VMware by Broadcom has recently released the “Consumption Interface” for the vSphere IaaS Control Plane (formerly known as vSphere with Tanzu or TKGS). This is a significant enhancement to the existing features of TKG, allowing for better management and visibility of your resources.
With this new interface, you can now view and manage all your resources within vSphere namespaces directly from the vCenter GUI. This update simplifies the creation and updating of resources, enhancing the user experience.
Installation Guide
To install the Consumption Interface, follow these steps:
- Prerequisites: Ensure your Supervisor Cluster is running vCenter 8.0.3 or later.
- Download Required Files: Access the required files from the Supervisor Services GitHub Repository.
- Import Configuration: Download the necessary
.ymlfile and import it into the Workload Management Services tab in vCenter.
Here is a step-by-step guide with screenshots to assist you through the installation process:
- Step 1: Download the .yml file from the repository.
- Step 2: Navigate to the Workload Management Services tab.
- Step 3: Import the .yml file.
- Step 4: Configure the Supervisor Service.
- Step 5: Adjust the package settings as needed, such as overriding the image registry to use your local registry.
Post-Installation Overview
After enabling the Consumption Interface, it will appear in the resources tab of your vSphere namespace.
From this interface, you can create and manage your IaaS resources, such as Kubernetes Clusters.
You can even preview the generated YAML that will be deployed on your behalf.
Conclusion
With these steps, you can seamlessly integrate the Consumption Interface into your existing vSphere environment, enhancing your control and visibility over your IaaS resources and providing an easy-to-use UI for your vSphere Admins to create Kubernetes Clusters and other resources.
This addon has proven to be highly beneficial for many of my customers who were seeking a simple interface for creating Kubernetes clusters.