Use VMware Tanzu Mission Control to provision the necessary resources and create a new Tanzu Kubernetes cluster in vSphere (not in vSphere with Tanzu).

Prerequisites

Before you can create new clusters using Tanzu Mission Control, you must first establish a connection with your management cluster.
  1. Register your Tanzu Kubernetes Grid management cluster with Tanzu Mission Control, as described in Register a Management Cluster with Tanzu Mission Control.
  2. Create a provisioner into which you will provision the cluster, as described in Create a Provisioner in Your Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Management Cluster.
Make sure you have the appropriate permissions to create a Tanzu Kubernetes cluster.
  • To provision a cluster, you must be associated with the clustergroup.edit role on the cluster group in which you want to put the new cluster.
  • To see and use a cloud provider account connection for creating a cluster, you must be associated with the organization.credential.view role.
  • You must also have admin privileges on the management cluster to provision resources within it.

Log in to the Tanzu Mission Control console, as described in Log In to the Tanzu Mission Control Console.

Procedure

  1. In the left navigation pane of the Tanzu Mission Control console, click Clusters.
  2. On the Clusters page, click Add Cluster, and then choose Create Tanzu Kubernetes Grid cluster from the dropdown.
  3. Click to select the management cluster in which to create the new workload cluster, and then click Continue to Create Cluster.
  4. On the Create cluster page, select the provisioner in which you want to create the cluster.
  5. Enter the name, group, and other details for the cluster.
    1. Enter a name for the cluster.
      Cluster names must be unique within an organization.
    2. Select the cluster group to which you want to attach your cluster.
    3. You can optionally enter a description and apply labels.
    4. Click Next.
  6. Select your configuration options.
    1. Select the data center in which you want to create the workload cluster.
      The vSphere data center contains an inventory of resource objects that can be used by your cluster. The available data centers are those that exist in the vSphere instance where your management cluster is deployed.
    2. Select the Kubernetes version and operating system to use for the cluster.
      The latest supported version is preselected for you.

      Selecting a non-default operating system for your cluster is supported for management clusters running in Tanzu Kubernetes Grid version 1.5 or later. For more information about the available operating systems, see Tanzu Kubernetes Releases in the VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Documentation.

    3. Enter the contents of the SSH public key created during deployment of the management cluster.
    4. Select a vSphere network to use as the Kubernetes service network.
    5. You can optionally define an alternative CIDR for the pod and service.
      The Pod CIDR and Service CIDR cannot be changed after the cluster is created.
    6. You can optionally specify a proxy configuration to use for this cluster.
    7. Click Next.
  7. Select your resource options.
    The resources that are available to include in the cluster are defined by the vSphere data center that you selected in the previous step.
    1. Select the resource pool to use for the workload cluster.
    2. Select the VM folder in which to place the workload cluster VMs.
    3. Select a vSphere datastore for the workload cluster to use.
  8. Select the type of cluster you want to create.
    The primary difference between the two is that the highly available cluster is deployed with multiple control plane nodes.
    • You can optionally select a different instance type for the cluster's control plane node.
  9. Specify a control plane endpoint for the workload cluster.
    The control plane endpoint is the unique address for the control plane of the workload cluster.
    If the Avi load balancer is enabled on your management cluster, this value is inherited from the management cluster and is not editable.
  10. You can optionally specify an alternative port number for the API server.
    If the Avi load balancer is enabled on your management cluster, this value is inherited from the management cluster and is not editable.
  11. Click Next.
  12. You can optionally define the default node pool for your cluster.
    1. Select the instance type for workload clusters.
    2. Specify the number of worker nodes to provision.
    3. You can optionally provide labels for the nodes and cloud. Make sure you click Add Label after entering the key and value.
  13. Depending on the kind of cluster you are creating, you can optionally specify advanced configuration settings.
    For more information, see Advanced Options During Cluster Creation.
  14. When you ready to provision the new cluster, click Create Cluster.

Results

When you click Create Cluster, you are directed to the cluster detail page where you can see its status is Unknown while it is being created. Tanzu Mission Control provisions the resources necessary for your cluster in your management cluster. It then creates the workload cluster and attaches it to your organization in the cluster group that you specified. This process takes a few minutes.