You must create a cluster plan for use with vSphere with Tanzu Kubernetes deployments in VMware Aria Automation. A cluster plan functions as a configuration template for provisioning Tanzu Kubernetes cluster instances on a particular vSphere cloud account instance.

A cluster plan defines a configuration mapping, similar to a flavor-mapping, for a set of vSphere cloud account instances. Generally, the cluster plan encodes a meaningful set of configuration properties, such as virtual machine classes, storage classes, etc, that are used when provisioning Tanzu kubernetes clusters on a particular vSphere server cloud account.

Note that a single cluster plan might have a particular configuration property mapping in one vSphere cloud account and another configuration mapping in another vSphere instance. For example, if you have two eligible vSphere cloud accounts, one with high resource and another with limited resources, the large cluster plan might specify guaranteed-xlarge for the high-profile vSphere server and best-effort-medium for the limited vSphere instance. In general, the large specification maps a different configuration property set to each eligible vSphere server instance.

After a cluster plan is created for one or more vSphere instance, all eligible supervisor namespaces, that an administrator assigns to host a Tanzu Kubernetes cluster using a Kubernetes zone assignment, should be aligned with respect to the configuration defined in the cluster plan specification. For example, the storage policy specified in the cluster plan should be added as a storage class to all vSphere supervisor namespaces dedicated for provisioning of Tanzu clusters.

Prerequisites

  • To create a vSphere with Tanzu Kubernetes deployment in Automation Assembler, you must have access to vSphere 7.x which is available as part of a vCenter cloud account. See Create a vCenter cloud account in VMware Aria Automation.
  • Tanzu must be enabled on the vSphere cloud account with one or more supervisor namespaces.
  • All supervisor clusters on the registered vSphere cloud account that are eligible for provisioning of Tanzu Clusters must be added as managed entities on the Automation Assembler Infrastructure > Kubernetes > Supervisor Clusters page using the Add Supervisor Cluster option.

Procedure

  1. In Automation Assembler, select Infrastructure > Configure > Cluster Plan and click New Cluster Plan.
  2. Enter an Account, Name, and Description for the cluster plan. The account defines the cloud account to which this cluster plan applies.
  3. Enter cluster information details including Kubernetes versions and Control plane. This information includes allocations for nodes, machine class and storage class.
    • Enter the version of Kubernetes that is applicable to this cluster plan. This is the Kubernetes version of the provisioned Tanzu Kubernetes clusters: for example, 1.19 or 1.20.
    • The control plane count defines the specification for Kubernetes API server nodes.
    • A virtual machine class is a request for reservations on the virtual machine for processing power. There are numerous predefined machine classes, which represent different levels of compute power. See Virtual Machine Classes for Tanzu Kubernetes Clusters for more information.
    • Workers specify the Tanzu Kubernetes worker nodes to be deployed with this plan.
  4. Enter and select Additional Settings for the cluster plan.
    • Enter the Default PVC storage class to use with this cluster.
    • Use the radio buttons to indicate behavior in regards to usage of storage classes and network settings.
  5. Click Create.

Results

The cluster plan is created and is available for use within Automation Assembler cloud templates.

What to do next

After you create a cluster plan, you can use it to create a vSphere with Tanzu Kubernetes deployment in Automation Assembler. See Provision a vSphere with Tanzu Kubernetes deployment in VMware Aria Automation.