VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 1.6

Before we begin, let's go over what's new in Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 1.6. Let's take a look at what Tanzu Kubernetes Grid is all about.

VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid
Enterprise Kubernetes runtimes enable the use of containers built on the Kubernetes platform across various cloud infrastructures. Although VMware's distributed container orchestration, Kubernetes, uses the same open-source tools as the rest of the Kubernetes community, it has been designed to make installation and regular use more straightforward.

Fig 1.1- Tanzu Kubernetes Grid

It allows IT administrators and developers to interact with vSphere using Kubernetes-based solutions. This enables simple provisioning of Kubernetes clusters via the Kubernetes APIs embedded directly within vSphere.

In both public and private clouds, Tanzu helps users run and manage multiple Kubernetes clusters (K8S).VMware keeps strong ties with Kubernetes despite making it a first-class VMware product. VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid will be available as a service in the various public cloud infrastructures that customers currently use.

VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 1.6

• With the new features added to the VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 1.6, now using PCI passthrough, you can create clusters of ESXi hosts with two types of NVIDIA GPU cards in vSphere.
• Kubernetes now supports CSI storage via the Amazon EBS CSI driver and the Azure Disk CSI driver. On vSphere, you can create clusters with VSPHERE CONTROL PLANE ENDPOINT set to a FQDN instead of an IP address when using NSX Advanced Load Balancer as the control plane endpoint.
• You can manage features in your target management cluster by using Tanzu feature activate, Tanzu feature deactivate, and Tanzu feature list.
• Tanzu config set edition is used to set the Tanzu CLI edition. It is possible to generate default values files in the Tanzu package by using the generate-default-values-file flag. Specify the package and the get command will generate the default configuration files.
• Based on the kapp-native controller's CLI, kctrl, the Tanzu CLI supports package commands. By default, kctrl mode is turned off. When kctrl mode is enabled, Tanzu package commands behave exactly like kctrl package commands. Run Tanzu config set features.package.kctrl-package-command-tree true to enable kctrl mode for Tanzu package commands.
• Tanzu's telemetry plugin replaces Tanzu's mc ceip-participation commands with Tanzu telemetry commands. There are some breaking changes to the Tanzu package command group when the kctrl mode is enabled.
• VSPHERE_CONTROL_PLANE_ENDPOINT can be set to an FQDN without the need for a custom overlay if you are using NSX ALB. Workload clusters are supported for the AVI LABELS variable.