Tagging Clusters

This topic describes how to tag new and existing clusters using the VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Integrated Edition Command Line Interface (TKGI CLI).

Overview

IaaSes provide the ability for customers to “tag” VMs, databases, and other resources with custom labels and metadata values. Apply one or more tags to your clusters to simplify organizing, managing, searching for, and filtering resources within your IaaS-provided management console and other tools:

You can use the TKGI CLI to tag clusters by following the steps in Tag Your Clusters as They Are Created below.

Note: Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Integrated Edition Cluster tagging requires Ops Manager v2.8.0 or later.

Tag Your Clusters as They Are Created

To apply tags to your cluster’s VMs, include the --tags parameter in your tkgi create-cluster command line, and specify the desired tags as a comma-delimited list of key:value pairs.

tkgi create-cluster CLUSTER-NAME --tags "TAGS"

Where:

• CLUSTER-NAME is the name of the cluster to create.
  

  Note: Use only lowercase characters when naming your cluster if you manage your clusters with Tanzu Mission Control (TMC). Clusters with names that include an uppercase character cannot be attached to TMC.

• TAGS is a comma-delimited list of key:value pairs to apply to the cluster.

For example:

$ tkgi create-cluster my-cluster --tags "status:billable"  
$ tkgi create-cluster my-cluster --tags "status:non-billable,region:northwest"  
$ tkgi create-cluster my-cluster --tags "client:example.com, costcenter:pettycash"  

Tag Your Existing Clusters

You can use the TKGI CLI to tag an existing cluster.

To apply tags to your existing cluster’s VMs, run the tkgi update-cluster command line, and specify the --tags parameter and a comma-delimited list of key:value pairs of the tags to apply to the cluster.

tkgi update-cluster CLUSTER-NAME --tags "TAGS"

Where:

• CLUSTER-NAME is the name of the cluster to tag.
• TAGS is a comma-delimited list of key:value pairs.

For example:

$ tkgi update-cluster my-cluster --tags "client:tinymegacorp"
$ tkgi update-cluster my-cluster --tags "client:example.com,costcenter:pettycash"
$ tkgi update-cluster my-cluster --tags "status:non-billable, region:northwest"

WARNING: Update a cluster with a revised tags only on a TKGI cluster that has been upgraded to the current TKGI version. For more information, see Tasks Supported Following a TKGI Control Plane Upgrade in About Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Integrated Edition Upgrades.

Modify Cluster Tags

You can also use tkgi update-cluster to modify your cluster’s existing tags. When you modify cluster tags you completely replace all of the cluster’s existing tags with the specified tags.

Note: On Azure, tkgi update-cluster cannot remove tags from your IaaS. For more information, see Azure-Specific Tagging Limitations below.

Modify Your Existing Tags

To modify your cluster’s existing tags do the following:

1. Retrieve the cluster’s existing tags list string by running tkgi cluster. For information on tkgi cluster Review Your Tags below.

2. Modify the tags list string by doing one of the following:

   • To add a new tag, append it to existing tags list string.
   • To modify an existing tag, modify it within the tags list string.
   • To remove an existing tag, delete it from within the tags list string.

3. Run the following command:

   tkgi update-cluster CLUSTER-NAME --tags "TAGS"
   

   Where TAGS is a comma-delimited list of revised key:value pairs.

WARNING: Update a cluster with a revised tags only on a TKGI cluster that has been upgraded to the current TKGI version. For more information, see Tasks Supported Following a TKGI Control Plane Upgrade in About Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Integrated Edition Upgrades.

Remove All Tags From Your Cluster

To remove all of your cluster’s existing tags do the following:

1. Run the following tkgi update-cluster --tags on your command line:

   tkgi update-cluster CLUSTER-NAME --tags ""
   

   Where CLUSTER-NAME is the cluster to remove tags from.

WARNING: Update a cluster with a revised tags only on a TKGI cluster that has been upgraded to the current TKGI version. For more information, see Tasks Supported Following a TKGI Control Plane Upgrade in About Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Integrated Edition Upgrades.

Review Your Tags

To review the tags applied to a cluster, run tkgi cluster.

For example:

$ tkgi cluster my-cluster 

Name:                     my-cluster  
Plan Name:                large  
UUID:                     01a234bc-d56e-7f89-01a2-3b4cde5f6789  
Last Action:              CREATE  
Last Action State:        succeeded  
Last Action Description:  Instance provisioning completed  
Kubernetes Master Host:   my-cluster.example.com  
Kubernetes Master Port:   8443  
Worker Instances:         3  
Kubernetes Master IP(s):  192.168.20.7  
Tags:                     client:tinymegacorp,costcenter:pettycash  

The tkgi cluster function returns only the custom tags you’ve applied to the cluster using the TKGI CLI. To display all of the tags applied to your cluster VMs use your IaaS-provided management console.

Note: Do not use the IaaS-provided management console to modify your custom tags. Custom tag alterations you’ve applied via the management console will be overwritten when you next run tkgi update-cluster.

Tagging Rules

The tagging you apply must adhere to the following rules:

• Tag names and values must not include any of the following symbols: ", :, ,.
• Surrounding double quotes are required if there are one or more spaces in your tag list, such as a space after a comma delimiter.
• Tag names and values must adhere to the tagging rules of the IaaS hosting your Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Integrated Edition environment.

For information about IaaS-specific tagging rules see the following:

• Azure: See Use tags to organize your Azure resources in the Azure documentation.
• vSphere: See vSphere Tags and Attributes in the vSphere documentation.

Tagging Limitations

Cluster tagging has the following limitations:

Tags Reserved for BOSH

The BOSH layer applies 10 system-level metadata tags to each cluster, including deployment, director, id, index, instance_group, job, and name. These reserved tags impose the following limitations:

• The maximum number of custom tags you can apply to a cluster is 10 less than the maximum number of tags supported by your IaaS.

  • For example: Azure limits tagging to a maximum of 50 tags per entity. Therefore, if your Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Integrated Edition environment is hosted on Azure, apply fewer than 40 custom tags to your clusters.

• You cannot set or change BOSH system-level tags using the TKGI CLI. If you use the TKGI CLI to create tags with those reserved names, they are ignored.

  • When you try to change system-level tags with the TKGI CLI, the output of tkgi cluster shows the tag values passed into the create-cluster or update-cluster command, but BOSH overrides and ignores these settings.

AWS-Specific Tagging Limitations

For tagging limitations on Amazon Web Services (AWS), see Tag restrictions in the AWS documentation.

Azure-Specific Tagging Limitations

The following are known tagging limitations specific to Microsoft Azure:

• tkgi update-cluster cannot remove tags from your Azure clusters. This limitation is due to an issue in the Azure CPI for BOSH which is used by tkgi cli for Azure IaaS tagging.
  • To remove an IaaS tag from an Azure cluster do the following:
    1. Perform the removal steps described in Modify Existing Tags above.
    2. Remove unwanted tags through the Azure portal.

For information about additional Azure-specific tagging limitations see Use tags to organize your Azure resources in the Azure documentation.

GCP-Specific Tagging Limitations

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) refers to tags as “labels.” The following are known label limitations specific to Google Cloud Platform (GCP):

• You can assign up to 64 labels (tags) to each resource.
• Label keys and values must:
  • Be 63 characters or shorter.
  • Contain only:
    • Lowercase letters (International characters are allowed)
    • Numeric characters
    • Underscores
    • Hyphens
• Label keys must start with a lowercase letter.
• Label keys cannot be empty.

vSphere-Specific Tagging Limitations

The following are known tagging limitations specific to vSphere:

• tkgi update-cluster applies tagging to vSphere entities as vSphere Custom Attributes. This limitation is due to an issue in the vSphere CPI which is used by tkgi cli for vSphere IaaS tagging.
  • vSphere Custom Attribute tagging is applied to VMs only. Disks and other resources are not tagged.
  • A vSphere Custom Attribute applied to a single VM is also visible on all other VMs, but as an empty property.

For information about additional vSphere-specific tagging limitations see vSphere Tags and Attributes in the vSphere documentation.