Provision a vSphere with Tanzu Kubernetes deployment in VMware Aria Automation

VMware Aria Automation enables you to provision a vSphere with Tanzu Kubernetes deployment from Automation Assembler to leverage the vSphere 7.x or later native capabilities to deploy and manage Tanzu Kubernetes clusters, providing an infrastructure-agnostic layer for provisioning and management of virtual infrastructure.

The Tanzu with vSphere Kubernetes functionality leverages the native Kubernetes capability of vSphere 7.x. It does not require a VMware Aria Automation PKS integration to function.

Prerequisites

• To provision a vSphere with Tanzu Kubernetes deployment with Automation Assembler, you must have access to vSphere 7.x or later. In VMware Aria Automation, vSphere is available as part of a vCenter cloud account. See Create a basic vCenter cloud account in VMware Aria Automation.
• Tanzu must be enabled on the vSphere cloud account, and it must contain appropriate supervisor namespaces.
• You must have an appropriate cluster plan to use with the integration. See Create a cluster plan in VMware Aria Automation Assembler for use with a vSphere with Tanzu Kubernetes deployment.

Procedure

1. If a suitable vCenter cloud account does not already exist in Automation Assembler, create one.
   See Create a basic vCenter cloud account in VMware Aria Automation.
2. Select Infrastructure > Configure > Kubernetes Zone to create or select a Kubernetes zone in Automation Assembler.
   You can use an existing Kubernetes zone if you have an appropriate one already configured, but an administrator must add one or more supervisor namespaces to the zone. These namespaces serve as the compute resources on which provisioned Tanzu Kubernetes clusters are created within the zone. See Configure a Kubernetes Zone in Automation Assembler for more information about Kubernetes zones.
3. Navigate to the Kubernetes Provisioning tab on the Infrastructure > Administration > Projects page in Automation Assembler and associate the Kubernetes Zone with the appropriate project.
4. Create or select a cluster plan for an appropriate vSphere 7.x cloud account.
   See Create a cluster plan in VMware Aria Automation Assembler for use with a vSphere with Tanzu Kubernetes deployment for more information.
5. Select Design > Templates and create a cloud template for a project which has access to an appropriate Kubernetes zone. Then, drag a K8s Cluster component on the cloud template scheme and specify its name and cluster plan.
   You have the option of also specifying the number of worker nodes.
6. Run the cloud template and then, when it completes, find the address of the provisioned Tanzu cluster on the deployment on the Automation Assembler Deployments page resource properties.
7. Find and explore the Tanzu cluster on the Automation Assembler Infrastructure > Configure > Kubernetes page.

Results

The Tanzu Kubernetes cluster is provisioned as specified in the cloud template.

What to do next

After you deploy the Tanzu cluster, you have several option for working with it.

• Navigate to the Resources > Deployments page in Automation Assembler, and locate and download the related Kubeconfig file to access the provisioned Tanzu cluster. You can use the Kubeconfig file to manage the deployed Tanzu Kubernetes cluster as any other compliant Kubernetes cluster.
• You can find and explore the Tanzu cluster on the Automation Assembler Infrastructure > Resources > Kubernetes page.
• To create a new namespace, navigate to the Namespaces tab on the Automation Assembler Infrastructure > Resources > Kubernetes page and click New Namespace to create a namespace on the applicable Tanzu cluster. You can verify that the namespace was created by verifying that it is listed on the Namespaces tab on the Kubernetes page.