Kubernetes on the VMWare ESX

This tutorial will walk you through setting up Kubernetes on VMWare ESX VM's with persistant storage.

Target Audience

The target audience for this tutorial is someone planning to create a Kubernetes cluster on VMWare ESX platform as this helps to support existing VM infra with container platform. .

Cluster Details

• Kubernetes 1.9.2
• Docker 1.12.6
• CNI Based Networking
• CSI Based Storage

Platform

• VMWare ESXi6.5 on 3 physical servers and VM's created one on each vSphere.
• Datastore for persistant storage which is accessable from all 3 vSphere's(like VSAN or NFS volume or SAN storage)

Steps for the test

1. Install VMWare_bootbank_esx-vmdkops-service_0.20.15f5e1d-0.0.1.vib on all the ESXi Servers.
   • esxcli software vib install -v /tmp/VMWare_bootbank_esx-vmdkops-service_0.20.15f5e1d-0.0.1.vib --no-sig-check
2. Create VM's for the Kuberentes cluster and form cluster
3. copy csi-vsphere binary to /usr/bin on all the VM's
4. Create csi-vsphere-node.service service on all the K8s worker nodes
   • mkdir -p /var/lib/kubelet/plugins/com.thecodeteam.vsphere/disks
   • systemctl enable csi-vsphere-node.service
   • systemctl start csi-vsphere-node.service
5. Master Node- kubectl apply -f csi-vsphere-controller.yaml
6. Test redis container with PV
   • Apply pvc.yaml
   • Apply redis.yaml
   • Kill the redis as it relocates to another node with same volume.