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Getting started with VMware Pivotal Container Service (PKS) Part 2: PKS Client

03.26.2018 by William Lam // 6 Comments

In this article, we will configure the various command-line tools that will be used to interact with the PKS Platform which will then be consumed by either the Operators (managing the PKS infrastructure) and/or the the Developers (consumers of the Kubernetes Clusters).

Below is a quick summary, description and the consumers of the CLIs that we will be installing:

CLI Description Consumer
pks Used to create/delete and manage K8S Clusters Operator
kubectl Used to interact with K8S Cluster and deploy applications including scaling up/down Developer
uaac Used to manage user accounts and authorization for the PKS platform Operator
bosh Used to manage PKS deployments and provides information about the VMs using its Cloud Provider Interface (CPI) which is vSphere in this case Operator
om Used to Used to manager and interact with Ops Manager Operator
nsx-cli.sh Used to clean NSX-T objects after a K8S have been deleted (will be Automated by PKS in future release) Operator

Both PKS and Kubectl CLIs are supported on either Windows, MacOS and Linux, you can refer to Part 1 for a link to the binary downloads. The remainder of the tools are primarily used by Operators and to make them accessible for multiple users, you can deploy a centralized management VM. In my lab, I am referring to this VM as the "PKS Client" which is where we will be installing all the CLIs. You can use a variety of supported Operating Systems, but I found Ubuntu to work the best, especially for some of the package dependencies. I did try to use our own PhotonOS, but I was having some trouble figuring out the required packages. If I figure it out, then I will update the article as that may be preferred over Ubuntu if you have never worked with it before.

If you missed any of the previous articles, you can find the complete list here:

  • Getting started with VMware Pivotal Container Service (PKS) Part 1: Overview
  • Getting started with VMware Pivotal Container Service (PKS) Part 2: PKS Client
  • Getting started with VMware Pivotal Container Service (PKS) Part 3: NSX-T
  • Getting started with VMware Pivotal Container Service (PKS) Part 4: Ops Manager & BOSH
  • Getting started with VMware Pivotal Container Service (PKS) Part 5: PKS Control Plane
  • Getting started with VMware Pivotal Container Service (PKS) Part 6: Kubernetes Go!
  • Getting started with VMware Pivotal Container Service (PKS) Part 7: Harbor
  • Getting started with VMware Pivotal Container Service (PKS) Part 8: Monitoring Tool Overview
  • Getting started with VMware Pivotal Container Service (PKS) Part 9: Logging
  • Getting started with VMware Pivotal Container Service (PKS) Part 10: Infrastructure Monitoring
  • Getting started with VMware Pivotal Container Service (PKS) Part 11: Application Monitoring
  • vGhetto Automated Pivotal Container Service (PKS) Lab Deployment

[Read more...]

Categories // Automation, Cloud Native, Kubernetes, NSX Tags // BOSH, cloud native apps, kubectl, Kubernetes, nsx-cli.sh, om, PCF, Pivotal, PKS, uaac

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William is Distinguished Platform Engineering Architect in the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Division at Broadcom. His primary focus is helping customers and partners build, run and operate a modern Private Cloud using the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) platform.

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