernetes cluster on which you want to deploy Data Services
and click Install Operator.

It takes a few minutes for the status of the cluster to change to Active.

Deploy a Tanzu Data Services instance

Go to Solutions and choose your required solution and click on “Launch”

This will take you to “Instances” page there , enter the necessary details.

Enter the instance name.
Solution should have RabbitMQ selected
Select the Kubernetes cluster ( You can only select cluster which has Data Solutions Operator successfully installed
Select a solution template (T-Shirt sizes)

To customize, for example, to configure the instance RabbitMQ Management Console or Expose Load Balancer for AMQP click Show Advanced Settings and select appropriate option.

Monitor Instance Health using Grafana

Tanzu Kubernetes Grid provides cluster monitoring services by implementing the open source Prometheus and Grafana projects. Tenant can use the Grafana Portal to get insights about the state of the RabbitMQ nodes and runtime. For this to work, Grafana must be installed on CSE 4 Tanzu Cluster.

NOTE: Follow this link for Prometheus and Grafana installation on CSE Tanzu K8s clusters.

Connecting to RabbitMQ

Since during the deployment, i have exposed RMQ as “Expose Load Balancer for AMQP”, if you take a look in vcd load balancer configuration CSE automatically exposed RMQ as load balancer VIP and a NAT rule get created, so that you can access it from outside.

Provider Configuration

Before you start using VMware Cloud Director extension for Data Solutions, you must meet certain prerequisites:

VMware Cloud Director version 10.3.1 or later.
Container Service Extension version 4.0 or later to your VMware Cloud Director.
A client machine with MacOS or Linux, which has a network connectivity to VMware Cloud Director REST endpoint.
Verify that you have obtained a VMware Data Solutions account.

Detailed instruction of installing VMware Cloud Director extension for VMware Data Solutions detailed Here.

VMware Cloud Director extension for VMware Data Solutions comes with zero additional cost to our cloud providers. Please note that the extension does not come with a cost, however, cloud providers need to report their service consumption of Data Services which do carry a cost.

AI/ML with VMware Cloud Director

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Posted on August 6, 2022 by vmtechie

AI/ML—short for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)—represents an important evolution in computer science and data processing that is quickly transforming a vast array of industries.

Why is AI/ML important?

it’s no secret that data is an increasingly important business asset, with the amount of data generated and stored globally growing at an exponential rate. Of course, collecting data is pointless if you don’t do anything with it, but these enormous floods of data are simply unmanageable without automated systems to help.

Artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning give organizations a way to extract value out of the troves of data they collect, delivering business insights, automating tasks and advancing system capabilities. AI/ML has the potential to transform all aspects of a business by helping them achieve measurable outcomes including:

Increasing customer satisfaction
Offering differentiated digital services
Optimizing existing business services
Automating business operations
Increasing revenue
Reducing costs

As modern applications become more prolific, Cloud Providers need to address the increasing customer demand for accelerated computing that typically requires large volumes of multiple, simultaneous computation that can be met with GPU capability.

Cloud Providers can now leverage vSphere support for NVIDIA GPUs and NVIDIA AI Enterprise (a cloud-native software suite for the development and deployment of AI and has been optimized and certified for VMware vSphere), This enables vSphere capabilities like vMotion from within Cloud Director to now deliver multi-tenancy GPU services which are key to maximizing GPU resource utilization. With Cloud Director support for the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software suite, customers now have access to best-in-class, GPU optimized AI frameworks and tools and to deliver compute intensive workloads including artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning (ML) applications within their datacenters.

This solution with NVIDIA takes advantage of NVIDIA MIG (Multi-instance GPU) which supports spatial segmentation between workloads at the physical level inside a single device and is a big deal for multi-tenant environments driving better optimization of hardware and increased margins. Cloud Director is reliant on host pre-configuration for GPU services included in NVIDIA AI Enterprise which contains vGPU technology to enable deployment/configuration on hosts and GPU profiles.

Customers can self serve, manage and monitor their GPU accelerated hosts and virtual machines within Cloud Director. Cloud Providers are able to monitor (through vCloud API and UI dashboard) NVIDIA vGPU allocation, usage per VDC and per VM to optimize utilization and meter/bill (through vCloud API) NVIDIA vGPU usage averaged over a unit of time per tenant for tenant billing.

Provider Workflow

Add GPU devices to ESXi hosts in vCenter and install required drivers.
Verify vGPU profiles are visible by going in to vCD provider portal → Resources → Infrastructure Resources → vGPU Profiles
Edit vGPU profiles to provide necessary tenant facing instructions and a tenant facing name to each vGPU profile. (Optional)
Create a PVDC backed by one or more clusters having GPU hosts in vCenter.
In provider portal → Cloud Resources → vGPU Policies → Create a new vGPU policy by following the wizards steps.

Tenant Workflow

When you create a vGPU policy, it is not visible to tenants. You can publish a vGPU policy to an organization VDC to make it available to tenants.

Publishing a vGPU policy to an organization VDC makes the policy visible to tenants. The tenant can select the policy when they create a new standalone VM or a VM from a template, edit a VM, add a VM to a vApp, and create a vApp from a vApp template. You cannot delete a vGPU policy that is available to tenants.

Publish the vGPU policy to one or more tenant VDCs similar to the way we publish sizing and placement policies.
Create a new VM or instantiate a VM from template. In vGPU enabled VDCs, tenants can now select a vGPU policy

Cloud Director not only allows for VMs but providers can also leverage cloud director’s Container Service Extension to offer GPU enabled Tanzu Kubernetes Clusters.

Step-by-Step Configuration

Below video covers step-by-step process of configuring provider and tenant side of configuration as well as deploying Tensor flow GPU in to a VM.

Persistent Volumes for Tanzu on VMware Cloud on AWS using Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP

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Posted on June 23, 2022 by vmtechie

Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP provides fully managed shared storage in the AWS Cloud with the popular data access and management capabilities of ONTAP and this blog post we are going to use these volumes mount as Persistent Volumes on Tanzu Kubernetes Clusters running on VMware Cloud on AWS

With Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, you pay only for the resources you use. There are no minimum fees or set-up charges. There are five Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP components to consider when storing and managing your data: SSD storage, SSD IOPS, capacity pool usage, throughput capacity, and backups.

The Amazon FSx console has two options for creating a file system – Quick create option and Standard create option. To rapidly and easily create an Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP file system with the service recommended configuration, I use the Quick create option.

The Quick create option creates a file system with a single storage virtual machine (SVM) and one volume. The Quick create option configures this file system to allow data access from Linux instances over the Network File System (NFS) protocol.

In the Quick configuration section, for File system name – optional, enter a name for your file system.

For Deployment type choose Multi-AZ or Single-AZ.

Multi-AZ file systems replicate your data and support failover across multiple Availablity Zones in the same AWS Region.
Single-AZ file systems replicate your data and offer automatic failover within a single Availability Zone, for this post i am creating in Single AZ
SSD storage capacity, specify the storage capacity of your file system, in gibibytes (GiBs). Enter any whole number in the range of 1,024–196,608.
For Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), choose the Amazon VPC that is associate with your VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC.

Review the file system configuration shown on the Create ONTAP file system page. For your reference, note which file system settings you can modify after the file system is created.

Choose Create file system.

Quick create creates a file system with one SVM (named fsx) and one volume (named vol1). The volume has a junction path of /vol1 and a capacity pool tiering policy of Auto.

For us to use this SVM, we need to get the IP address of SVM for NFS , Click on SVM ID and take a note of this IP, we will use this IP in our NFS configurations for Tanzu.

Kubernetes NFS-Client Provisioner

NFS subdir external provisioner is an automatic provisioner that use your existing and already configured NFS server to support dynamic provisioning of Kubernetes Persistent Volumes via Persistent Volume Claims. Persistent volumes are provisioned as ${namespace}-${pvcName}-${pvName}.

More Details – Explained here in detail https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/nfs-subdir-external-provisioner

I am deploying this on my Tanzu Kubernetes cluster which is deployed on VMware Cloud on AWS.

Add the helm repo –

#helm repo add nfs-subdir-external-provisioner https://kubernetes-sigs.github.io/nfs-subdir-external-provisioner/

Install using as below:

#helm install nfs-subdir-external-provisioner nfs-subdir-external-provisioner/nfs-subdir-external-provisioner \
    --set nfs.server=<IP address of Service> \
    --set nfs.path=/<Volume Name>
#My command will be like this#
#helm install nfs-subdir-external-provisioner nfs-subdir-external-provisioner/nfs-subdir-external-provisioner \
    --set nfs.server=172.31.1.234 \
    --set nfs.path=/vol1

Post installation of chart, you can check the status of Pod, it is not in running state then describe and see where it stuck

Finally, Test Your Environment!

Now we’ll test your NFS subdir external provisioner by creating a persistent volume claim and a pod that writes a test file to the volume. This will make sure that the provisioner is provisioning and that the Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP service is reachable and writable.

As you can see deployed application created an PV and PVC successfully on Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP

Describe the Persistent Volume to see the source of it, as you can see below it is created on NFS running on SVM having IP – 172.31.1.234

This is the power of VMware Cloud on AWS and AWS native services, customers can use any AWS native service without worrying about egress charges as well as security as everything is being configured and accessed over the private connections.

Building Windows Custom Machine Image for Creating Tanzu Workload Clusters

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Posted on June 17, 2022 by vmtechie

If your organisation is building an application based on Windows components (such as .NET Framework) and willing to deploy Windows containers on VMware Tanzu, this blog post is on how to build a Windows custom machine image and deploy windows Kubernetes cluster.

Windows Image Prerequisites

vSphere 6.7 Update 3 or greater
A macOS or Linux workstation, Docker Desktop and Ansible must be installed on workstation
Tanzu Kubernetes Grid v1.5.x or greater
Tanzu CLI
A Recent Image of Windows 2019 (newer than April 2021) and must be downloaded from Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) or Volume Licensing (VL) account.
The latest VMware Tools Windows ISO image. Download from VMware Tools
on vCenter, Inside a data store create a folder such as iso and upload windows ISO and VMware Tools iso

Build a Windows Image

Deploy Tanzu Management Cluster with Ubuntu 2004 Kubernetes v1.22.9 OVA
Create a YAML file named builder.yaml with the following configuration, On my local system I have saved this yaml as builder.yaml

apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
 name: imagebuilder
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
 name: imagebuilder-wrs
 namespace: imagebuilder
spec:
 selector:
   app: image-builder-resource-kit
 type: NodePort
 ports:
 - port: 3000
   targetPort: 3000
   nodePort: 30008
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
 name: image-builder-resource-kit
 namespace: imagebuilder
spec:
 selector:
   matchLabels:
     app: image-builder-resource-kit
 template:
   metadata:
     labels:
       app: image-builder-resource-kit
   spec:
     nodeSelector:
       kubernetes.io/os: linux
     containers:
     - name: windows-imagebuilder-resourcekit
       image: projects.registry.vmware.com/tkg/windows-resource-bundle:v1.22.9_vmware.1-tkg.1
       imagePullPolicy: Always
       ports:
         - containerPort: 3000

Connect the Kubernetes CLI to your management cluster by running:

#kubectl config use-context MY-MGMT-CLUSTER-admin@MY-MGMT-CLUSTER

Apply the builder.yaml file as below:

To ensure the container is running run below command:

List the cluster’s nodes, with wide output and take note of Internal IP address value of the node with ROLE listed as control-plane,master

#kubectl get nodes -o wide

Retrieve the containerd component’s URL and SHA, Query the control plane’s nodePort endpoint:

#curl http://CONTROLPLANENODE-IP:30008

Take note of containerd.path and containerd.sha256 values. The containerd.path value ends with something like containerd/cri-containerd-v1.5.9+vmware.2.windows-amd64.tar.

Create a JSON file in an empty folder named windows.json with the following configuration:

{
 "unattend_timezone": "WINDOWS-TIMEZONE",
 "windows_updates_categories": "CriticalUpdates SecurityUpdates UpdateRollups",
 "windows_updates_kbs": "",
 "kubernetes_semver": "v1.22.9",
 "cluster": "VSPHERE-CLUSTER-NAME",
 "template": "",
 "password": "VCENTER-PASSWORD",
 "folder": "",
 "runtime": "containerd",
 "username": "VCENTER-USERNAME",
 "datastore": "DATASTORE-NAME",
 "datacenter": "DATACENTER-NAME",
 "convert_to_template": "true",
 "vmtools_iso_path": "VMTOOLS-ISO-PATH",
 "insecure_connection": "true",
 "disable_hypervisor": "false",
 "network": "NETWORK",
 "linked_clone": "false",
 "os_iso_path": "OS-ISO-PATH",
 "resource_pool": "",
 "vcenter_server": "VCENTER-IP",
 "create_snapshot": "false",
 "netbios_host_name_compatibility": "false",
 "kubernetes_base_url": "http://CONTROLPLANE-IP:30008/files/kubernetes/",
 "containerd_url": "CONTAINERD-URL",
 "containerd_sha256_windows": "CONTAINERD-SHA",
 "pause_image": "mcr.microsoft.com/oss/kubernetes/pause:3.5",
 "prepull": "false",
 "additional_prepull_images": "mcr.microsoft.com/windows/servercore:ltsc2019",
 "additional_download_files": "",
 "additional_executables": "true",
 "additional_executables_destination_path": "c:/k/antrea/",
 "additional_executables_list": "http://CONTROLPLANE-IP:30008/files/antrea-windows/antrea-windows-advanced.zip",
 "load_additional_components": "true"
}

update the values in file as below:

Add the XML file that contains the Windows settings by following these steps:

Go to the autounattend.xml file on VMware {code} Sample Exchange.
Select Download.
If you are using the Windows Server 2019 evaluation version, remove <ProductKey>...</ProductKey>.
Name the file autounattend.xml.
Save the file in the same folder as the windows.json file and change permission of file to 777.

From your client VM run following command from folder containing your windows.json and autounattend.xml file:

#docker run -it --rm --mount type=bind,source=$(pwd)/windows.json,target=/windows.json --mount type=bind,source=$(pwd)/autounattend.xml,target=/home/imagebuilder/packer/ova/windows/windows-2019/autounattend.xml -e PACKER_VAR_FILES="/windows.json" -e IB_OVFTOOL=1 -e IB_OVFTOOL_ARGS='--skipManifestCheck' -e PACKER_FLAGS='-force -on-error=ask' -t projects.registry.vmware.com/tkg/image-builder:v0.1.11_vmware.3 build-node-ova-vsphere-windows-2019

NOTE: Before you run below command, make sure your workstation is running “Docker Desktop” as well “Ansible”

To ensure the Windows image is ready to use, select your host or cluster in vCenter, select the VMs tab, then select VM Templates to see the Windows image listed.

Use a Windows Image for a Workload Cluster

Use a Windows Image for a Workload Cluster, below yaml shows you how to deploy a workload cluster that uses your Windows image as a template. (This windows cluster is using NSX Advance LB)

#! ---------------------------------------------------------------------
#! non proxy env configs
#! ---------------------------------------------------------------------
CLUSTER_CIDR: 100.96.0.0/11
CLUSTER_NAME: tkg-workload02
CLUSTER_PLAN: dev
ENABLE_CEIP_PARTICIPATION: 'true'
IS_WINDOWS_WORKLOAD_CLUSTER: "true"
VSPHERE_WINDOWS_TEMPLATE: windows-2019-kube-v1.22.5
ENABLE_MHC: "false"

IDENTITY_MANAGEMENT_TYPE: oidc

INFRASTRUCTURE_PROVIDER: vsphere
SERVICE_CIDR: 100.64.0.0/13
TKG_HTTP_PROXY_ENABLED: false
DEPLOY_TKG_ON_VSPHERE7: 'true'
VSPHERE_DATACENTER: /SDDC-Datacenter
VSPHERE_DATASTORE: WorkloadDatastore
VSPHERE_FOLDER: /SDDC-Datacenter/vm/tkg-vmc-workload
VSPHERE_NETWORK: /SDDC-Datacenter/network/tkgvmc-workload-segment01
VSPHERE_PASSWORD: <encoded:T1V3WXpkbStlLUlDOTBG>
VSPHERE_RESOURCE_POOL: /SDDC-Datacenter/host/Cluster-1/Resources/Compute-ResourcePool/Tanzu/tkg-vmc-workload
VSPHERE_SERVER: 10.97.1.196
VSPHERE_SSH_AUTHORIZED_KEY: ssh-rsa....loudadmin@vmc.local

VSPHERE_USERNAME: cloudadmin@vmc.local
WORKER_MACHINE_COUNT: 3
VSPHERE_INSECURE: 'true'
ENABLE_AUDIT_LOGGING: 'true'
ENABLE_DEFAULT_STORAGE_CLASS: 'true'
ENABLE_AUTOSCALER: false
AVI_CONTROL_PLANE_HA_PROVIDER: 'true'
OS_ARCH: amd64
OS_NAME: photon
OS_VERSION: 3

WORKER_SIZE: small
CONTROLPLANE_SIZE: large
REMOVE_CP_TAINT: "true"

if your cluster yaml file is correct, you should see that new windows cluster has been started to deploy.

and after some time if should deploy cluster sucessfully.

In case if you are using NSX-ALB AKO or Pinniped and see that those pods are not running, please refer Here

NOTE – if you see this error during image build process : Permission denied: ‘./packer/ova/windows/windows-2019/autounattend.xml, check the permission of file autounattend.yaml

Tanzu Service on VMware Cloud on AWS – Installing Tanzu Application Platform

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Posted on March 25, 2022 by vmtechie

VMware Tanzu Application Platform is a modular, application detecting platform that provides a rich set of developer tools and a paved path to production to build and deploy software quickly and securely on any compliant public cloud or on-premises Kubernetes cluster.

Tanzu Application Platform delivers a superior developer experience for enterprises building and deploying cloud-native applications on Kubernetes. It enables application teams to get to production faster by automating source-to-production pipelines. It clearly defines the roles of developers and operators so they can work collaboratively and integrate their efforts.

Operations teams can create application scaffolding templates with built-in security and compliance guardrails, making those considerations mostly invisible to developers. Starting with the templates, developers turn source code into a container and get a URL to test their app in minutes.

Pre-requisite

You should have created an account on Tanzu Network to download Tanzu Application Platform packages.
Servers should have Network access to https://registry.tanzu.vmware.com
A container image registry and access from K8s cluster, in my case i have installed “Harbor” with let’s encrypt certificate.
Registry credentials with read and write access made available to Tanzu Application Platform to store images.
Git repository for the Tanzu Application Platform GUI’s software catalogs, along with a token allowing read access.

Kubernetes cluster requirements

Installation requires Kubernetes cluster v1.20, v1.21, or v1.22 on Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Service on VMware Cloud on VMC as well as pod security policies must be configured so that Tanzu Application Platform controller pods can run as root. To set the pod security policies, run:

#kubectl create clusterrolebinding default-tkg-admin-privileged-binding --clusterrole=psp:vmware-system-privileged --group=system:authenticated

Install Cluster Essentials for VMware Tanzu

The Cluster Essentials for VMware Tanzu package simplifies the process of installing the open-source Carvel tools on your cluster. It includes a script that uses the Carvel CLI tools to download and install the server-side components kapp-controller and secretgen-crontroller on the targeted cluster. Currently, only MacOS and Linux are supported for Cluster Essentials for VMware Tanzu.

Sign in to Tanzu Network.
Navigate to Cluster Essentials for VMware Tanzu on VMware Tanzu Network.
on Linux, download tanzu-cluster-essentials-linux-amd64-1.0.0.tgz.
Unpack the TAR file into the tanzu-cluster-essentials directory by running:

#mkdir $HOME/tanzu-cluster-essentials
#tar -xvf tanzu-cluster-essentials-linux-amd64-1.0.0.tgz -C $HOME/tanzu-cluster-essentials

Configure and run install.sh using below commands:

#export INSTALL_BUNDLE=registry.tanzu.vmware.com/tanzu-cluster-essentials/cluster-essentials-bundle@sha256:82dfaf70656b54dcba0d4def85ccae1578ff27054e7533d08320244af7fb0343
#export INSTALL_REGISTRY_HOSTNAME=registry.tanzu.vmware.com
#export INSTALL_REGISTRY_USERNAME=TANZU-NET-USER Name
#export INSTALL_REGISTRY_PASSWORD=TANZU-NET-USER PASSWORD
#cd $HOME/tanzu-cluster-essentials
#./install.sh

now Install kapp & imgpkg CLI onto your $PATH using below commands:

sudo cp $HOME/tanzu-cluster-essentials/kapp /usr/local/bin/kapp
sudo cp $HOME/tanzu-cluster-essentials/imgpkg /usr/local/bin/imgpkg

For Linux Client VM: Install the Tanzu CLI and Plugins

To install the Tanzu Tanzu command line interface (CLI) on a Linux operating system, Create a directory named Tanzu and download tanzu-framework-bundle-linux from Tanzu Net and unpack the TAR file into the Tanzu directory and install using below commands:

#mkdir $HOME/tanzu 
#tar -xvf tanzu-framework-linux-amd64.tar -C $HOME/tanzu
#export TANZU_CLI_NO_INIT=true
#cd $HOME/tanzu 
#sudo install cli/core/v0.11.1/tanzu-core-linux_amd64 /usr/local/bin/tanzu
#tanzu version
#cd $HOME/tanzu
#tanzu plugin install --local cli all
#tanzu plugin list

Ensure that you have the accelerator, apps, package, secret, and services plug-ins installed. You need these plug-ins to install and interact with the Tanzu Application Platform.

Installing the Tanzu Application Platform Package and Profiles

VMware recommends install of Tanzu Application Platform packages by relocating the images to your registry from VMware Tanzu Network registry, this will ease the deployment process, so lets do it by logging in to Tanzu Net Registry, setting some env variables and relocate images.

#docker login registry.tanzu.vmware.com
#export INSTALL_REGISTRY_USERNAME=MY-REGISTRY-USER
#export INSTALL_REGISTRY_PASSWORD=MY-REGISTRY-PASSWORD
#export INSTALL_REGISTRY_HOSTNAME=MY-REGISTRY
#export TAP_VERSION=VERSION-NUMBER
#imgpkg copy -b registry.tanzu.vmware.com/tanzu-application-platform/tap-packages:1.0.2 --to-repo ${INSTALL_REGISTRY_HOSTNAME}/TARGET-REPOSITORY/tap-packages

This completes the download and upload on images to local registry.

Create a registry secret by running below command:

#tanzu secret registry add tap-registry \
  --username ${INSTALL_REGISTRY_USERNAME} --password ${INSTALL_REGISTRY_PASSWORD} \
  --server ${INSTALL_REGISTRY_HOSTNAME} \
  --export-to-all-namespaces --yes --namespace tap-install

Add the Tanzu Application Platform package repository to the cluster by running:

#tanzu package repository add tanzu-tap-repository \
  --url ${INSTALL_REGISTRY_HOSTNAME}/TARGET-REPOSITORY/tap-packages:$TAP_VERSION \
  --namespace tap-install

Get the status of the Tanzu Application Platform package repository, and ensure the status updates to Reconcile succeeded by running:

#tanzu package repository get tanzu-tap-repository --namespace tap-install

Tanzu Application Platform profile

The tap.tanzu.vmware.com package installs predefined sets of packages based on your profile settings. This is done by using the package manager you installed using Tanzu Cluster Essentials.Here is my full profile sample file:

buildservice:
  descriptor_name: full
  enable_automatic_dependency_updates: true
  kp_default_repository: harbor.tkgsvmc.net/tbs/build-service
  kp_default_repository_password: <password>
  kp_default_repository_username: admin
  tanzunet_password: <password>
  tanzunet_username: tripathiavni@vmware.com
ceip_policy_disclosed: true
cnrs:
  domain_name: tap01.tkgsvmc.net
grype:
  namespace: default
  targetImagePullSecret: tap-registry
learningcenter:
  ingressDomain: learningcenter.tkgsvmc.net
metadata_store:
  app_service_type: LoadBalancer
ootb_supply_chain_basic:
  gitops:
    ssh_secret: ""
  registry:
    repository: tap
    server: harbor.tkgsvmc.net/tap
profile: full
supply_chain: basic
tap_gui:
  app_config:
    app:
      baseUrl: http://tap-gui.tap01.tkgsvmc.net
    backend:
      baseUrl: http://tap-gui.tap01.tkgsvmc.net
      cors:
        origin: http://tap-gui.tap01.tkgsvmc.net
    catalog:
      locations:
        - target: https://github.com/avnish80/tap/blob/main/catalog-info.yaml
          type: url
  ingressDomain: tap01.tkgsvmc.net
  ingressEnabled: "true"
  service_type: LoadBalancer

save this file with modified values as per your environment, for more details about details of settings, check Here.

Install Tanzu Application Platform

finally lets install TAP, to install the Tanzu Application Platform package run below commands:

#tanzu package install tap -p tap.tanzu.vmware.com -v $TAP_VERSION --values-file tap-values.yml -n tap-install

to verify the packages installed, you can go to TMC and check there

or you an run below command to verify too

#tanzu package installed get tap -n tap-install

This completes the installation of Tanzu Application platform, now developer can: Develop and promote an application, Create an application accelerator, Add testing and security scanning to an application, Administer, set up, and manage supply chains.

Getting Started with Tanzu Service on VMware Cloud on AWS

Posted on March 1, 2022 by vmtechie

VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) is a multi-cloud Kubernetes footprint that customers/partners can run both on-premises in vSphere, VMware Cloud on AWS and the public cloud on Amazon EC2 and Microsoft Azure VMs.

TKG provides a Container orchestration through Kubernetes is now built into the vSphere 7 platform.As a VMware Cloud on AWS customer you can take advantage of this new functionality to build Kubernetes clusters in the same platform you’ve grown accustomed to using to manage your virtual infrastructure.

Take control of Cloud Resources and give freedom to Developers based on Personas

Virtualization Administrator: They will be able to define resource allocations and permissions for your users to create their own Kubernetes clusters according to their own specifications.Define access policies, storage policies, memory and CPU restrictions for teams needing Kubernetes access.

Developer or Platform Administrator: They can create new Kubernetes clusters within the defined access policies, upgrade those clusters and scale clusters within the approved resource allocations.

VMware recognizes that not all environments are running on top of vSphere. Tanzu Kubernetes Grid(TKG) leverages the same ClusterAPI engine as VMware Tanzu to manage cluster lifecycles, and can run on any infrastructure. VMware provides three variants of the TKG:

Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Multi-Cloud (TKGm): Installer driven wizard to set up Kubernetes environment to run across multi clouds for example: on AWS EC2 or Azure Native VMs
Tanzu Kubernetes grid Service (TKGS) aka vSphere With Tanzu: Natively integrated with vSphere7+ and available to customers at no extra cost for basic version on VCF on-prem as well as VMware Cloud on AWS
Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Integrated Edition: VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Integrated Edition (formerly known as VMware Enterprise PKS) is a Kubernetes-based container solution with advanced networking, a private container registry, and life cycle management.

Enable Tanzu Service on VMware Cloud on AWS

Pre-requisite:

Make sure we have at-least three node SDDC is deployed and running with enough available resources (at least 112 GB of available memory, and has sufficient free resources to support 16 vCPUs)
Get Three CIDR blocks for the deployment. These three needs to be ranges that does not overlap with the Management CIDR or any other networks used on-prem or in the VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC.
You can activate Tanzu Kubernetes Grid in any SDDC at version 1.16 and later.
If Edge cluster has been configured with medium configuration, then a SDDC cluster requires a minimum of three hosts for activation.
If Edge cluster has been configured with Large configuration, then a SDDC cluster requires a minimum of four hosts for activation.

Once pre-requisites are ready, go to VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC and click on “Activate the Tanzu Kubernetes Service”

Activation process will check required resources and will only move ahead if you have pre-requisite completed.

on the next screen:

Leave the Service CIDR as default or pick of your choice but non-overlapping and used for Tanzu supervisor services for the cluster
Enter the “namespace Network CIDR”, non-overlapping
Enter an ‘Ingress CIDR”, non-overlapping
Enter an “Egress CIDR”, non-overlapping
next Click on “Validate and Proceed”

NOTE: CIDR blocks of size 16, 20, 23, or 26 are supported, and must be in one of the “private address space” blocks defined by RFC 1918 (10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, or 192.168.0.0/16).

and finally once validation is done, click on Activate Tanzu Kubernetes Grid

this will start activation process and you should be seeing “Activating Tanzu Kubernetes Grid” on your SDDC tile.This process should get completed within 20-30 minutes.

Such an easy process to make your SDDC enabled for running VMs and Containers together. When activation is completed, login to SDDC vCenter and click on Workload Management

Persona (Virtualization/vSphere Administrator) – vSphere Administrator create a vSphere Namespace on the Supervisor Cluster, sets resource limits to the namespace and permissions so that DevOps engineers can access it. he/she provide the URL of the Kubernetes control plane to DevOps engineers where they can run create their own Kubernetes clusters and run their workloads.

Step -1: Set permissions so that DevOps engineers can access the namespace.

From the Permissions pane, select Add Permissions.

Select an identity source, a user or a group, and a role, and click OK.

Step-2: Set persistent storage to the namespace.Storage policies that you assign to the namespace control how persistent volumes and Tanzu Kubernetes cluster nodes are placed within datastores in the SDDC environment.

From the Storage pane, select Add Storage.

Select a storage policy to control datastore placement of persistent volumes and click OK

The VM class is a VM specification that can be used to request a set of resources for a VM. The VM class is controlled and managed by a vSphere administrator, and defines such parameters as the number of virtual CPUs, memory capacity, and reservation settings. The defined parameters are backed and guaranteed by the underlying infrastructure resources of a Supervisor Cluster.

Workload Management offers several default VM classes. Generally, each default class type comes in two editions: guaranteed and best effort. A guaranteed edition fully reserves resources that a VM specification requests. A best effort class edition does not and allows resources to be overcommitted. Typically, a guaranteed type is used in a production environment.

vSphere Administrator can setup additional limits based on use cases and requirements.

Copy NameSpace URL by clicking on “Copy link” and give it to your DevOps/Platfrom admin)

Persona (DevOps/Platform Administrator)

How to Access and Work ?

Install a new VM (clientvm) or from their desktop/laptop, he/she can access this newly created “Namespace” and then create new Kubernetes cluster. When the new VM is provisioned, power it on and and ssh to it and Download the command line tools from vCenter, make sure the item below in red box is changed to your supervisor cluster address that you copied earlier by running:

#wget https://k8s.Cluster-1.vcenter.sddc-18-139-9-54.vmwarevmc.com/wcp/plugin/linux-amd64/vsphere-plugin.zip

Unzip using below command

Now lets login to the supervisor cluster by entering the following :

kubectl vsphere login --vsphere-username cloudadmin@vmc.local --server=https://k8s.Cluster-1.vcenter.sddc-18-139-9-54.vmwarevmc.com

enter the password for cloudadmin or any other user to complete the login

From here onwards, Devops can create their own K8s clusters and deploy applications, they can also utlize VMware’s multi-cloud mamagement platfrom to spin up kubernetes clusters using GUI.

For Devops to use GUI, vSphere Administrator need to Register VMware Cloud on AWS management cluster with Tanzu Mission Control. lets do that:

Register This Management Cluster with Tanzu Mission Control

Tanzu service ships with a namespace for Tanzu Mission Control. This namespace exists on the Supervisor Cluster where you install the Tanzu Mission Control agent.

The vSphere Namespace provided for Tanzu Mission Control is identified as svc-tmc-cXX

To integrate the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Service with Tanzu Mission Control, install the agent on the Supervisor Cluster.

Register the Supervisor Cluster with Tanzu Mission Control and obtain the Registration URL. See Register a Management Cluster with Tanzu Mission Control.

On the client-vm, create a .yaml file with below content:

apiVersion: installers.tmc.cloud.vmware.com/v1alpha1
kind: AgentInstall
metadata:
  name: tmc-agent-installer-config
  namespace: <NAMESPACE captured in above step>
spec:
  operation: INSTALL
  registrationLink: <TMC-REGISTRATION-URL captured from TMC console>

Run this yaml file on using:

#kubectl create -f tmc.yaml

you can also check the status of TMC registration by running below command:

#kubectl get pods -n <ns name>

Now go back to Tanzu Mission Control and after some time you should see your Supervisor cluster ready

Devops/Platform admins are now ready to deploy your TKC clustes as well they can deploy containers, this completes this part of blog, in the next part i will write how to create TKC clusters, run applications within containers and how to expose to internet.

Tanzu on Azure Native

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Posted on September 24, 2021 by vmtechie

VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid provides organizations with a consistent, upstream-compatible, regional Kubernetes substrate that is ready for end-user workloads and ecosystem integrations. You can deploy Tanzu Kubernetes Grid across software-defined datacenters (SDDC) and public cloud environments, including vSphere, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon EC2. in this blog post we will deploy Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 1.4 to Azure Native VMs.

Pre-requisite

Deploy a Client VM ,my case ubuntu VM, this VM will be the bootstrap VM for Tanzu, from where we will deploy management cluster in Azure, you can have one native Azure VM for this.
TKG uses a local Docker install to setup a small, ephemeral, temporary kind based Kubernetes cluster to build the TKG management cluster in Azure. you need Docker locally to run the kind cluster.
Download and Unpack the “Tanzu CLI” and “Kubectl” from HERE, on above VM in a new directory named "tkg" or "tanzu"
- unpack using #> tar -xvf tanzu-cli-bundle-v1.4.0-linux-amd64.tar
- After you unpack the bundle file, in your folder, you will see a cli folder with multiple subfolders and files
- Install Tanzu CLI using #> sudo install core/v1.4.0/tanzu-core-linux_amd64 /usr/local/bin/tanzu
Unpack the kubectl binary using:
- #> tar -xvf kubectl-linux-v1.21.2+vmware.1.gz
- Install kubectl using #> sudo install kubectl-linux-v1.21.2+vmware.1 /usr/local/bin/kubectl
Run the following command from the tanzu directory to install all the Tanzu plugins:
- #> tanzu plugin install –local cli all
- #> tanzu plugin list

Configure Azure resources

In this section we will prepare Microsoft Azure for running Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, For the networking, i have prepared azure network as below:

Every Tanzu Kubernetes Grid cluster requires 2 Public IP addresses
For each Kubernetes Service object with type LoadBalancer, 1 Public IP address is required.
A VNET with: (only required if using existing VNET else TKG can create all automatically)
- A subnet for the management cluster control plane node
- A Network Security Group on the control plane subnet with Allow TCP over port 22 and 6443 for any source and destination inbound security rules, to enable SSH and Kubernetes API server connections
- One additional subnet and Network Security Group for the management cluster worker nodes.
Below is the high level network topology will look like when we deploy Tanzu Management Cluster:

Get Tenant ID

Make a note of the Tenant ID value as it will be used later by hovering over your account name at upper-right, or else browse to Azure Active Directory > <Your Org> > Properties > Tenant ID

Register Tanzu Kubernetes Grid as an Azure Client App & Get Application (Client) ID

Tanzu Kubernetes Grid manages Azure resources as a registered client application that accesses Azure through a service principal account. Below steps register your Tanzu Kubernetes Grid application with Azure Active Directory, create its account, create a client secret for authenticating communications, and record information needed later to deploy a management cluster.

Go to Active Directory > App registrations and click on + New registration.
Enter name and select who else can use it. leave Redirect URI (optional) field blank.
Click Register. This registers the application with an Azure service principal account

Make a note of the Application (client) ID value, we will use it later.

Get Subscription ID

From the Azure Portal top level, browse to Subscriptions. At the bottom of the pane, select one of the subscriptions you have access to, and make a note of Subscription ID.

Add a Role, Create and Record Secret ID

Click the subscription listing to open its overview pane and Select to Access control (IAM) and click Add a role assignment.

In the Add role assignment pane
- Select the Owner role
- Select to “user, group, or service principal“
- Under Select enter the name of your app, in my case “avnish-tkg”. It appears under Selected Members
Click Save. A popup appears confirming that your app was added as an owner for your subscription. You can also verify by going in to “Owned Application” section.

On the Azure Portal go to Azure Active Directory, click on App Registrations, select your “avnish-tkg” app under Owned applications.
Go to Certificates & secrets then in Client secrets click on New client secret.
In the Add a client secret popup, enter a Description, choose an expiration period, and click Add.
Azure lists the new secret with its generated value under Client Secrets. take a note of “Client Secret” value, which we will use later.

With All above steps, we will have four recorded values:

Subscription ID – XXXXXXX-XXX-4853-9cff-3d2d25758b70
Application Client ID – XXXXXXXX-6134-xxxx-b1a9-8fcbfd3ea189
Secret Value – XXXXX-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxkB3VdcBF.c_C.
Tenant ID – XXXXXXXX-3cee-4b4a-a4d6-xxxxxdd62f0

we will use these values when we will create management cluster.

Create an SSH Key-Pair

To connect to management azure machine we must need to provide the public key part of an SSH key pair. you can use a tool "ssh-keygen" to generate one

#>ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C “email@example.com“
At the prompt Enter file in which to save the key (/root/.ssh/id_rsa): press Enter to accept the default
Enter and repeat a password for the key pair

Copy the content of .ssh/id_rsa.pub, which we will use in next section.

Accept Base VM image license

To run management cluster VMs on Azure, accept the license for their base Kubernetes version and machine OS by logging to azure cell and run below commands:

#> az login --service-principal --username AZURE_CLIENT_ID --password AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET --tenant AZURE_TENANT_ID

AZURE_CLIENT_ID, AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET, and AZURE_TENANT_ID are your avnish-tkg app's client ID and secret and your tenant ID, as recorded above

#> az vm image terms accept --publisher vmware-inc --offer tkg-capi --plan k8s-1dot21dot2-ubuntu-2004 --subscription AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID

In Tanzu Kubernetes Grid v1.4.0, the default cluster image --plan value is k8s-1dot21dot2-ubuntu-2004.

Start the Installer Interface

On the machine on which you downloaded and installed the Tanzu CLI, run the

#> tanzu management-cluster create -b "IP of this machine:port" -u

b = binding with interface
u = for User Interface

On the local machine, browse to the above machine’s IP address to access the installer interface and then choose “Microsoft Azure” and click on “DEPLOY”

In the IaaS Provider section, enter the Tenant ID, Client ID, Client Secret, and Subscription ID values for your Azure account. we recorded these values in above pre-requisite section.

Click Connect. The installer verifies the connection and changes the button label to Connected.
Select the Azure region in which to deploy the management cluster.
Paste the contents of your SSH public key, ".ssh/id_rsa.pub“, into the text box.
Under Resource Group, select either the Select an existing resource group or the Create a new resource group radio button.

In the VNET for Azure section, select either the Create a new VNET on Azure or the Select an existing VNET radio button, in my case i am using existing VNET and Subnets which i had provisioned already.

To make the management cluster private, enable the Private Azure Cluster checkbox or leave it Untick. By default, Azure management and workload clusters are public. But you can also configure them to be private, which means their API server uses an Azure internal load balancer (ILB) and is therefore only accessible from within the cluster’s own VNET or peered VNETs.

In Management Cluster Settings section choose Development or Production tiles, use the Instance type drop-down menu to select from different combinations of CPU, RAM, and storage for the control plane node VM or VMs.

Under Worker Node Instance Type, select the configuration for the worker node VM

In the optional Metadata section, optionally provide descriptive information about this management cluster.

in Kubernetes Network section check the default Cluster Service CIDR and Cluster Pod CIDR ranges. If these CIDR ranges of 100.64.0.0/13 and 100.96.0.0/11 are not available, change the values under Cluster Service CIDR and Cluster Pod CIDR.

In Identity Management section, enable/disable Enable Identity Management Settings based on your use case.

In OS Image section, select the OS and Kubernetes version image template to use for deploying Tanzu Kubernetes Grid VMs, and click Next

In the Registration URL field, copy and paste the registration URL you obtained from Tanzu Mission Control or if you don’t have TMC access or URL, move next you can register it later if you want.

In the CEIP Participation section, optionally deselect the check box to opt out of the VMware Customer Experience Improvement Program and then Click Review Configuration to see the details of the management cluster that we have configured.

and finally click on Deploy Management Cluster.

Deployment of the management cluster can take several minutes, in my case around 12 minutes.

and finally, once everything is deployed and configured. your “Management Cluster Created”

The installer saves the configuration of the management cluster to ~/.config/tanzu/tkg/clusterconfigs with a generated filename of the form UNIQUE-ID.yaml. After the deployment has completed, you can rename the configuration file to something memorable,

if you go to azure portal, you should see three control plane VMs, for with names similar to CLUSTER-NAME-control-plane-abcde, one or three worker node VMs with name similar to CLUSTER-NAME-md-0-rh7xv, Disk and Network Interface resources for the control plane and worker node VMs, with names based on the same name patterns.

At this point we can see management cluster deployed successfully, now we can go ahead and create workload clusters based on your requirement easily. Tanzu allows to deploy and manage Kubernetes cluster on vSphere, on VMware on public clouds and native public cloud AWS and Azure native, in next post i will deploy Tanzu on AWS.

Code to Container with Tanzu Build Service

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Posted on September 11, 2021 by vmtechie

Tanzu Build Service uses the open-source Cloud Native Buildpacks project to turn application source code into container images. Build Service executes reproducible builds that align with modern container standards, and additionally keeps images up-to-date. It does so by leveraging Kubernetes infrastructure with kpack, a Cloud Native Buildpacks Platform, to orchestrate the image lifecycle. Tanzu Build Service helps customers develop and automate containerized software workflows securely and at scale.

In this post Tanzu Build Service will monitor git branch and automatically build containers with every push. Then it will upload that container to your image registry for you to pull down and run locally or on Kubernetes cluster

Tanzu Build Service Installation Pre-requisite

Before we install Tanzu Build Service, you must ensure we have a Kubernetes cluster and ensure that all worker nodes have at least 50 GB of ephemeral storage allocated to them and also ensure your Kubernetes cluster is configured with default StorageClass

To do this on Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Service, mount a 60GB volume at /var/lib to the worker nodes in the TanzuKubernetesCluster resource that corresponds to your TKGs cluster. I have used below yaml content for mounting volumes while creating Tanzu Kubernetes cluster.

storage:
      classes:
      - tanzu01
      - tkgontkgs
      defaultClass: tkgontkgs
  topology:
    controlPlane:
      class: best-effort-medium
      count: 1
      storageClass: tkgontkgs
      volumes:
      - capacity:
          storage: 60Gi
        mountPath: /var/lib

    workers:
      class: best-effort-medium
      count: 3
      storageClass: tkgontkgs
      volumes:
      - capacity:
          storage: 60Gi
        mountPath: /var/lib

Ensure you have access to an existing container registry or install one using this guidance, this will be used to install Tanzu Build Service and store the application images that will be created by build process.

Also on a client VM from where you will connect to your Kubernetes cluster, install “docker cli” as well as install below tools , if you need guidance to install these tools, check Here

Install kapp, this is a deployment tool that allows users to manage Kubernetes resources in bulk.
Install ytt, this is a templating tool that understands YAML structure.

# wget -O ytt https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/carvel-ytt/releases/download/ v0.35.1/ytt-linux-amd64
#chmod +x ytt
#mv ytt /usr/local/bin/ytt

Install kbld,this is tool that builds, pushes, and relocates container images.

#wget -O kbld https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/carvel-kbld/releases/downloa d/v0.30.0/kbld-linux-amd64
#mv kbld /usr/local/bin/kbld
#chmod +x /usr/local/bin/kbld

Install kp, it controls the kpack installation on Kubernetes, download the kp CLI for your operating system from the Tanzu Build Service page on Tanzu Network.

#mv kp-linux-0.3.1 /usr/local/bin/kp
#chmod +x /usr/local/bin/kp

Install imgpkg, it is a tool that relocates container images and pulls the release configuration files.

#wget -O imgpkg https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/carvel-imgpkg/releases/dow nload/v0.17.0/imgpkg-linux-amd64
#mv imgpkg /usr/local/bin/imgpkg
#chmod +x /usr/local/bin/imgpkg

and finally target the Kubernetes Cluster on which you want to install “Tanzu Build Service” using :

#kubectl config use-context <context-name>

Relocate Images to private Registry

First we need to relocate images from the Tanzu Network registry to an internal image registry and for that login to the image registry where you want to store the images by running:

#>docker login harbor.tanzu.zpod.io - 

<harbor.tanzu.zpod.io> - this is my private registry host name

Now login to the Tanzu Network registry with your Tanzu Network credentials:

#>docker login registry.pivotal.io

Now lets relocate the images to your local registry using “imgpkg” command:

#>imgpkg copy -b "registry.pivotal.io/build-service/bundle:1.2.2" --to-repo harbor.tanzu.zpod.io/tbs/build-service

This completes image relocation process, now lets move to installation.

Tanzu Build Service Installation

Pull the Tanzu Build Service bundle image on your client vm from your internal registry using imgpkg:

#>imgpkg pull -b  "harbor.tanzu.zpod.io/library/build-service:1.2.2" -o /tmp/bundle

Use the Carvel tools kapp, ytt, and kbld, (those we installed in pre-requisite section) to install Build Service and define the required Build Service parameters by running:

#>ytt -f /tmp/bundle/values.yaml -f /tmp/bundle/config/ -f /tmp/ca.crt -v docker_repository='harbor.tanzu.zpod.io/tbs/build-service'     -v docker_username='admin' -v docker_password='<password>' -v tanzunet_username='tripathiavni@vmware.com' -v tanzunet_password='<password>'| kbld -f /tmp/bundle/.imgpkg/images.yml -f- | kapp deploy -a tanzu-build-service -f- -y




#/tmp/ca.crt:-path to registry CA certificate
#docker_repository:-image repository where TBS images exist

/tmp/ca.crt – is my CA certificate of the registry.if all above steps are correct, then you should see the “succeeded” as below.

that means, TBS installation is complete, lets move to next

Import Tanzu Build Service Dependency Resources

The Tanzu Build Service Dependencies like stacks, Buildpacks, Builders, etc. are used to build applications and keep them patched and These must be imported with the kp cli and the Dependency Descriptor (descriptor-<version>.yaml) file from the Tanzu Build Service Dependencies page

and now run below command to import all the dependencies

#>kp import -f /tmp/descriptor-100.0.146.yaml --registry-ca-cert-path /tmp/CA.cer

Verify Installation

To verify Build Service installation, lets target the Kubernetes Cluster where Tanzu Build Service has been installed on and run “kp” command which we installed as part of pre-req.

List the cluster builders available in your installation using:

#> kp clusterbuilder list

you should see output like below.

Few Additional commands, you can also run

#> kp clusterstack list
#> kp clusterstore list

This completes the installation of Tanzu build Service.

Build and Deploy a Sample App

First lets create a “secret” for “gitlab” as i have installed gitlab in to my vSphere Lab environment

#> kp secret create github-creds --git http://10.96.63.48 --git-user demoadmin -n tbs-demo

Lets also create secret for the private registry, in my case my registry is hosted on “harbor.tanzu.zpod.io” in vSphere environment

#> kp secret create my-registry-creds --registry harbor.tanzu.zpod.io --registry-user admin --namespace tbs-demo

With the next command, we are telling Tanzu Build Service where to retrieve the source code. Tanzu Build Service will be configured to watch the master branch by default, but you can configure it to watch your own development branch for whatever feature or bug you happen to be working on. Finally, the tag is where the image will be pushed in your registry. Lets create an image using source code from my git repository by running:

#>kp image create spring-petclinic --tag harbor.tanzu.zpod.io/library/sp                                                    ring-petclinic:latest --namespace tbs-demo --git http://10.96.63.48/demoadmin/wwcp.get

it will download its dependencies and start building image

Once completed, Tanzu Build Service will put a copy of the image into Harbor registry, as well as onto your local Kubernetes cluster within the default namespace.

You can check the image status by running below command.

We can now deploy this image either on local or Kubernetes environment or you can setup continuous deployment to deploy build images on any Kubernetes platform. in below example I am installing on my Tanzu Kubernetes cluster from the private registry where build service pushed the container image.

As you can see once image is deployed, i can access it easily from my browser successfully.

This completes the Step-by-Step procedure to install and use Tanzu Build Service. If you would like to dive deeper into VMware Tanzu Build Service, check out the documentation section.

Deploy Tanzu Kubernetes Clusters using Tanzu Mission Control

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Posted on August 31, 2021 by vmtechie

VMware Tanzu Mission Control is a centralized management platform for consistently operating and securing your Kubernetes infrastructure and modern applications across multiple teams and clouds.

TMC is Available through VMware Cloud services, Tanzu Mission Control provides operators with a single control point to give developers the independence they need to drive business forward, while ensuring consistent management and operations across environments for increased security and governance.

Use Tanzu Mission Control to manage your entire Kubernetes footprint, regardless of where your clusters reside.

Getting Started with Tanzu Mission Control

To get Started with Tanzu Mission Control, use VMware Cloud Services tools to gain access to VMware Tanzu Mission Control

Launch the TMC Console – Log in to the Tanzu Mission Control console to start managing clusters

Create a Cluster Group – Create a cluster group to help organize and manage your clusters

Register TKGs Management Cluster – When customer registers a Tanzu Kubernetes Grids management cluster, you can bring all of its workload clusters under the management of Tanzu Mission Control, which helps customer to facilitate consistent management using all of the capabilities of Tanzu Mission Control, as well as provisioning resources and creating new clusters directly from Tanzu Mission Control.

Once customer has access to Tanzu Mission Control and created cluster group and registered management cluster, follow below video to deploy Kubernetes clusters on vCenter using management cluster. Video has step-by-Step instruction to help customers for their TMC journey.

Tanzu mission control help customers to bring all the K8s clusters together and once together you can manage policies and configuration of these clusters and help developers to self services.

Now Tanzu Mission Control is available as VMware Cloud Provider Partners as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering through the VMware Cloud Partner Navigator, this unlocks new opportunities for cloud providers to offer Kubernetes (K8s) managed services for a multi-cloud and multi-team environment. For more details check HERE or reach out to your Business Development Manager.

Deploy Harbor Registry on TKG Clusters

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Posted on August 16, 2021 by vmtechie

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.

Cloud Native Runtimes for Tanzu

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Posted on June 15, 2021 by vmtechie

Dynamic Infrastructure

This is an IT concept whereby underlying hardware and software can respond dynamically and more efficiently to changing levels of demand. Modern Cloud Infrastrastructure built on VM and Containers requires automated:

Provisioning, Orchestration, Scheduling
Service Configuration, Discovery and Registry
Network Automation, Segmentation, Traffic Shaping and Observability

What is Cloud Native Runtimes for Tanzu ?

Cloud Native Runtimes for VMware Tanzu is a Kubernetes-based platform to deploy and manage modern Serverless workloads. Cloud Native Runtimes for Tanzu is based on Knative, and runs on a single Kubernetes cluster. Cloud Native Runtime automates all the aspects of dynamic Infrastructure requirements.

Serverless ≠ FaaS

Serverless	FaaS
Multi-Threaded (Server)	Cloud Provider Specific
Cloud Provider Agnostic	Single Threaded Functions
Long lived (days)	Shortly Lived (minutes)
offer more flexibility	Managing a large number of functions can be tricky

Cloud Native Runtime Installation

Command line Tools Required For Cloud Native Runtime of Tanzu

The following command line tools are required to be downloaded and installed on a client workstation from which you will connect and manage Tanzu Kubernetes cluster and Tanzu Serverless.

kubectl (Version 1.18 or newer)

Using a browser, navigate to the Kubernetes CLI Tools (available in vCenter Namespace) download URL for your environment.
Select the operating system and download the vsphere-plugin.zip file.
Extract the contents of the ZIP file to a working directory.The vsphere-plugin.zip package contains two executable files: kubectl and vSphere Plugin for kubectl. kubectl is the standard Kubernetes CLI. kubectl-vsphere is the vSphere Plugin for kubectl to help you authenticate with the Supervisor Cluster and Tanzu Kubernetes clusters using your vCenter Single Sign-On credentials.
Add the location of both executables to your system’s PATH variable.

kapp (Version 0.34.0 or newer)

kapp is a lightweight application-centric tool for deploying resources on Kubernetes. Being both explicit and application-centric it provides an easier way to deploy and view all resources created together regardless of what namespace they’re in. Download and Install as below:

ytt (Version 0.30.0 or newer)

ytt is a templating tool that understands YAML structure. Download, Rename and Install as below:

kbld (Version 0.28.0 or newer)

Orchestrates image builds (delegates to tools like Docker, pack, kubectl-buildkit) and registry pushes, works with local Docker daemon and remote registries, for development and production cases

The Knative client kn is your door to the Knative world. It allows you to create Knative resources interactively from the command line or from within scripts. Download, Rename and Install as below:

Download Cloud Native Runtimes for Tanzu (Beta)

To install Cloud Native Runtimes for Tanzu, you must first download the installation package from VMware Tanzu Network:

Log into VMware Tanzu Network.
Navigate to the Cloud Native Runtimes for Tanzu release page.
Download the serverless.tgz archive and release.lock
Create a directory named tanzu-serverless.
Extract the contents of serverless.tgz into your tanzu-serverless directory:

#tar xvf serverless.tar.gz

Install Cloud Native Runtimes for Tanzu on Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Cluster

For this installation i am using a TKG cluster deployed on vSphere7 with Tanzu.To install Cloud Native Runtimes for Tanzu on Tanzu Kubernetes Grid: First target the cluster you want to use and verify that you are targeting the correct Kubernetes cluster by running:

#kubectl cluster-info

Run the installation script from the tanzu-serverless directory and wait for progress to get over

#./bin/install-serverless.sh

During my installation, I faced couple of issues like this..

i just rerun the installation, which automatically fixed these issues..

Verify Installation

To verify that your serving installation was successful, create an example Knative service. For information about Knative example services, see Hello World – Go in the Knative documentation. let’s deploy a sample web application using the kn cli. Run:

#kn service create hello --image gcr.io/knative-samples/helloworld-go - default

Take above external URL and either add Contour IP with host name in local hosts file or add an DNS entry and browse and if everything is done correctly your first application is running sucessfully.

You can list and describe the service by running command:

#kn service list -A

#kn service describe hello -n default

It looks like everything is up and ready as we configured it. Some other things you can do with the Knative CLI are to describe and list the routes with the app:

#kn route describe hello -n default

Create your own app

This demo used an existing Knative example, why not make our own app from an image, let do it using below yaml:

apiVersion: serving.knative.dev/v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: helloworld
  namespace: default
spec:
 template:
  spec:
   containers:
     - image: gcr.io/knative-samples/helloworld-go
       ports:
             - containerPort: 8080
       env:
        - name: TARGET
          value: "This is my app"

Save this to k2.yaml or something which you like, now lets deploy this new service using the kubectl apply command:

#kubectl apply -f k2.yaml

Next, we can list service and describe new deployment, as per the name provided in the YAML file:

and now finally browse the URL by going to http://helloworld.default.example.com (you would need to add entry in DNS or hosts files)

This proves your application is running successfully, Cloud Native Runtimes for Tanzu is a great way for developers to move quickly go on serverless development with networking, autoscaling (even to zero), and revision tracking etc that allow users to see changes in apps immediately. GO ahead and try this in your Lab and once GA in production.

Quick Tip – Delete Stale Entries on Cloud Director CSE

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Posted on June 7, 2021 by vmtechie

Container Service Extension (CSE) is a VMware vCloud Director (VCD) extension that helps tenants create and work with Kubernetes clusters.CSE brings Kubernetes as a Service to VCD, by creating customized VM templates (Kubernetes templates) and enabling tenant users to deploy fully functional Kubernetes clusters as self-contained vApps.

Due to any reason, if tenant’s cluster creation stuck and it continue to show “CREATE:IN_PROGRESS” or “Creating” for many hours, it means that the cluster creation has failed for unknown reason, and the representing defined entity has not transitioned to the ERROR state .

Solution

To fix this, provider admin need to get in to API and delete these stale entries, there are very few simple steps to clean those stale entries.

First – Let’s get the “X-VMWARE-VCLOUD-ACCESS-TOKEN” for API calls by calling below API call:

https://<vcd url>/cloudapi/1.0.0/sessions/provider
Authentication Type: Basic
Username/password – <adminid@system>/<password>

Above API call will return “X-VMWARE-VCLOUD-ACCESS-TOKEN”, inside header section of response window. copy this token and use as “Bearer” token in subsequent API calls.

Second – we need to get the “Cluster ID” of the stale cluster which we want to delete, and to get “Cluster ID” – Go in to Cloud Director Kubernetes Container Extension and click on cluster which is stuck and get Cluster IP in URN Format.

Third (Optional) – Get the cluster details using below API call and using authentication using Bearer token , which we first step:

Get https://<vcd-fqdn>/cloudapi/1.0.0/entities/<cluster-id>/

Fourth – Delete the stale cluster using below API call by providing “ClusterID“, which we captured in second step and using authenticate type a “Bearer Token“

Delete https://<vcd-fqdn>/cloudapi/1.0.0/entities/<cluster-id>/

Above API call should respond with “204 No Content”, it means API call has been executed sucessfully.

Now if you login to Cloud Director “Kubernetes Container Cluster” extension, above API call must have deleted the stale/stuck cluster entry

Now you can go to Cloud Director vAPP section and see if any vAPP/VM is running for that cluster , shutdown that VM and Delete it from Cloud Director. simple three API calls to complete the process.

vSphere Tanzu with AVI Load Balancer

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Posted on March 25, 2021 by vmtechie

With the release of the vSphere 7.0 Update 2, VMware now adds new Load Balancer option for vSphere with Tanzu which provides production-ready load balancer option for your vSphere with Tanzu deployments. This Load Balancer is called NSX Advanced Load Balancer, or NSX ALB or AVI Load Balancer, This will provide Virtual IP addresses for the Supervisor Control Plane API server, the TKG guest cluster API servers and any Kubernetes applications that require a service of type Load Balancer. In this post, I will go through a step-by-step deployment of the new NSX ALB along with vSphere with Tanzu.

VLAN & IP address Planning

There are many way to plan IP, in this Lab I will place management ,VIPs and workload nodes on three different networks. For this deployment , I will be using three VLANs, One for Tanzu Management, One for Frontend or VIP and one for Supervisor cluster and TKG clusters , here is my IP Planning sheet:

Deploying & Configuring NSX ALB (AVI)

Now Lets deploy NSX ALB controller (AVI LB) by following very similar process that we follow to deploy any other OVA and I will be assigning NSX ALB IP management address from management network address range. The NSX ALB is available as an OVA. In this deployment, I am using version 20.1.4.The only information required at deployment time are

A static IP Address
A subnet mask
A default gateway
An sysadmin login authentication key

I have deployed one controller appliance for this Lab but if you are doing production deployment , it is recommended to create three node controller cluster for high availability and better performance.

Once OVA deployment completes, power on the VM and wait for some time before you browse NSX ALB url using the IP address provided while deployment and login to Controller and then:

Enter DNS Server Details and Backup Passphrase
Add NTP Server IP address
Provide Email/SMTP details ( not mandatory)

Next Choose VMware vCenter as your “Orchestrator Integration”, This creates a new cloud configuration in the NSX ALB called as Default-Cloud. Enter below details on next screen:

Insert IP of your vCenter,
vCenter Credential
Permission – Write Permission
SDN Integration – None

Select appropriate vCenter “Data Center”
For Default Network IP Address Management – Static

On next screen, we define the IP address pool for the Service Engines.

Select Management Network (on this Network “management interface” of “service engine” will get connected)
Enter IP Subnet
Enter Free IP’s in to IP Address Pool section
Enter Default Gateway

Select No for configuring multiple Tenants. Now we’re ready to get into the NSX ALB configuration.

Create IPAM Profile

IPAM will be used to assign VIPs to Virtual Services, Kubernetes control planes and applications running inside pods. to create IPAM Go to: Templates -> Profiles -> IPAM/DNS Profiles

Assign Name to the Profile , This IPAM will be for “frontend” Network
Select Type – “Avi Vantage IPAM“
Cloud for Usable Network – Choose “Default-Cloud“
Usable Network – Choose Port group, in my case “frontend” ( all vCenter port groups will get populated automatically by vCenter discovery)

Create and Configure DNS profile as below: ( This is optional)

Go to “Infrastructure” and click on “Cloud” and edit “Default Cloud” and update IPAM Profile and DNS profiles with the IPAM profile and DNS profile that we created above.

Configure the VIP Network

On NSX ALB console , go to “Infrastructure” and then “Networks” , this will display all the network discovered by NSX ALB. Select “frontend” network and Click on Edit

Click on “Add Subnet“
Enter subnet , in my case – 192.168.117.0/24
Click on Static IP Address pool:
Ensure “Use Static IP Address for VIPs and SE” is selected
- and enter IP Segment Pool , in my case 192.168.117.100-192.168.117.200
- Click on Save

Create New Controller Certificate

Default AVI certificate doesn’t contain IP SAN and can’t be used by vCenter/Tanzu to connect to AVI, so we need to create a custom controller and use it during Tanzu management plane deployment. let’s create controller certificate by going to Templates -> Security -> SSL/TLS Certificates -> Create -> Controller Certificate

Complete the Page with required information and make sure “Subject Alernative Name (SAN)” is NSX ALB controller IP/Cluster IP or hostname.

Then go to Administration -> Settings -> Access Settings and edit System Access Settings:

Delete all the certificates in SSL/TLS certificate filed and choose the certificate that we created in above section.

Go to Template->Security->SSL/TLS Certificates, Copy the certificate we created to use while enabling Tanzu Management plane

Configure Routing

Since the workload network (192.168.116.0/24) is on a different subnet from the VIP network (192.168.170.0/24), we need to add a static route in NSX ALB controller, Go the Infrastructure page, navigate to Routing and then to Static Route. Click the Create button and create static routes accordingly.

Enable Tanzu Control Plane (Workload Management)

I am not going to go through the full deployment of workload management, these are similar steps detailed HERE . However, there are a few steps that are different:

On page 6 Choose Type=AVI as your Load Balancer type.
there is no load balancer IP Address range required, this is now provided by the NSX ALB.
the Certificate we need to provide, should be of NSX ALB which we created in previous step.

The new NSX Advanced Load Balancer is far superior to the HA-Proxy specially in provider environment. The providers can deploy, offer and manage K8 clusters with VMware supported LB type even though the configuration requires a few additional steps, it is very simple to setup. The visibility provided into health and usage of the virtual services are going to be extremely beneficial for day-2 operations, and should provide great insights for those providers who are responsible for provisioning and managing Kubernetes distributions running on vSphere. Feel free to share any feedback…

Tanzu Basic – Enable Workload Management

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Posted on November 24, 2020 by vmtechie

In continuation to last post where we had deployed VMware HA proxy, now we will enable a vSphere cluster for Workload Management, by configuring it as a Supervisor Cluster.

Part-1- Getting Started with Tanzu Basic – Part1

What is Workload Management

With Workload Management we can deploy and operate the compute, networking, and storage infrastructure for vSphere with Kubernetes. vSphere with Kubernetes transforms vSphere to a platform for running Kubernetes workloads natively on the hypervisor layer. When enabled on a vSphere cluster, vSphere with Kubernetes provides the capability to run Kubernetes workloads directly on ESXi hosts and to create upstream Kubernetes clusters within dedicated resource pools

Since we selected creating a Supervisor Cluster with the vSphere networking stack in previous post that means vSphere Native Pods will not be available but we can create Tanzu Kubernetes clusters.

Pre-Requisite

As per our HA proxy deployment , we chosen HAProxy VM with three virtual NICs, thus connecting HAProxy to a Frontend network. DevOps users and external services can access HAProxy through virtual IPs on the Frontend network. Below are the pre-requisite to enable Workload Management

DRS and HA should be enabled on the vSphere cluster, and ensure DRS is in the fully automated mode.
Configure shared storage for the cluster. Shared storage is required for vSphere DRS, HA, and storing persistent volumes of containers.
Storage Policy: Create a storage policy for the placement of Kubernetes control plane VMs.
- I have created policy two policies named “basic” & “TanzuBasic”
- NOTE: You should created policy with lower case policy name
- This policy has been created with Tag based placement rules

Content Library: Create a subscribed content library using URL: https://wp-content.vmware.com/v2/latest/lib.json on the vCenter Server to download VM image that is used for creating nodes of Tanzu Kubernetes clusters. The library will contain the latest distributions of Kubernetes.

Add all hosts from the cluster to a vSphere Distributed Switch and create port groups for Workload Networks

Deploy Workload Management

With the release of vSphere 7 update 1 a free trial of Tanzu is available for 60 day evaluation . Enter your details to receive communication from VMware and get started with Tanzu

Next screen takes you to choose networking options available with vCenter, make sure

You choose correct vCenter
For networking there are two networking stack, since we haven’t installed NSX-T it will be greyed out and unavailable, choose “vCenter Server Network” and move to “Next”

On next screen you will be presented with vSphere Clusters which are compatible for Tanzu, incase you don’t see any cluster, go on to “Incompatible” section and click on cluster which will give you guidance for the reason of incompatible, go back and fix the reason and try again

Select the size of the resource allocation you need for the Control Plane. For the evaluation, Tiny or Small should be enough and click on Next.

Storage: Select the storage policy which we created as per of pre-requisite and click on Next

Load Balancer: This section is very important and we need to ensure that we provide correct values:

Enter a DNS-compliant, don’t use “under-score” in the name
Select the type of Load Balancer: “HA Proxy”
Enter the Management data plane IP Address. This is our management ip and port number assigned to VMware HA proxy management interface.In our case it is 192.168.115.10:5556.
Enter the username and password used during deployment for the HA Proxy
Enter the IP Address Ranges for Virtual Server. we need to provide the IP ranges for virtual servers, these are the ip-address which we had defined in the frontend network. It’s the exact same range which we used during deployment of HA-proxy configuration process, but this time we will have to write full range instead of using a CIDR format, in this case i am using: 192.168.117.33-192.168.117.62
Finally, enter in the Server CA cert. If you have added a cert during deployment, you would use that. If you have used a self-signed cert then you can retrieve that data from the VM by browsing /etc/haproxy/ca.crt.

Management Network: Next portion is to configure IP address for Tanzu supervisor control plane VM’s, this will be from management IP range.

We will need 5 consecutive IPs free from Management IP range, Starting IP Address this is the first IP in a range of five IPs to assign to Supervisor control plane VMs’ management network interfaces.
One IP is assigned to each of the three Supervisor control plane VMs in the cluster
One IP is used for a Floating IP which we will use to connect to Management plane
One IP is reserved for use during upgrade process
This will on mgmt port group

Workload Network:

Service IP Address: we can take the default network subnet for “IP Address for Services. change this if you are using this subnet anywhere else. This subnet is for internal communication and it not routed.

And the last network in which we will define the Kubernetes node IP range, this applies to both the supervisor cluster as well as the guest TKG clusters. This range will be from workload IP range which we had created in the last post with vLAN 116.

Port Group – workload
IP Address Range – 192.168.116.32-192.168.116.63

Finally choose the content library which we had created as a part of pre-requisite

if you have provided right information with correct configuration, it will take around 20 minutes to install and configure entire TKG management plane to consume. you might see few errors while configuring Management plane but you can ignore as those operations will be retried automatically and errors will get clear when that particular task get succeed.

NOTE-Above screenshot has different cluster name as i have taken it from different environment but IP schema is same.

I hope this article helps you to enable your first “Workload Management” vSphere cluster without NSX-T. Next Blog post i will cover deployment of TKG Clusters and others things around that…

Getting Started with Tanzu Basic

Posted on November 19, 2020 by vmtechie

In the process of modernize your data center to run VMs and containers side by side, Run Kubernetes as part of vSphere with Tanzu Basic. Tanzu Basic embeds Kubernetes in to the vSphere control plane for the best administrative control and user experience. Provision clusters directly from vCenter and run containerized workloads with ease. Tanzu basic is the most affordable and has below components as part of Tanzu Basic:

To Install and configure Tanzu Basic without NSX-T, at high level there are four steps which we need to perform and I will be covering all the steps in three blog posts:

vSphere7 with a cluster with HA and DRS enabled should have been already configured
Installation of VMware HA Proxy Load Balancer – Part1
Tanzu Basic – Enable Workload Management – Part2
Tanzu Basic – Building TKG Cluster – Part3

Deploy VMware HAProxy

There are few topologies to setup Tanzu Basic with vSphere based networking, for this blog we will deploy the HAProxy VM with three virtual NICs, which means there will be one “Management” network , one “Workload” Network and another one will be “frontend” network which will be used by DevOps users and external services will also access HAProxy through virtual IPs on this Frontend network.

Network	Use
Management	Communicating with vCenter and HA Proxy
Workload	IP assigned to Kubernetes Nodes
Front End	DevOps uses and External Services

For This Blog, I have created three VLAN based Networks with below IP ranges:

Network	IP Range	VLAN
tkgmgmt	192.168.115/24	115
Workload	192.168.116/24	116
Frontend	192.168.117/24	117

Here is the topology diagram , HAProxy has been configured with three nics and each nic is connected to VLAN that we created above

NOTE– if you want to deep dive on this Networking refer Here , This blog post describe it very nicely and I have used the same networking schema in this Lab deployment.

Deploy VMware HA Proxy

This is not common HA Proxy, it is customized one and its Data Plane API designed to enable Kubernetes workload management with Project Pacific on vSphere 7.VMware HAProxy deployment is very simple, you can directly access/download OVA from Here and follow same procedure as you follow for any other OVA deployment on vCenter, there are few important things which I am covering below:

On Configuration screen , choose “Frontend Network” for three NIC deployment topology

Now Networking section which is heart of the solution, on this we align above created port groups to map to the Management, Workload and Frontend networks.

Management network is on VLAN 115, this is the network where the vSphere with Tanzu Supervisor control plane VMs / nodes are deployed.

Workload network is on vLAN 166, where the Tanzu Kubernetes Cluster VMs / nodes will be deployed.

Front end network which is on vLAN 117, this is where the load balancers (Supervisor API server, TKG API servers, TKG LB Services) are provisioned. Frontend network and workload network must need to route to each other for the successful wcp enablement.

Next page is most important and here we will have VMware HAProxy appliance configuration. Provide a root password and tick/untick for root login option based on your choice. The TLS fields will be automatically generated if left blank.

In the “network config” section, provide network details about the VMware HAProxy for the management network, the workload network and frontend/load balancer network. These all require static IP addresses, in the CIDR format. You will need to specify a CIDR format that matches the subnet mask of your networks.

For Management IP: 192.168.115.5/24 and GW:192.168.115.1

For Workload IP: 192.168.116.5/24 and GW:192.168.116.1

For Frontend IP: 192.168.117.5/25 and GW:192.168.117.1 . this is not optional if you had selected Frontend in “configuration” section.

In Load Balancing section, enter the Load Balancer IP ranges. these IP address will be used as Virtual IPs by the load balancer and these IP will come from Frontend network IP range.

Here I am specifying 192.168.117.32/27 , this segment will give me 30 address for VIPs for Tanzu management plane access and application exposed for external consumption.Ignore “192.168.117.30” in the image back ground.

Enter Data plane API management port. Enter: 5556 and also enter a username and password for the load balancer data plane API

Finally review the summary and click finish. this will deploy VMware HAProxy LB appliance

Once deployment completed, power on the appliance and SSH in to the VM using the management plane IP and check if all the interfaces are having correct IPs:

Also check if you can ping Front end ip ranges and other Ip ranges also. stay tuned for Part2.

NSX Multi-Tenancy in VMware Cloud Director

Multi-Tenancy was introduced in NSX UI starting from VMware NSX 4.1 and now commencing with version 10.5.1, VMware Cloud Director introduces support for NSX multi-tenancy, facilitating direct alignment of vcd organizations with NSX projects. What are NSX Projects ? A project in NSX functions akin to a tenant. Creating projects enables the separation of security…

by vmtechie December 7, 2023

Deploy, Run, and Manage Any Application with VMware Cloud Director Content Hub

by vmtechie August 22, 2023

Infrastructure as Code with VMware Cloud Director

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, organizations are constantly seeking ways to optimize their IT operations and streamline infrastructure management. One approach that has gained significant traction is Infrastructure as Code (IaC). By treating infrastructure provisioning and management as code, IaC enables organizations to automate and standardize their processes, resulting in increased efficiency, scalability, and consistency.…

by vmtechie June 23, 2023

Harness the Power of Cloud Director Data Solutions: Offer DBaaS using VMware SQL with MySQL

The VMware Cloud Director Extension for Data Solutions is a game-changing plug-in for the VMware Cloud Director. By incorporating data and messaging services into the VMware Cloud Director portfolio, it enables cloud providers and their tenants to access and manage services such as VMware SQL with MySQL, VMware SQL with PostgreSQL, and the efficient messaging…

by vmtechie June 14, 2023

Assess Your Sovereign Cloud Stack for Compliance

by vmtechie April 26, 2023April 26, 2023

What is Content Hub ?

Integration with VMware Marketplace

Integration with Helm Chart Repository

Share a VMware Marketplace/Helm Chart Repository Resource with tenants

Roles Required

Content Hub Operator for Kubernetes Container Service Extention

Catalog Versioning

Let’s Deploy a Container Application

Deploy an Stateful Container Application

Deploy an Virtual Machine Application

Share this:

VMware Cloud Director Extension for Data Solutions: An Introduction

How the VMware Cloud Director Extension for Data Solutions Functions

Use Cases for the VMware Cloud Director Extension for Data Solutions

Tenant self-service UI for the lifecycle management of VMware SQL with MySQL

Step:1 – Installing VMware Cloud Director Data Solutions operator

Step:2 – Installing VMware SQL with MySQL

Step:3 – Connecting to VMware SQL with MySQL

Step:4 – Enable a full-privileged DB user for your MySQL instance provisioned by the VMware Cloud Director Extension for Data Solutions

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Compliance Pack for Sovereign Cloud Controls Rules

Data Sovereignty and Jurisdictional Control

Data Access and Integrity

Data Security and Compliance

Data Independence and Interoperability

Control Rules and Product Control Set for vSphere

Control Rules and product control set for nsx-t

Controls Rules and Product Control Set for VMware Cloud Director

Control Rules and Product Control Set for VMware Cloud Director Availability

Install the VMware vRealize (ARIA) Operations Compliance Pack for Sovereign Cloud

Accessing Compliance Reports

Custom Benchmarks

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Installation Steps

Step:1- Install kapp-controller

Step:2- Install secretgren-controller

Step:3- Install cert-manager

Verify Tanzu Packages

Step4:- Implement Ingress Control with Contour

Step 5:- Deploy Prometheus

Step 6:- Deploy Grafana

Access the Grafana Dashboard

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Pre-requisite for Container Service Extension 4.0

Provider Configuration

Install Kubernetes Container Clusters UI plug-in for VMware Cloud Director

Container Service Extension OVA deployment

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Tenant Self-Service Access to Data Solutions

Deploy a Tanzu Data Services instance

Monitor Instance Health using Grafana

Connecting to RabbitMQ

Provider Configuration

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Why is AI/ML important?

Provider Workflow

Tenant Workflow

Step-by-Step Configuration

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Kubernetes NFS-Client Provisioner

Finally, Test Your Environment!

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Windows Image Prerequisites

Build a Windows Image

Use a Windows Image for a Workload Cluster

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Pre-requisite

Kubernetes cluster requirements

Install Cluster Essentials for VMware Tanzu

For Linux Client VM: Install the Tanzu CLI and Plugins

Installing the Tanzu Application Platform Package and Profiles

Tanzu Application Platform profile

Install Tanzu Application Platform

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Take control of Cloud Resources and give freedom to Developers based on Personas

Enable Tanzu Service on VMware Cloud on AWS

Pre-requisite:

How to Access and Work ?

Register This Management Cluster with Tanzu Mission Control

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