You can create a VMware Aria Automation integration with vSphere Tanzu Mission Control (TMC) to support monitoring and managing Kubernetes deployments across cloud providers. TMC offers support for templates and policies to facilitate management of Kubernetes resources.

The following procedure describes how to create a basic Tanzu Mission Control integration in Cloud Assembly.

Prerequisites

  • You must have an appropriate CSP API token with access to TMC. The TMC URL is derived from the token.
  • Tanzu Mission Control requires that clusters have Kubernetes compliant names using characters a-z and 0-9.

Procedure

  1. In Cloud Assembly, select Infrastructure > Connections > Integrations and click Add Integration.
  2. Select Tanzu Mission Control.
  3. Type a Name and Description for the integration.
  4. Enter the Token for the Tanzu Mission Control account.
    The token authenticates against the TMC SaaS instance using VMware Cloud Services Platform (CSP).
  5. Enter a valid Username and Password and other related information..
  6. Click Validate to confirm the account connection.
  7. After you have validated an integration, a Configuration section appears on the integration page, and you can specify a Default Cluster group and a Default Workspace for the integration.
    • To search for existing cluster groups, start typing the name of a desired group in the Default Cluster group search field. All cluster groups on the assoicated TMC instance whose name matches the typed text are shown in the drop down. To view all available cluster groups, click Show all on the drop-down. You can select one cluster group which will become the default.
    • To search for existing workspaces on the associated TMC instance, start typing the name of a desired workspace in the Default Workspace search field. You can select one workspace which will become the default.
  8. Click Add.

Results

The Tanzu Mission Control integration is created and is ready for use.

What to do next

After you create an integration, you can navigate to the Kubernetes page on the Infrastructure tab in Cloud Assembly located at Resources > Kubernetes. Then select the TMC Cluster Groups tab at the top of the page, and you can view and manage cluster groups for the TMC integration.

Also you can navigate to the Infrastructure > Configure > Cluster Plans page in Cloud Assembly to add or manage cluster plan that define the configuration for a deployed Tanzu Kubenetes cluster.

Administrators can also configure external clusters for use with a TMC integration. To use external clusters with TMC, you must add a cluster to VMware Aria Automation and then associate it with the appropriate project as described below.

  1. In Cloud Assembly, navigate to the Infrastrucuture > Resources > Kubernetes page.
  2. Click Add on the Clusters tab and then select Attach external cluster from the drop-down list.
  3. Enter a Name and Description for the external cluster.
  4. Select whether the cluster can be shared globally or only within the specified project.
  5. Select the Cluster group that this cluster will be associated with.
  6. Enter the required credentials for the cluster.
  7. Click Validate to confirm the cluster configuration is valid.
  8. Click Add to add the cluster to VMware Aria Automation.

After you add the external cluster to VMware Aria Automation, you can then add the related cluster to the appropriate project so that the TMC integration can access the cluster.

  1. Select the applicable project on the Cloud Assembly Projects page.
  2. Select the Kubernetes Provisioning tab.
  3. In the Project Cluster group section select the Cluster Group that you want to associate with the project.

The cluster plan containing the external cluster is available to the TMC integration.

The following YAML example is a simple TMC integration cloud template. 
formatVersion: 1
inputs: {}
resources:
  Cloud_Tanzu_Cluster_1:
    type: Cloud.Tanzu.Cluster
    metadata:
      layoutPosition:
        - 0
        - 0
    properties:
      name: demo
      plan: small
      tmcClusterGroupName: my-cluster

After you create a Tanzu Mission Control (TMC) integration, you can attach a TKG cluster to a TMC cluster group to facilitate cluster management.

Administrators can set a default cluster group on a per project basis that is used by any TKG cluster deployed to that project. Also, administrators can set a default cluster group in the TMC integration. If no cluster group is defined in the project, the default group specified in the integration is used. Cloud administrators and users can both set a cluster group to attach a TKG cluster to in the blueprint. The cluster group in the blueprint is used if no default is set for the project. The list below summarizes the priority used to attach a TKG cluster to a TMC cluster group when one is defined in multiple places:
  • Project
  • Blueprint
  • Endpoint

When a TKG cluster is destroyed, it is detached from TMC automatically.