This topic provides a set of reference architectures for TKG Service clusters with various deployment topologies.

TKG Service Cluster with NSX Topology

The reference architecture illustrates a TKG cluster on Supervisor with NSX networking. In such an environment, the management plane hosts vCenter Server and NSX Managers. The compute plane hosts NSX Edge Nodes and Supervisor nodes.

The following NSX network objects are present:
  • Tier-1 gateway (router)
  • Segment (switch) linked to the gateway
  • Load balancer server
  • Server pool for each TKG cluster control plane virtual server
  • Virtual server for each Kubernetes service load balancer instance
Figure 1. TKG Service Cluster with NSX Topology
TKG Service Cluster with NSX Topology

TKG Service Cluster with VDS Topology

The reference architecture illustrates a TKG Service cluster with VDS networking and an external load balancer. In such an environment, the following networks are present:
  • Management network for Supervisor control plane VMs
  • Workload network for TKG clusters
  • Frontend network through which developers connect to TKG Service clusters
Figure 2. TKG Service Cluster with VDS Topology
TKG Service Cluster with VDS Topology

TKG Service Cluster with vSphere Zones Topology

The reference architecture depicts a TKG cluster deployed across vSphere Zones. Each vSphere Zone maps to a vSphere Cluster, which is a collection of ESXi hosts managed by vCenter and connected by a vSphere Distributed Switch, with shared storage and qualities of service enabled.

In a zoned topology, you deploy Supervisor across three vSphere Zones. The system locates a Supervisor control plane in each vSphere Zone, providing for high-availability in case of failure.

When you provision a TKG cluster on Supervisor, the cluster is aware of the vSphere Zones. The zone topology supports failure domains for highly available workloads. If needed you can run a workload in a specific zone using annotations.
Note: vSphere Zones are new for vSphere 8. As such, vSphere Zones only support new deployments of Supervisor and TKG clusters.
Figure 3. TKG Service Cluster with vSphere Zones Topology
TKG Service Cluster with vSphere Zones Topology