VMware Cloud Foundation 

Enabling vSphere with Kubernetes

Welcome to this demonstration on enabling vSphere with Kubernetes on VMware Cloud Foundation. 

The VMware Cloud Foundation SDDC Manager makes it easy to enable vSphere with Kubernetes on a Virtual Infrastructure (VI) workload domain.  When enabling vSphere with Kubernetes the SDDC Manager first validates that the required NSX prerequisites have been met.  I will then ensure the domain is healthy and ready for Kubernetes to be enabled.  Finally, it hands you off to the vSphere web client to complete the task of enabling vSphere with Kubernetes.

In this demonstration we will show the steps to enable vSphere with Kubernetes on a 3-node Cloud Foundation VI Workload Domain.

We begin with a brief overview of the demo environment.

• Click VI Domain

Here we see that a single VI domain named “wold01” has been created in Cloud Foundation.  We will enable vSphere with Kubernetes on this domain.

• Click wld01

A requirement for enabling vSphere with Kubernetes is to have NSX-T installed and an NSX Edge Cluster configured for the domain.  NSX is installed as part of the domain creation.  After the domain creation the SDDC Manager provides automation to create the NSX Edge Cluster.  We see on the domain summary tab details about the NSX instance and the associated Edge Cluster running in this domain.

• Click the vSphere browser tab

From the vSphere web client we see the “wld01-clus01” cluster is comprised of three hosts.  On the cluster there is a single resource pool where the two Edge Transport Nodes are running.

• Click the NSX browser tab
• Click System
• Click Nodes

Inside NSX we see the three hosts in the cluster have all be configured for NSX.

• Click Edge Transport Nodes

We can also confirm the Edge Transport Nodes are running and the overlay tunnels are up.

• Click the SDDC Manager Browser Tab

We will now enable vSphere with Kubernetes on the three-node “wld01-clus01” cluster in the wld01 domain.

• Click Solutions
• Click Deploy

We are presented with a list of prerequisites.  These include:

·      Having a vSphere with Kubernetes license

·      Having a healthy VI Domain

·      Having an NSX Edge Cluster deployed in the VI Domain

·      Having assigning IP address ranges that can be used by vSphere with Kubernetes

• Click Select All
• Click Begin

We start by selecting the workload domain and associated vSphere cluster on which we will enable vSphere with Kubernetes.  Note that Cloud Foundation workload domains can have multiple clusters.

• Click Select option
• Click wld01
• Click wld01-clus01
• Click Next

The SDDC Manager performs a series of checks against the domain and cluster to ensure the prerequisites have been met, to include having the NSX Edge Cluster deployed, and that the cluster is healthy and ready for vSphere with Kubernetes to be enabled.

• Click the Scroll Bar
• Click Next

Following the validation the SDDC Manager presents details about the VI domain that will be used to configure vSphere with Kubernetes and provides a link to the vSphere Web Client where we will complete the steps.

• Click Complete in vSphere

We complete the steps to enable vSphere with Kubernetes from the vSphere Web Client.

• Click wld01-clus01
• Click Next

We begin by specifying the size of the vSphere with Kubernetes control plane.  This determines the amount of CPU, storage and memory resources that will be allocated to the vSphere pod service. 

• Click Small
• Click Next

Next, we provide the networking information that will be used for the control plane.  This includes specifying the network to use, providing the first IP address in a range of five IP addresses that will be assigned to the control plane, along with the subnet mask and gateway and the DNS and NTP server IP addresses.

• Click Select Network

We then specify the vSphere Distributed Switch and NSX Edge Cluster to be used.  We also provide a set of CIDR address ranges that can be consumed by the Kubernetes pods and services.  Lastly, we provide a set of IP address ranges to be used for the ingress and egress traffic.

• Click Select a VDS
• Click Next

Finally we specify the storage polices to be used for the control plane nodes, ephemeral disks and the image cache.  We will use the vSAN Default Storage Policy for all three in this example.

• Click Select Storage
• Click Next

We are able to review our input parameters.

• Click Finish

Based on the input parameters provided, the vSphere Web Client proceeds to enable vSphere with Kubernetes.  This will take approximately 20 minutes.  It involves installing additional VIBs on the ESXi hosts and deploying the control plane supervisor VMs in the cluster.

• Click the arrows to expand the task pane

We can monitor the progress from the tasks pane.  Here we see the control plane VMs being deployed and powered on.

• Click the arrows to collapse the task pane

Once vSphere with Kubernetes has been enabled the configuration state will show “Running”.  This indicates that we have successfully deployed vSphere with Kubernetes.

• Click Menu
• Click Host and Clusters
• Click vcenter-wld01-vcf.sddc.lab

From the Host and Clusters view we see a new “Namespaces” object.  

• Click Namespaces

Inside the namespaces we see our three control plane VMs that make up the vSphere Pod Service. 

With the vSphere pod service instantiated we have completed the steps to enable vSphere with Kubernetes and we are now ready to deploy additional namespaces and to configure access for our developers.  We will cover these steps in the next demo.

• Click Menu
• Click Workload Management
• Click Namespaces

This concludes the demonstration on enabling vSphere with Kubernetes.

The VMware Cloud Foundation SDDC Manager makes it easy to enable vSphere with Kubernetes.  The SDDC Manager first validates that the required NSX prerequisites have been meet, it then ensures the domain is healthy and ready for Kubernetes to be enabled, and then hands you off to the vSphere web client to complete the task of deploying the vSphere Pod Service and enabling vSphere with Kubernetes.

Follow along by completing the next demonstration showing how to enable the Harbor Registry in our vSphere with Kubernetes cluster. 

For more information on VMware Cloud Foundation, visit our website at vmware.com/go/cloudfoundation.