What is VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension

VMware Cloud Director™ Container Service Extension™ is a VMware Cloud Director extension that offers a server and a UI component to tenant users to create Tanzu Kubernetes Grid clusters in their virtual data centers alongside their virtual machines.

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. For more information on Tanzu Mission Control, refer to Tanzu Mission Control.

The VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension server is highly available, maintaining availability continously. This means that if an incident occurs, the VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension server can shift workloads and configurations away from the affected nodes, and continue to operate. There is no requirement to backup or restore VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension appliance as it is a stateless application. For VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension server to achieve high availability, it is necessary for service providers to run multiple vApp instances of the server. For more information, see Create a vApp from VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension server OVA file.

As a service provider administrator, you can perform the following functions in VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension:

• Set up the VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension server through the new CSE Management tab in Kubernetes Container Clusters UI plug-in. You can also perform cluster management tasks, such as create, delete, resize, and upgrade clusters through this tab.

• Import and upload the following two types of OVA files that are necessary for VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension configuration:

  • VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension server OVA file
  • Kubernetes Template OVAs

  For information on downloading the appropriate OVA files, see Download OVA Files.

• Allow tenant users to deploy fully functional Kubernetes clusters as self-contained vApps.