• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

virtuallyGhetto

  • About
  • Privacy
  • VMware Cloud
  • Home Lab
  • Nested Virtualization
  • Automation
    • VMware Kickstart
    • VMware API/SDK/CLI
    • VMware vMA/VIMA
    • VMware OVF / OVFTOOL
  • Apple Mac
  • VCSA
  • VSAN

vSphere with Kubernetes

Deploying a minimal vSphere with Kubernetes environment

04/29/2020 by William Lam 9 Comments

A very useful property of automation is the ability to experiment. After creating my vSphere 7 with Kubernetes Automation Lab Deployment Script, I wanted to see what was the minimal footprint in terms of the physical resources but also the underlying components that would be required to allow me to still a fully functional vSphere with Kubernetes environment.

Before diving in, let me give you the usual disclaimer 😉

Disclaimer: This is not officially supported by VMware and you can potentially run into issues if you deviate from the official requirements which the default deployment script adheres to out of the box.

In terms of the physical resources, you will need a system that can provision up to 8 vCPU (this can be further reduced, see Additional Resource Reduction section below), 92GB memory and 1TB of storage (thin provisioned).


which translates to following configuration within the script:

  • 1 x Nested ESXi VM with 4 vCPU and 36GB memory
  • 1 x VCSA with 2 vCPU and 12GB memory
  • 1 x NSX-T Unified Appliance with 4 vCPU and 12GB memory
  • 1 x NSX-T Edge with 8 vCPU and 12GB memory

Note: You can probably reduce memory footprint of the ESXi VM further depending on your usage and the VCSA is using the default values for "Tiny", so you can probably trim the memory down a bit more.

Another benefit to this solution is by reducing the number of ESXi VMs required, it also speeds up the deployment and in just 35 minutes, you can have the complete infrastructure fully stood up and configured to try out vSphere with Kubernetes!


The other trick that I leveraged to reduce the amount of resources is by changing the default number of Supervisor Control Plane VMs required for enabling vSphere with Kubernetes. By default, three of these VMs are deployed as part of setting up the Supervisor Cluster, however I found a way to tell the Workload Control Plane (WCP) to only deploy two 🙂


This minimal deployment of vSphere with Kubernetes has already been incorporated into my vSphere with Kubernetes deployment script, but it does require altering several specific settings. You can find the instructions below.

[Read more...] about Deploying a minimal vSphere with Kubernetes environment

Share this...
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Linkedin
  • Reddit
  • Pinterest

Filed Under: Automation, Kubernetes, Not Supported, VMware Tanzu, vSphere 7.0 Tagged With: vSphere 7, vSphere with Kubernetes

Automated vSphere 7 and vSphere with Kubernetes Lab Deployment Script

04/13/2020 by William Lam 91 Comments

I know many of you have been asking me about my vSphere with Kubernetes automation script which I had been sharing snippets of on Twitter. For the past couple of weeks, I have been hard at work making the required changes between the vSphere 7 Beta and GA workflows, some additional testing and of course documentation. Hopefully the wait was worth it (I think it is) and if you enjoy the script or have benefited, please consider adding 🌟to the Github repo to show your support! Thanks and enjoy

Had to make some updates to one of my vGhetto Automated Lab Deployment Scripts

💥44min to automate all required #vSphere7 infrastructure! 🤛🎤🥳

1 x VCSA 7.0
3 x ESXi + vSAN 7.0
1 x NSX-T 3.0 UA
1 x NSX-T Edge

Need to clean up #ProjectPacific wording but its working great! pic.twitter.com/ZInPgVgbGS

— William Lam (@lamw) April 4, 2020

The Github repository:

  • https://github.com/lamw/vghetto-vsphere-with-kubernetes-external-nsxt-automated-lab-deployment

Before getting started, please carefully read through the requirements section along with the complete sample end-to-end execution if you are new to vSphere with Kubernetes. You will need to have a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 4.0 license before you can get started and specifically an NSX-T Advance license which is one of the required parameters within the script. If you do not have access to a VCF 4 license, I strongly recommend taking part in the recent VMUG Advantage Homelab Group Buy effort which I had started to easily get access to the latest VMware releases along with a nice 15% discount!

The script supports deploying both a standard vSphere 7 environment with just VCSA, ESXi and vSAN as well as the complete solution which includes NSX-T to support vSphere with Kubernetes. For more details, please refer to the FAQ.

Share this...
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Linkedin
  • Reddit
  • Pinterest

Filed Under: Automation, Kubernetes, Nested Virtualization, NSX, VMware Tanzu, VSAN, vSphere, vSphere 7.0 Tagged With: Kubernetes, NSX-T, Project Pacific, VMware Cloud Foundation, vSphere 7, vSphere with Kubernetes

  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2

Primary Sidebar

Author

William Lam is a Senior Staff Solution Architect working in the VMware Cloud team within the Cloud Services Business Unit (CSBU) at VMware. He focuses on Automation, Integration and Operation for the VMware Cloud Software Defined Datacenters (SDDC)

  • Email
  • GitHub
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • Vimeo

Sponsors

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy