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VMWare

The example below creates a Kubernetes cluster with 4 worker node Virtual Machines and a master Virtual Machine (i.e. 5 VMs in your cluster). This cluster is set up and controlled from your workstation (or wherever you find convenient).

• Prerequisites
• Setup
• Starting a cluster
  • From extracted binary release
  • Build from source
• Extra: debugging deployment failure
• Support Level

Prerequisites

1. You need administrator credentials to an ESXi machine or vCenter instance.
2. You must have Go (see here for supported versions) installed: www.golang.org.
3. You must have your GOPATH set up and include $GOPATH/bin in your PATH.

export GOPATH=$HOME/src/go
mkdir -p $GOPATH
export PATH=$PATH:$GOPATH/bin

1. Install the govc tool to interact with ESXi/vCenter:

go get github.com/vmware/govmomi/govc

1. Get or build a binary release

Setup

Download a prebuilt Debian 8.2 VMDK that we’ll use as a base image:

curl --remote-name-all https://storage.googleapis.com/govmomi/vmdk/2016-01-08/kube.vmdk.gz{,.md5}
md5sum -c kube.vmdk.gz.md5
gzip -d kube.vmdk.gz

Import this VMDK into your vSphere datastore:

export GOVC_URL='hostname' # hostname of the vc
export GOVC_USERNAME='username' # username for logging into the vsphere.
export GOVC_PASSWORD='password' # password for the above username
export GOVC_NETWORK='Network Name' # Name of the network the vms should join. Many times it could be "VM Network"
export GOVC_INSECURE=1 # If the host above uses a self-signed cert
export GOVC_DATASTORE='target datastore'
export GOVC_RESOURCE_POOL='resource pool or cluster with access to datastore'

govc import.vmdk kube.vmdk ./kube/

Verify that the VMDK was correctly uploaded and expanded to ~3GiB:

govc datastore.ls ./kube/

Take a look at the file cluster/vsphere/config-common.sh fill in the required parameters. The guest login for the image that you imported is kube:kube.

Starting a cluster

Now, let’s continue with deploying Kubernetes. This process takes about ~20-30 minutes depending on your network.

From extracted binary release

cd kubernetes
KUBERNETES_PROVIDER=vsphere cluster/kube-up.sh

Build from source

cd kubernetes
make release
KUBERNETES_PROVIDER=vsphere cluster/kube-up.sh

Refer to the top level README and the getting started guide for Google Compute Engine. Once you have successfully reached this point, your vSphere Kubernetes deployment works just as any other one!

Enjoy!

Extra: debugging deployment failure

The output of kube-up.sh displays the IP addresses of the VMs it deploys. You can log into any VM as the kube user to poke around and figure out what is going on (find yourself authorized with your SSH key, or use the password kube otherwise).

Support Level

For support level information on all solutions, see the Table of solutions chart.