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vSphere infrastructure optionsNew#

When you deploy child clusters on vSphere, MKE 4 uses the Cluster API Provider vSphere (CAPV) to provision and manage cluster infrastructure. The spec.infrastructure.configuration block exposes the key CAPV settings — vCenter coordinates, virtual machine sizing and placement, DNS, and optional IPAM-based address allocation — for both control plane and worker nodes. Required parameters are noted in the sections herein; all others apply provider defaults when omitted.

Example vSphere configuration, with all optional parameters#

spec:
  infrastructure:
    provider: vsphere
    credential: vsphere-cluster-identity-cred
    controlPlaneNumber: 3
    workersNumber: 3
    configuration:
      controlPlaneEndpointIP: 10.10.0.10
      nameservers:
        - 10.0.0.53
        - 1.1.1.1
      ipamEnabled: true
      ipPool:
        config:
          apiGroup: ipam.cluster.x-k8s.io
          kind: InClusterIPPool
          name: child-cluster-pool
      vsphere:
        server: vcenter.example.com
        thumbprint: "AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF:00:11:22:33:44:55:66:77:88:99:AA:BB:CC:DD"
        datacenter: DATACENTER
        datastore: DATASOURCE
        resourcePool: /DATACENTER/host/cluster-1/Resources/ResourcePool
        folder: /DATACENTER/vm/folder
      controlPlane:
        vmTemplate: /DATACENTER/vm/templates/ubuntu-2204-kube-v1.35
        network: /DATACENTER/vm/networks/VMNetwork
        rootVolumeSize: 64
        cpus: 4
        memory: 16384
        ssh:
          user: vsphere
          publicKey: "ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAI... mke4-admin@example"
      worker:
        vmTemplate: /DATACENTER/vm/templates/ubuntu-2204-kube-v1.35
        network: /DATACENTER/networks/VMNetwork
        rootVolumeSize: 64
        cpus: 4
        memory: 16384
        ssh:
          user: vsphere
          publicKey: "ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAI... mke4-admin@example"

Top-level configuration parameters#

Parameter                                        Type                          Required Default Description                              
controlPlaneEndpointIP string (IPv4/IPv6) yes — Static IP assigned to the control plane endpoint, kube-apiserver VIP. Must be a syntactically valid IP address.
nameservers list of strings (IP) no [] DNS servers injected into the cloud-init network configuration of every virtual machine. Each entry must be a valid IPv4 or IPv6 address.
ipamEnabled boolean no false When true, virtual machine NICs request addresses from a CAPV IPAM pool referenced by ipPool instead of using DHCP.
ipPool object yes if ipamEnabled: true — CAPV addressesFromPools reference. Refer to ipPool.
vsphere object yes — Cluster-wide vSphere/vCenter coordinates. Refer to vsphere.
controlPlane object yes — Virtual machine sizing and placement for control plane nodes. Refer to controlPlane / worker parameters.
worker object yes — Virtual machine sizing and placement for worker nodes. Refer to controlPlane / worker parameters.

vsphere parameters#

The cluster-wide vCenter coordinates are described in the following table. Note that all parameters are required and must be non-empty.

Parameter                     Type Description
server string vCenter server address, FQDN or IP. For example, vcenter.example.com.
thumbprint string SHA-1/SHA-256 TLS thumbprint of the vCenter certificate.
datacenter string vSphere datacenter name.
datastore string vSphere datastore name where the virtual machine disks are placed.
resourcePool string vSphere resource pool path.
folder string vSphere virtual machine folder path. Must be non-empty.

Use the following command to obtain the vSphere certificate thumbprint:

curl -sw %{certs} https://vcenter.example.com | openssl x509 -sha256 -fingerprint -noout | awk -F '=' '{print $2}'

controlPlane / worker parameters#

The controlPlane and worker objects are identical in shape.

Parameter                 Type Required Default (control plane / worker)   Constraints Description                          
vmTemplate string yes — / — non-empty Name or inventory path of the vSphere virtual machine template to clone from.
network string yes — / — non-empty vSphere network or portgroup name to attach the virtual machine NIC to.
rootVolumeSize integer (GiB) no 32 / 32 > 0 Root disk size in GiB.
cpus integer no 4 / 2 > 0 Number of vCPUs per virtual machine.
memory integer (MiB) no 16000 / 8000 > 0 Memory in MiB.
ssh.user string yes — / — non-empty Operating system user account on the virtual machine template for which the operator SSH public key is authorized.
ssh.publicKey string yes — / — valid SSH authorized-keys entry SSH public key authorized on the virtual machine. Must parse as a single authorized_keys-format entry. For example, ssh-ed25519 AAAA... user@host.

ipPool parameters#

The ipPool parameters are used only when ipamEnabled: true. The config block is passed to CAPV as an addressesFromPools reference.

Parameter                               Type Required                                         Description                                                            
ipPool.config.apiGroup string no API group of the IPAM pool resource. If specified, the parameter must not be empty or whitespace.
ipPool.config.kind string yes (when ipamEnabled: true) Type of IPAM pool. Examples include InClusterIPPool and GlobalInClusterIPPool.
ipPool.config.name string yes (when ipamEnabled: true) Name of the IPAM pool resource.