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Deploy a Virtual Cluster to a Cluster Group

You can deploy Palette Virtual Clusters to a cluster group. The advantages of a virtual cluster environment are:

  • You can operate with admin-level privileges while ensuring strong isolation.
  • Virtual clusters reduce operational overhead and improve resource utilization.

Use the following steps to deploy a virtual cluster on connected and airgapped environments.

Prerequisites​

  • A Spectro Cloud account.

  • A cluster group. Refer to the Create and Manage Cluster Groups guide to learn how to create a cluster group.

  • Attach any required policies in your cloud account that must be added to your virtual cluster deployment.

    • For AWS, refer to the Required IAM Policies documentation.
    • For Azure, no additional policies are required.

  • If you are deploying a virtual cluster on an airgapped self-hosted instance of Palette or Palette VerteX, you must download and install the airgap-pack-vcluster pack on your airgap support VM. Refer to the Additional Packs for Airgap Environments page for guidance.

  • If your cluster group uses vCluster pack version 4.9.0 or later, you must set the CoreDNS image in the cluster group's Advanced Config YAML before deploying the virtual cluster. Refer to Configure the CoreDNS Image for guidance.

    info

    Palette does not support Usage and Cost metrics for Virtual Clusters running on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE).

Add Node-Level Policies in your Cloud Account​

In some situations additional node-level policies must be added to your deployment.

To add node-level policies:

  1. In Cluster Mode, switch to the Tenant Admin project.

  2. Select Tenant Settings in the Main Menu.

  3. Click Cloud Accounts and ensure Add IAM policies is enabled for your cloud account. If an account does not already exist, you must add one.

  4. You can specify any additional policies to include in virtual clusters deployed with this cloud account.

    • For AWS, add the AmazonEBSCSIDriver policy so that the virtual clusters can access the underlying host cluster's storage. Check out the Palette required IAM policies documentation to learn more about additional IAM policies.

  5. Confirm your changes.

Configure the CoreDNS Image​

Version 4.9.0 of the vCluster pack, which packages vCluster 0.27.3, does not ship a default CoreDNS image. Before deploying a virtual cluster to a cluster group that uses this pack version, set the CoreDNS image in the cluster group's Advanced Config YAML.

info

This step applies only to cluster groups that use vCluster pack version 4.9.0 or later. Cluster groups on earlier pack versions do not require this change.

  1. Log in to Palette as a tenant admin.

  2. From the left Main Menu, select Cluster Groups.

  3. Select the cluster group that will host the virtual cluster.

  4. In the Host Clusters tab that displays on the next page, select Settings.

  5. In the slide panel that opens, select the Settings tab. The Advanced Config section containing the cluster group YAML appears.

  6. Locate the controlPlane.coredns.deployment.image field in the YAML. Set the value to the CoreDNS image that matches your Palette installation, as shown in the following examples.

    Example configuration
    controlPlane:
      coredns:
        deployment:
          image: "us-docker.pkg.dev/palette-images/k8s/coredns/coredns:v1.12.1"

  7. Save your changes. You can now deploy a virtual cluster to the cluster group by following the steps in Deploy a Virtual Cluster.

Deploy a Virtual Cluster​

Follow these steps to deploy a virtual cluster to a cluster group depending on the Palette Mode.

  1. Log in to Palette.

  2. From the left Main Menu, select Clusters.

  3. Select the Virtual Clusters tab.

  4. Click Add New Virtual Cluster.

  5. Select your cluster group from the Select cluster group drop-down Menu, and enter a Cluster name for the virtual cluster.

  6. Assign the CPU, Memory, and Storage size for the cluster.

  7. Click Deploy Virtual Cluster.

Validate​

  1. Log in to Palette.

  2. From the left Main Menu, select Clusters.

  3. Select the Virtual Clusters tab.

  4. Your cluster is ready to use if the status is Running.

Resources​