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Quick Tip - Using VCF CLI to login to vSphere Supervisor when configured with VCF Automation

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When a vSphere Supervisor Cluster is configured to be consumed by VCF Automation, the Identity Provider (IdP) for that vSphere Supervisor is automatically configured to redirect to VCF Automation (VCFA) as an OIDC relay.


When an end user wishes to access or manage their resources, they will be directed to the IdP that has been configured for their Organization Portal. To create a k8s login context, they will need to create a VCFA API token that is then passed to the VCF CLI before they can interact with their resources using kubectl.

Below is an example VCF CLI command where I am logging into an Organization Portal called legal and I have specified my VCFA endpoint along with the VCFA API Token to login as an end user.

vcf context create legal --endpoint auto01.vcf.lab --api-token $VCF_CLI_VCFA_API_TOKEN --insecure-skip-tls-verify --type cci --tenant-name legal

However, if you are an administrator who is managing the underlying VCF Infrastructure and need to troubleshoot or access the vSphere Supervisor Cluster, an alternative workflow will be required.

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Enabling new vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS) Cluster Management for VCF Automation (VCFA)

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As of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0.1, users can now manage the full lifecycle of their vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS) Clusters, including backup and restore, using the new vSphere Kubernetes Service Cluster Management (VKSM) capability, natively integrated into VCF Automation (VCFA).


This is definitely a must have capability for users managing dozen or even hundreds of VKS Clusters across different versions, VKSM provides the easy button for platform operators!

I figured before going on PTO next week and shutting down my lab, this would be the perfect time to get this deployed in my lab ... what could go wrong, right!? 😅

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Quick Tip - Configuring vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS) Cluster with self-signed container registry

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Over the weekend, I had finished building a small container application that I had developed on my local desktop, which worked great. However, the real test was to deploy the application on a vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS) Cluster, which would require the container image to be hosted in a container registry.

Rather than using a public container registry, like many organizations, you typically would setup an internal registry that your infrastructure could have access to. Harbor is my go to container registry and is extremely simple to setup as it uses docker-compose under the hood.

After uploading my container image to Harbor, if you try to deploy it to your VKS Cluster, you will immediately see the following image pull error:

tls: failed to verify certificate: x509: certificate signed by unknown authority


Just like any system that attempts to connect to an endpoint with a self-signed TLS certificate that it can not verify, it will not trust which is the default behavior.

For our VKS Cluster to be able to successfully pull an image from Harbor with a self-signed TLS certificate, we need to add the trusted CA to our vSphere Namespace and then reference that as part of our VKS Cluster deployment.

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