In this post I am going to cover all the areas within vRealize Automation that can help deploy and manage upstream Kubernetes environments as well as deployments of applications to Kubernetes environments.
VMware Cloud Assembly:
PKS Integration:
The first area within VMware Cloud Assembly that has integration to Kubernetes is the direct integration with Enterprise PKS (PKS). Here you can connect VMware Cloud Assembly to your on-prem PKS environment which can then be used to create Kubernetes cluster via the blueprint design canvas. I will touch on that a little later in the blog.
Deploying and On-Boarding PKS Kubernetes Clusters
Deploy Cluster:
VMware Cloud Assembly provides the capability to deploy a Kubernetes cluster on to a PKS environment that has been setup as an endpoint. This is a quick an easy way to deploy a cluster manually through the platform.
Onboard Cluster:
Let’s say you already have a PKS environment in place and clusters deployed, not a problem!! VMware Cloud Assembly can on-board existing clusters deployed on PKS so you can use them in any of the services.
Kubernetes Profiles
Cloud Assembly allows so many different ways to configure deployments including deployments on PKS by being able to select the types of PKS plans a specific team can deploy in the environment. By setting up Kubernetes Profiles you can select from the plans setup by your PKS administrator and then use these plans within the blueprint. Once you have setup the PKS endpoint you will see a list of the plans that are created in that environment and have the option to toggle whether they are available for provisioning. You can also tag these different plans and make it a selectable object from the blueprint request.
Add External Native Kubernetes Clusters
Of course, we don’t want to forget the native Kubernetes fans out there either. VMware Cloud Assembly also allows you to integrate any native Kubernetes cluster into the platform by simply selecting “Add External Cluster” and providing the necessary information to connect to the cluster.
Kubernetes Clusters As Part of Blueprints
Now that everything is setup in VMware Cloud Assembly you can simply drag the K8S Cluster object on to the canvas and have an on-demand Kubernetes cluster built as a part of a blueprint. Just think, you can have a cluster built along with a remote database, storage, additional networking…the possibilities are endless.
VMware Code Stream:
Kubernetes as an Endpoint for Deployment
In VMware Code Stream you can deploy any container based application directly to a Kubernetes cluster from within your VMware Code Stream pipeline. It’s very easy once you have setup the Kubernetes endpoint.
Once your endpoint is created you can select any of the Kubernetes endpoints you have in VMware Code Stream as tasks within your pipeline.
Check out all the other great integrations possibilities in VMware Code Stream in this blog.
Deploying to Kubernetes Through Pipelines
Once your endpoint is created in VMware Code Stream you can then deploy workloads into the Kubernetes clusters simply by providing the YAML code or pulling YAML files from a source repository like Github, GitLab, or BitBucket.
Managing Supervisor Namespaces in vSphere with Kubernetes:
vSphere with Kubernetes will revolutionize how Kubernetes will be delivered to developers by making it a first-class citizen within vSphere. In vRealize Automation an administrator can create a supervisor namespace on a supervisor cluster and assign the namespace to a project. Users in that project can get the kubectl and deploy application containers and VMs.
Summary:
As you can see there are a ton of ways to use upstream Kubernetes within vRealize Automation. Whether it’s deploying a cluster, managing clusters on PKS, or deploying applications to Kubernetes clusters through CI/CD pipelines, vRealize Automation Cloud gives you the capabilities you need to make your application and digital transformations.
