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Quick Tip - Install kube-vip as service load balancer with Tanzu Community Edition (TCE)

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As a follow up to my recent blog post on how to install Metallb as a service load balancer with Tanzu Community Edition (TCE), I also wanted to take a look at the other alternative which is using kube-vip. As mentioned in the previous blog post, I also noticed that Scott Rosenberg, an awesome VMware/Tanzu customer who has also been contributing to the community, has been working on some really cool ways of deploying additional packages using the Carvel tooling.

Since I have not deployed kube-vip for use with service load balancer, I was curious on how easy it would be to setup and hint, it is pretty darn easy using Carvel packages! You can find the detailed instructions along with a sample kubernetes (k8s) application to verify load balancer configuration was setup correctly.

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Quick Tip - Install Metallb as service load balancer with Tanzu Community Edition (TCE)

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There have been a few questions in the community asking about service load balancer options when using Tanzu Community Edition (TCE). Out of the box, TCE does support NSX Advanced Load Balancer (NSX-ALB), but most folks will probably not have access to NSX-ALB or the resources to set that up. As an alternative, either kube-vip and metallb can be used and they are completely free and easy to setup.

I personally have used metallb before and I definitely recommend it for its ease of use and setup. You can find the instructions below on setting up metallb with TCE along with a sample kubernetes (k8s) application to verify its functionality.

Note: Scott Rosenberg is also doing some interesting stuff with Carvel that would enable easy deployment of kube-vip and metallb in TCE. I am hoping I will get some time to take a look at this setup as I think this would be great user experience for TCE just like you can install other k8s applications.

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Minimum vSphere edition & features for Tanzu Community Edition (TCE)

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There have been a number of questions that have been raised by the community regarding the specific vSphere features and/or editions that is needed to deploy Tanzu Community Edition (TCE). I honestly thought I knew the requirements quite well myself but when it came to specific vSphere Editions, it made me second guess on what features TCE actually required for functionality.

I decided to deploy a brand new setup using the latest vSphere 7.0 Update 3 (vCenter Server and ESXi) release, which was all deployed onto a single 11th Gen Intel NUC. Below are my findings which I will share back with TCE folks and enhance our documentation. Ultimately, you just need access to a vCenter Server that is managing an ESXi host which can be a standalone host or one that is within a vSphere Cluster. Hopefully this will be helpful for anyone that wishes to get started.

vSphere Version:

  • As the official TCE documentation states, vSphere 6.7 Update 3 or newer is needed and this is primarily because that is the initial release that incorporates our vSphere CSI driver

vSphere Edition (minimum):

  • vCenter Standard and vSphere Standard
  • vCenter Essentials and vSphere Essentials Plus

Note: I did not have access to a vSphere Essential license but I am pretty confident it should also work.

vSphere Features:

  • Both vSphere HA and DRS is NOT required