Avi Kubernetes Operator Guide 1.13

AKO 1.13 1.12 1.11 1.10

Deploying
AKO
 on vSphere with Tanzu with VDS

This topic explains how
AKO
 is deployed on vSphere with Tanzu with VDS.

AKO
 in vSphere with Tanzu

When using VDS as the networking option for vSphere with Tanzu (TKGs),
AKO
 will automatically be deployed into the Supervisor cluster to handle L4 workloads in
VMware Avi Load Balancer
. This para-virtualized
AKO
 will manage the L4 workloads in both the Supervisor cluster and each of the workload clusters.
Additionally,
AKO
 can be manually deployed through the helm into the workload cluster to support L7 Ingress workloads.
For more information, see Install NSX Advanced Load Balancer.

AKO
 Compatibility

When deploying
AKO
 through helm in the workload cluster, the
VMware Avi Load Balancer
 version must be compatible with the
AKO
 release. For more information, see Compatibility Matrix for AKO.

Deployment Guide

AKO
 can be installed on any workload cluster through helm to handle the L7 Ingress workloads.

Deploying the
Avi Load Balancer Controller

For more information on deploying the
Avi Load Balancer Controller
 (or Cluster of Controllers), see
Installing
Avi Load Balancer
 in VMware vSphere Environments
 topic in the
VMware Avi Load Balancer
 Installation Guide
.

Configuring vCenter Cloud on
VMware Avi Load Balancer

The point of integration with
VMware Avi Load Balancer
 and vCenter is called a cloud. For the vCenter environment, a vCenter cloud must be configured. For more information on configuring vCenter cloud, see
Installing
Avi Load Balancer
 in VMware vSphere Environments
 topic in the
VMware Avi Load Balancer
 Installation Guide
.

Configuring
VMware Avi Load Balancer
 IPAM Profile

The
VMware Avi Load Balancer
 allocates IP addresses from a pool of IP addresses within the subnet configured. After creating the profile, modify the vCenter cloud and add the profile as shown below.
For more information, see
Configuring NSX Advanced Load Balancer IPAM
 topic in the
VMware Avi Load Balancer
 Installation Guide
.
Avi Load Balancer
 in TKGs with VDS supports only a single VIP Network in the IPAM for Essentials for Tanzu and Enterprise licenses.

Configuring
Avi Load Balancer
 DNS Profile

AKO
 uses FQDN and path-based routing. It must be authoritative in the specified domain. After creating the profile, modify the vCenter cloud, and add the profile as shown below.
For more information, see
Configuring
Avi Load Balancer
 IPAM
 topic in the
VMware Avi Load Balancer
 Installation Guide
.

Installing Helm on the Workload Cluster

Helm is an application manager that facilitates the installation of packages in a Kubernetes environment.
AKO
 requires a helm for installation. For more information on install commands, see Installing Helm.

Pod Routing

Kubernetes Ingress traffic can be routed to the pods in the following ways:
  1. ClusterIP
  2. NodePort
  3. NodePortLocal

ClusterIP

In ClusterIP mode, the
Avi Load Balancer
 SEs will route directly to the Pod IPs. For this to work, the
Avi Load Balancer
 will configure static routes on the SEs for the internal Kubernetes cluster network. With this design,
Avi Load Balancer
 can check health of each pod individually and provide application persistence at the application level. However, this design requires a new SE Group per cluster since each SE Group will have its own static routes to each Kubernetes cluster. Additionally, the
Avi Load Balancer
 SEs must have a vNic in the Kubernetes node network.

NodePort

In NodePort mode, the
Avi Load Balancer
 SEs will route to the Kubernetes service. No static routes are required, as the service will be externally reachable through the NodePort. This design allows for the reuse of the SE Group since no static routes to the Kubernetes nodes are required. However, this design limits monitoring and persistence because most of this is handled by
kube-proxy
.

NodePortLocal

In
NodePortLocal
 mode, the
Avi Load Balancer
 SEs will route directly to the pods through a nodeport. Each pod is directly exposed as a NodePort. No static routes are required with this design since the NodePorts are externally routable. Additionally, this design will allow the reuse of SE Groups.

Installing
AKO
 on the Workload Cluster

AKO
 is installed through helm using a values.yaml file with various parameters specific to the environment. For more information, see values.yaml. When using VDS in the TKGs environment, the below parameters must be configured:
  • AKOSettings.clusterName
    : cluster-1. Create a Unique cluster name for each cluster.
  • AKOSettings.layer7Only
    : true. Set this to
    true
    . The
    VMware Avi Load Balancer
     will handle the L7, and VDS will still handle the L4.
  • NetworkSettings.vipNetworkList
    : Define the VIP Network List.
  • L7Settings.serviceType
    : Set this to either ClusterIP (default) or NodePort.
  • ControllerSettings.serviceEngineGroupName
    : Default-Group
  • ControllerSettings.controllerVersion
    : 22.1.2
  • ControllerSettings.cloudName
    : vcenter-cloud
  • ControllerSettings.controllerHost
    : ‘’
  • ControllerSettings.tenantName
    : admin
  • Avicredentials.username
    : username
  • Avicredentials.password
    : password
After configuring the necessary parameters in the
values.yaml
 file, install
AKO
 using the following command:
helm install  ako/ako  --generate-name --version 1.10.1 -f values.yaml namespace=avi-system
For complete installation steps, see Install Avi Kubernetes Operator.

Validating the
AKO
 Installation

This optional step will validate the
AKO
 pod running in the
avi-system
 namespace. Use
kubectl get pods -n avi-system
 command to show ako-0 pod. Below is an example of the output:

Deploying an Ingress

AKO
 is now installed and configured for L7 Ingress. After creating the first ingress, the appropriate objects are created in the
Avi Load Balancer Controller
 and an SE is automatically be deployed (if not configured already) to handle the L7 load balancing.

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