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Troubleshooting tips for configuring vSphere with Kubernetes

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With more and more folks trying out the new vSphere with Kubernetes capability, I have seen an uptick in questions both internally and externally around the initial setup of the infrastructure required for vSphere with Kubernetes but also during the configuration of a vSphere Cluster for Workload Management.

One of the most common question is why are there no vSphere Clusters listed or why a specific vSphere Cluster is showing up as Incompatible? There are a number of reasons that this can occur including vCenter Server not being able to communicate with NSX-T Manager to retrieve the list of NSX pre-checks which would cause the list to either be empty or listed as incompatible. Not having proper time sync between vCenter Server and NSX-T which can also manifest in a similar behavior among other infrastructure issues.


Having ran into some of these issues myself when developing my automation script, I figure it might be useful to share some of the troubleshooting tips I have used when trying to figure out what is going on whether that is during the initial setup or actually deploying workloads using vSphere with Kubernetes.

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Deploying a minimal vSphere with Kubernetes environment

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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.

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Special VMUG Advantage Homelab Group Buy

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The VMware Community Homelabs Project is a crowdsourcing effort that I had started back in February that enables the VMware community to help share the various VMware homelab configurations, usage and costs into a single location that can benefit our larger community. With the success of that project and the "hardware" aspects out of the way, I wanted to see what else I could do to help our VMware community in terms of the "software" aspects, as that is just as important.

The most popular solution by far today is to sign up for a VMUG Advantage membership which gives you access to a number of benefits including training and VMworld discounts but also to EVALExperience, which provides you with 365-days access (non-production usage) to the latest VMware solutions such as vSphere, vSAN, NSX, vRealize Suite and VMware Cloud Foundation. The EVALExperience alone is worth the $200 USD membership and is certainly one of the cheapest and easiest way to get access to all the latest VMware offerings for homelab purposes. Throughout the year, there are usually promo codes that you can find that ranges anywhere from 5-10% discount, but I wanted to see if we could do better 🙂

Today, I am very excited to announce a partnership between virtuallyGhetto and the VMware User Group (VMUG) organization to share with the VMware Community a special VMUG Advantage Homelab Group Buy offering. The table below provides the respective discounts based on the quantity of VMUG Advantage membership purchases. The larger the interests group, the larger the discount.

UPDATE (04/25/20) - The survey has officially closed and I will send in the final list to the VMUG folks which you will be receiving an email with instructions on how to obtain your promotional code. In total, we had a total of 701 respondents!


UPDATE (04/20/20) - We now have over 600+ folks registered. Everyone signed up (please sign up as that is the only way to take part in the group buy) will receive the 15% discount. I have already spoken to the VMUG folks and they will be working on getting the promotion code ready so folks can start purchasing immediately, stay tuned for that update via email. We have also agreed to leave the survey up for another week (Fri 4/24 will be last day) to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to sign up.

Quantity Discount Cost
1-99 12% $176
100-199 14% $172
200-300 15% $170

With the GA of vSphere 7.0, vSAN 7.0 and NSX-T 3.0, there is no better time to consider VMUG Advantage to get access to the latest releases. If that was not enough, I should also mention that VMUG Advantage will also include the upcoming VMware Cloud Foundation 4.0 release, which will allow folks to also try out the new vSphere with Kubernetes capabilities, which is currently only available as part of the VMware Cloud Foundation SKU.

Note: Licenses from VMUG Advantage can NOT be used for Production purposes.

If you are interested in participating in the VMUG Advantage Homelab Group Buy, please fill out the following survey below to express your interests in purchasing a VMUG Advantage subscription(s). This survey is planned to be open for two weeks to gauge the level of interests and help determine the final promotion discount. Please share this with friends and colleagues and its never too early to start thinking about Christmas gifts for that special someone 😉

Once the survey period has closed, you will be contacted by the VMUG organization with the details of the promotion along with the promotion code to apply towards your VMUG Advantage membership. Depending on the amount of interests, we could potentially close the survey sooner if we reach 200+ folks.

Here's short URL for the survey in case you want to share with others: http://vmwa.re/vmug-adv-groupbuy