Tag - Tanzu

With Velero now installed on our cluster, we can create a backup job and protect our data. We can also test restores of our data into a new namespace. I mentioned in the previous post that we’re going to use File-System Backups (FSB) for the applications in our TKG cluster, and you’ll see how that’s handled here. Velero works using the idea of “jobs” - either a backup job or restore job.

Disclaimer: Most of these notes are based on my own internal wiki notes when I deployed Velero in my lab. They may be out of date between the date of publication and when you read it. What is Velero? Velero is VMware’s open-source backup and restore tool for workloads running in Kubernetes. It’s available to anyone for use on Kubernetes, and supports several combinations of integrations with underlying cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, vSphere, etc).

I recently posted how to upgrade VMware Cloud Director’s Container Service Extension from 4.0.1 to 4.0.3. The next step in the journey is to configure the new CAPVCD provider (1.0.1) on any existing Kubernetes clusters deployed by CSE, and then upgrade those clusters from TKG 1.5.4 images to TKG 1.6.1 images. Wait, what am I updating? Kubernetes clusters deployed by CSE include what’s called a Cluster API Provider (CAP) for VMware Cloud Director (VCD) which is where we get CAPVCD.

I’ve got VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension (CSE) 4.0.1 running in my lab to test and demo Kubernetes Clusters as-a-service in Cloud Director. CSE 4.0.3 was released on the 20th of April 2023 and came with significant improvements. Let’s take a look at my current environment: VCD 10.4.1 CSE UI Plugin 4.0.1 CSE Server 4.0.1 vSphere 7.0U3 NSX-T 4.0.1.1 NSX ALB (Avi) 22.1.2-9086 Based on the above, I don’t need to change a single thing for CSE 4.

With the announcement and release of TKG 2.1, it’s about time I publish a post on deploying TKGm 1.6 in my vSphere lab. /sarcasm If you aren’t familiar with Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) or, more specifically, TKG Multi-Cloud (TKG-m) then I highly suggest having a read over the official documentation: What is TKG. In a nutshell, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid is a great solution to deploy and manage Tanzu Kubernetes clusters. TKGs is the variation of TKG that is deeply integrated with vSphere (also known as vSphere with Tanzu), while TKGm can be deployed and managed across one or many clouds, including vSphere.

I’ve had some partners ask for a reference that maps VCD, CSE, TKG images and TKr versions in a single table. Behold! The Cloud Director column details the VCD version, CSE details the version of CSE compatible with the VCD builds. TKG Images column lists the versions of Tanzu Kubernetes Grid images that are supported by CSE, and the Tanzu Kubernetes Release (TKr) column details the Kubernetes releases available for the TKG Images version in the list.