Tag: K8s

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Update Tanzu Workload Management

This is a brief guide on how to upgrade Tanzu Workload Management within the vSphere cluster.

Kubernetes Release and Patch Cycles

Kubernetes versions are specified as x.y.z following Semantic Versioning terminology, where x is the major version, y is the minor version, and z is the patch version. For example, v1.22.6 denotes a minor version 22 with patch level 6. Minor versions are released approximately every 3-4 months. In the meantime, there are several patches within the minor version.

The Kubernetes project maintains release branches for the last three minor versions (1.24, 1.23, 1.22). Since Kubernetes 1.19, newer versions receive patch support for about a year. So keeping the Kubernetes versions in Tanzu up to date is highly recommended.

Step 1 – Update vCenter

This step is not mandatory, but recommended. Updates on vCenter are often accompanied by a new Kubernetes versions. You can see notifications about updates in the vSphere Client.

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Improve your K8s and Tanzu Skills with VMware ModernApps Ninja

VMware has launched a training portal that allows you to improve your skills and knowledge of Tanzu and Kubernetes. On the portal ModernAppsNinja there are many free trainings that will bring you closer to the ModernApps topic. You will find a variety of courses, labs, tutorials, learning materials and handson tutorials. For example, if you want to prepare for the Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA), or the VCP ModernApps, you can easily find the necessary resources and tools there. But also useful tutorials such as how to use VSCode.

https://modernapps.ninja/

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Using ESXi on Arm as a tiny Kubernetes cluster

ESXi on Intel x86 architecture has been a commodity for many years now. In recent years and during VMworld for example we’ve seen early alpha versions of ESXi running on Arm architecture like smart NICs or even Raspberry Pi. Meanwhile VMware developers published a Fling named ESXi Arm Edition to deploy ESXi on Arm architecture. Of course this is a lab project and not supported by VMware for production workloads. But anyway, it’s a great opportunity to play around with ESXi on a cheap and tiny computer like Raspberry Pi. I will not explain how to deploy ESXi on Arm. Check the detailed documentation on the Fling project page (PDF). I will focus on day-2 operation.

I would like to thank William Lam for providing a lot of background information, hacks and tricks around PhotonOS and ESXionArm.

Now I’ve got an ESXi host on my Raspi. What can I do with it?

Just a few remarks before we start:

You can’t run any workload on the ESXi on Arm platform. As the project name says, it’s an Arm architecture, So you can’t run operating systems based on Intel architecture. All guest VMs need to be made for Arm architecture. That will rule out Windows guest systems and also most Linux distributions. But luckily there are a couple of Linux distributions made specific for Arm architecture like Ubuntu Server for Arm, or Photon OS. For my demonstration I chose the latest Photon OS (version 4 beta). As host hardware I’m using the “big” Raspberry Pi 4 with 8 GB RAM. You can imagine that 8 GB of RAM isn’t very much for host OS and guest VMs. We have to use resources sparingly.

Our aim is to deploy a 3 node Kubernets cluster on an ESXi on Arm host on Raspberry Pi with just 8 GB RAM and 4 cores. Sounds crazy, but it’s possible. Thanks to K3s lightweight Kubernetes on Arm.

Hardware used

  • Raspberry Pi 4, Broadcom BCM2711, Quad core Cortex-A72 (ARM v8) 64-bit SoC @ 1.5GHz
  • Heat sink for Raspberry Pi4 (your Raspi will become hot without)
  • SD-card (only for UEFI BIOS)
  • USB stick for ESXi installation
  • USB 3 hub with external power supply (Raspi doesn’t provide reliable power on USB port for an NVMe SSD)
  • USB 3 NVMe M.2 case
  • Samsung NVMe EvoPlus 250 GB M.2

Using ESXi on Arm in standalone mode

Although I have joined my ESXi on Raspi to my vCenter 7, I will not use any vCenter features. All works are done like on a standalone ESXi (with all the shortcomings and limitations).

First we need 3 VMs for the 3 K3s nodes. It’s a good idea to build a VM with everything we need except K3s and then clone it. Well, if you think cloning a VM on a standalone ESXi on Arm host is just a mouse click in the UI, then welcome to the real world. 😉 I will come to that point later. Let’s build our first Photon OS VM.

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