VMware Tanzu Modern Apps
  • Modern Application Solutions
  • The Why and What of Kubernetes
    • Introduction to Containers
    • Introduction to Kubernetes
    • From Docker Containers to Kubernetes
    • The Power of Kubernetes Services
    • Microservices Architecture
    • What is Cloud Native?
  • Build Kubernetes Runtime
    • Provisioning Kubernetes
      • Kubernetes on vSphere
        • Provisioning Kubernetes Clusters with VMware PKS
        • Provisioning Kubernetes Clusters with VMware Enterprise PKS
        • Provisioning Kubernetes Clusters with the Cluster API
    • Updating Kubernetes Clusters
    • Controlling Ingress with Contour
  • Manage and Monitor
    • Monitoring Kubernetes
    • Monitoring Containers at Scale with Wavefront
    • Monitoring with VMware vRealize Log Insight
    • Managing and Securing Container Images in a Registry
    • Compliance Testing with Sonobuoy
    • Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Resources with Velero
    • Managing Microservices with a Service Mesh
  • Multi-Cloud Multi-Cluster Management
  • Challenges Managing Multiple Cluster across Multiple Clouds
  • Introducing VMware Tanzu Mission Control
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  1. Build Kubernetes Runtime
  2. Provisioning Kubernetes

Kubernetes on vSphere

Deploying a Kubernetes cluster on vSphere

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Last updated 5 years ago

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At its foundation, a Kubernetes cluster contains a set of nodes that endow pods with compute, storage, and networking. For a Kubernetes cluster to run on VMware vSphere, these nodes are virtual machines sitting in a vSphere DRS cluster or resource pool. The VMs have a Linux kernel with a container runtime, such as Docker, that integrates with Kubernetes. Each VM that is a node in the cluster will also be running various Kubernetes modules, such as kubelet and kube-proxy. Each node also needs information about the underlying vCenter, information that the node uses to provision a persistent storage volume when it's needed. As a result, the kubelet must be configured to use the vSphere Storage Provider.

  • The DRS cluster pools resources from the underlying ESXi hosts that are part of the cluster and provides the resources to the Kubernetes cluster through the node VMs.

  • The resources help provide elastic capacity to the Kubernetes cluster -- whenever the cluster needs to scale, a new node can be provisioned to attach it to the cluster.

  • The resource pool also helps avoid overprovisioning physical server capacity.

Kubernetes Cluster on VMware vSphere