This topic gives a high-level explanation of how to create a Tanzu Kubernetes Grid instance by deploying a management cluster.
After you have performed the steps described in Install the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid CLI, you can deploy management clusters to the platform of your choice.
NOTE: On vSphere 7, it is recommended to use a built-in supervisor cluster from Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Service instead of deploying a management cluster with Tanzu Kubernetes Grid. For details, see Management Clusters Unnecessary on vSphere 7.
A management cluster is the first element that you deploy when you create a Tanzu Kubernetes Grid instance. The management cluster is a Kubernetes cluster that performs the role of the primary management and operational center for the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid instance. This is where Cluster API runs to create the Tanzu Kubernetes clusters in which your application workloads run, and where you configure the shared and in-cluster services that these clusters use.
You can deploy management clusters in two ways:
Tanzu Kubernetes Grid allows you to provision and manage management clusters on the following platforms:
You can provision the management cluster in both a single node control plane configuration for development, and in a highly available, multi-node control plane configuration for production environments.
You deploy your management console by running the tkg init
command on the bootstrap machine, and you can configure the deployment in multiple ways:
--worker-size
AZURE_NODE_MACHINE_TYPE
config.yaml
or another configurationThe tkg init
command uses these sources and inputs in the following order of increasing precedence:
~/.tkg/providers/config_defaults.yaml
: This file contains system defaults, and should not be changed.~/.tkg/config.yaml
or other file passed in with the --config
option: This file configures specific invocations of tkg init
and other tkg
commands. Use different --config
files to save multiple configurations, for example so that multiple management clusters can share a virtual network such as a VNET on Azure or a VPC on AWS.--worker-size
overrides AZURE_NODE_MACHINE_TYPE
. But see --ui
below.tkg init
with the --ui
option, the installer sets all management cluster configuration values from user input and ignores all other CLI options except for --config
.