Tanzu Kubernetes Releases and Custom Node Images

This topic outlines how Tanzu Kubernetes Grid uses Tanzu Kubernetes releases (TKrs) and VM images to deploy clusters that run nodes with specific Kubernetes versions and operating systems.

Tanzu Kubernetes Releases

To support running diverse applications efficiently and reliably, you can customize Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) clusters to run its worker nodes and other VMs on different Kubernetes versions, operating systems, and operating system (OS) versions. For supported Kubernetes versions, VMware publishes Tanzu Kubernetes releases (TKrs), which associate a specific patch version of Kubernetes with compatible versions of a base OS plus compatible versions of additional components required by cluster nodes.

Each TKr contains everything that a specific patch version of Kubernetes needs to run on various VM types on different infrastructures, and the management cluster uses a TKr to create a workload cluster that runs the desired Kubernetes and OS version.

How TKrs are published, how TKG uses them, and which Kubernetes versions they support depend on the management cluster deployment option:

• TKG with a standalone management cluster:

  • TKr format and location: TanzuKubernetesRelease objects
    • The default TKr is defined by the TKr BoM file in the ~/.config/tanzu/tkg/bom directory
    • List available TKrs with tanzu kubernetes-release get
  • How TKrs work:
    • Conceptual overview: About Kubernetes Versions
    • Practical how-to: Multiple Kubernetes Versions
  • Supported Kubernetes versions:
    • See Kubernetes Version Support Policies
• TKG with Supervisor: If you are using the TKG Service in the vSphere IaaS control plane (formerly known as vSphere with Tanzu) Supervisor, see the vSphere IaaS control plane docs for information about how to obtain TKrs.

Custom Node Images (Standalone Management Cluster)

For TKG with a standalone management cluster, TKrs distributed by VMware support a selection of OSes by default, as listed in the Target Operating Systems table below.

You can also create clusters based on additional OSes listed as Custom image in the table. To do this, you run Kubernetes Image Builder and create a custom TKr as described in Build Machine Images.

Target Operating Systems (Standalone Management Cluster)

The following table shows the operating systems for cluster nodes that Tanzu Kubernetes releases support:

Distributed with TKG	Custom Image (see Build Machine Images)
For Kubernetes v1.27+: Ubuntu 22.04 Photon OS 5 For Kubernetes v1.27 and earlier: Ubuntu 20.04 Photon OS 3	Ubuntu 22.04 Ubuntu 20.04 RHEL 8 Photon OS 5 Photon OS 3 Windows 2019