Set up Palette with VMware

In this guide, you will learn how to set up Palette for use with your VMware user account. These steps are required in order to authenticate Palette and allow it to deploy host clusters. The concepts you learn about in the Getting Started section are centered around a fictional case study company, Spacetastic Ltd.

🧑‍🚀 Back at Spacetastic HQ

The Spacetastic team decide to look for an external solution that can help them scale and manage their Kubernetes services. Partnering with a team of Kubernetes experts allows them to focus on expanding their astronomy education platform, instead of spending countless hours migrating and rehosting their services. They identify the following list of benefits that their new platform should provide.

• Simplified Kubernetes cluster deployment processes across cloud providers.
• Cluster maintenance and security patching across environments.
• Monitoring and observability of Kubernetes workloads.

"I have so many ideas for new features for our backlog." says Anya, Lead Astrophycist. "Our community of space explorers want to keep learning, so we shouldn't slow down our implementation cycle. We need to keep expanding our astronomy education product."

Kai nods knowingly. As a Platform Engineer, they agree with Anya's concerns. "I've done some research on Kubernetes orchestration solutions. It seems that Palette has all the capabilities we need to help us grow."

"I agree with both of you, but I want to review the developer experience in detail before we agree to implement a new solution in production." says Wren, whose main concern as Founding Engineer is to ensure development velocity does not decrease. "Let's reach out to Spectro Cloud to create an account. Then, we can make an informed decision after we complete their Getting Started tutorials."

Prerequisites

• A Palette account with tenant admin access.

• A VMware vSphere user account with the required permissions.

Enablement

Palette needs access to your VMware user account in order to create and manage VMware resources.

Create a Palette API Key

1. Log in to Palette.

2. Click on the drop-down Menu at the top of the page and switch to the Tenant Admin scope.

3. Navigate to the left Main Menu and select Tenant Settings.

4. From the Tenant Settings Menu, click on Security and select API Keys.

5. Click on Add New API key.

6. Fill out the following input fields:

Input Field	Description
API Key Name	Assign a name to the API key.
Description	Provide a description for the API key.
User Name	Select the user to assign the API key.
Expiration Date	Select an expiration date from the available options. You can also specify a custom date by selecting Custom.

5. Click the Generate button.

6. Copy the API key and save it in a secure location, such as a password manager. Share the API key with the user you created the API key for.

warning

Ensure you save the API key in a secure location. You will not be able to view the API key again.

Create and Upload an SSH Key

Follow the steps below to create an SSH key using the terminal and upload it to Palette. This step is optional for the Cluster Management with Terraform tutorial.

1. Open the terminal on your computer.

2. Check for existing SSH keys by invoking the following command.

   
   

    ls -la ~/.ssh

   If you see files named id_rsa and id_rsa.pub, you already have an SSH key pair and can skip to step 8. If not, proceed to step 3.

3. Generate a new SSH key pair by issuing the following command.

   
   

   ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "your_email@example.com"

   Replace your_email@example.com with your actual email address.

4. Press Enter to accept the default file location for the key pair.

5. Enter a passphrase (optional) and confirm it. We recommend using a strong passphrase for added security.

6. Copy the public SSH key value. Use the cat command to display the public key.

   
   

   cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

   Copy the entire key, including the ssh-rsa prefix and your email address at the end.

7. Log in to Palette.

8. Navigate to the left Main Menu, select Project Settings, and then the SSH Keys tab.

9. Open the Add New SSH Key tab and complete the Add Key input form:

   • Name: Provide a unique name for the SSH key.

   • SSH Key: Paste the SSH public key contents from the key pair generated earlier.

10. Click Confirm to complete the wizard.

info

You can edit or delete SSH keys later by using the three-dot Menu to the right of each key.

During cluster creation, assign your SSH key to a cluster. You can use multiple keys to a project, but only one key can be assigned to an individual cluster.

Validate

You can verify your Palette API key is added.

1. Log in to Palette.

2. Switch to the Tenant Admin scope.

3. Navigate to the left Main Menu and select Tenant Settings.

4. From the Tenant Settings Menu, select API Keys.

5. Verify the API key is listed in the table with the correct user name and expiration date.

Next Steps

Now that you set up Palette for use with VMware vSphere, you can start deploying a Private Cloud Gateway (PCG), which is the bridge between Palette and your private infrastructure environment.

To learn how to get started with deploying Kubernetes clusters to VMware virtual machines, we recommend that you continue to the Deploy a PCG with Palette CLI tutorial.

🧑‍🚀 Catch up with Spacetastic

After following the detailed Palette setup instructions, the Spacetastic team have added their cloud accounts on the Palette dashboard. They are ready to learn about Palette.

"The Spectro Cloud team has provided our Palette accounts" says Kai. "I have followed their setup guide and have added our cloud accounts. I can already tell at a first glance that they offer many Kubernetes customization features."

Wren joins Kai in looking at the Palette dashboard. "I'm interested to learn more, but I never believe in magic solutions. We should review their Getting Started material in detail to ensure that Palette is a good fit for us."