Tag Archives: vsphere with Tanzu

Tips for passing vSphere with Tanzu specialist exam

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In the past, I had shared preparation tips/guidance on VMware cloud foundation (VCF) and VMware Cloud on AWS specialist exams. In this post, I am going to share preparation guidance for passing vSphere with Tanzu specialist exam. In fact, recently couple of VMware community friends reached out to me to understand what it takes to be “vSphere with Tanzu” specialist, I thought same would be useful to larger VMware community, hence this post. Let’s get going..

Below is what VMware official statement says about specialist badge holders, how cool is that !

The VMware vSphere with Tanzu 2021 specialist badge holder knows about how vSphere with Tanzu can be used to orchestrate the delivery of Kubernetes clusters and containerized applications in a vSphere environment. This badge holder possesses extensive knowledge on deploying and managing VMware vSphere® with Tanzu.

My badge

My experience and tips

  1. First thing you must be clear in your mind is that why do you want to write this exam. For me, getting comprehensive view of the vSphere with Tanzu from customer/user perspective was important as it is directly aligned with one of the key focus areas in my day to day office work . Also, vSphere with Tanzu is one of key foundational areas under bigger Tanzu portfolio. As I posted in my earlier posts, I love going through learning journey and exam/certifications are just one of the milestones in that journey. I had written about Why I choose to target exams. I highly recommend you read that 7 line section. Let us now focus on vSphere with Tanzu specialist exam.
  2. There is a 3 day official course on “vSphere with Tanzu” available on demand or live as well. On demand course is available on customer connect portal.
  3. If you are working at VMware, I think you have free access to customer connect portal. In addition, course and lab material is available on internal vault portal. Please reach out to me if you need help on the same.
  4. One important thing to note that passing this exam itself does not require you to undergo the official course. If you have enough hands on experience configuring vSphere with Tanzu with NSX-T & also with vSphere Networking (with AVI LB or HAproxy), you can go ahead and write this exam.
  5. When I say hands-on experience, it is about deploying & configuring from scratch and have performed all day 1 and day 2 operations as a vSphere admin as well as Dev/Devops persona.
  6. Since my focus at job was also on vSphere with Tanzu, I had enough hands on experience but I chose to undergo 3 days training as well, which definitely helped me connecting all the dots in my overall understanding of the solution. However, if you could not undergo the course due to various reasons, it is all right to directly write the exam as long as you already have gained enough hands on experience
  7. While writing exam itself does not require you to undergo course but in order to achieve the certification “VMware Certified Specialist – vSphere with Tanzu 2022” , you must be done with course as well as you must be VCP-DCV certified.
  8. In my case, I first completed the on demand course & passed this exam. Since my existing VCP was expired, I got re-certified on VCP 2021 (Last time I had passed VCP was whopping 9 years back when I was intern) to satisfy certification requirement.
  9. Since I completed my certification requirements in late last year, my certification was vSphere with Tanzu 2021 but there is no difference between 2021 and 2022 from course content perspective at the moment.
  10. Finally one fine day schedule the exam through PearsonVue portal, you should be good. I usually prefer scheduling exams early in the morning to avoid any distractions during exam time. All the best !

What is next?

If you already passed vSphere with Tanzu specialist and now looking for next learning milestone around VMware Tanzu or Kubernetes in general , I would suggest below 2 certifications.

  1. Newly launched VCP-AM 2022 : i.e. VCP on Application Modernization
  2. Certified Kubernetes Administrator i.e. CKA

I hope this post was helpful, please share with others as appropriate and follow me on Twitter for upcoming posts or feel free to DM me.

Why wcpsvc service is running even when Supervisor cluster is not enabled on vSphere cluster?

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Recently I got this question i.e. Why wcpsvc (Workload Control Plane) service is running even when Supervisor cluster is not enabled on vSphere cluster? I thought it is worth to share the answer with a quick post. Before we jump on to the list of reasons, let me share my understanding of what is the wcpsvc and what is its primary role. It is one of the services among several services running on vCenter server. It is primarily responsible for managing/orchestrating Supervisor cluster (which is key part of vSphere with Tanzu) workflows and functionality. In other words, it implements all the CRUD REST APIs for Supervisor cluster i.e. Enabling Supervisor cluster on vSphere cluster, updating Supervisor cluster to next available kubernetes version etc.

Now let us look at reasons why it should be up before enabling Supervisor cluster

  1. Since it orchestrates API for enabling Supervisor cluster, it has to be running before we call enable API.
  2. When you put host inside the cluster into maintenance mode, it has to check whether host being put into maintenance mode is part of Supervisor cluster (as one of the worker nodes). To understand what happens when we put host into maintenance mode, please have a look at my other article i.e. How to gracefully remove host from Supervisor cluster.
  3. Before enabling Supervisor cluster, there is REST API exposed by wcpsvc service to know whether given cluster is compatible or not (both Supervisor cluster with NSX-T and vSphere networking stack)
  4. If user wants to know how many distributed switches are compatible with NSX-T and in-turn wants to know whether NSX-T edge cluster is compatible with given distributed switch. There is API for the same as well.
  5. User wants to know what are the kubernetes versions supported by given vCenter server before enabling it.
  6. User wants to get an idea on sizing for the Supervisor cluster i.e. TINY, SMALL, MEDIUM, LARGE and network CIDR default sizes.
  7. H5C has some vSphere with Tanzu UI workflows and for it to dynamically showcase them, it has to make some API calls exposed by wcpsvc irrespective of whether Supervisor cluster is enabled or not

I hope you now got insight into why wcpsvc has to be running without even Supervisor cluster is not up. It might happen there are few more reasons wcpsvc has to be running, I will update this post as I understand more.

Further reading

1. Official documentation for vSphere with Tanzu is here
2. Automating supervisor cluster workflows using Java
3. Automation around Supervisor cluster

How to gracefully remove host from NSX-T based Supervisor Cluster?

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Recently got this question couple of times on how to gracefully remove host from existing Supervisor cluster, which is configured with NSX-T. I thought it is worth to write a quick post with detailed steps. Removal of the host from existing Supervisor cluster can be for multiple reasons, it can be for some maintenance or adding host into other supervisor cluster etc.

If you are still not aware of what is this Supervisor cluster, I would highly recommend you read this blog post.

Below steps are written assuming you have NSX-T based Supervisor cluster configured. In NSX-T based supervisor cluster, ESXi hosts are also working as kubernetes worker nodes, hence it is important they are properly removed from cluster. In new 70 U1 capability vSphere with Tanzu with vSphere (VDS) networking, ESXi hosts are no more worker nodes as there it is all about Tanzu kubernetes clusters (aka Guest clusters), hence removing host from VDS based Supervisor cluster is same as earlier.

Steps :

  1. Identify the host you would like to remove.
  2. Put the host in maintenance mode
  3. Since host is now going into maintenance mode, all the vSphere pods running on this node/host will be re-created on the other available hosts (DRS will take care of recommending proper host).
  4. VMs running on this host such as Supervisor control plane VMs or Guest Cluster VMs or any other normal VMs will be migrated to other available hosts as usual.
  5. Once host goes into maintenance mode, spherelet service on the host will be stopped but spherelet vib pushed to ESXi host will be still there. you can check spherelet vib and service status using below commands. SSH to host for running below commands.
  6. “esxcli software vib list | grep spherelet” & “/etc/init.d/spherelet status”
  7. When host goes into maintenance mode, in kubernetes term, it is called node is drained. i.e. this host is no more ready for taking any k8s workloads. When you run “kubectl get nodes”, it should be shown as “not ready”.
  8. NSX-T host transport node will be still as it is in configured state. You can confirm it from NSX-T UI or you can also check “nsx” vibs on host in maintenance mode.
  9. Now instead of removing this directly from inventory, move this host as standalone host into datacenter.
  10. As soon as you move this host as standalone host, spherelet vib on the host will be removed as well i.e. no spherelet service will be on it as well.
  11. Also, NSX-T host transport node will be un-configured as well automatically. i.e. All NSX-T vibs are removed at this stage. You can check it from NSX-T UI, it should be shown as “Not Configured”. This happens because while configuring NSX-T, we had applied host transport node profile on vSphere cluster level.
  12. “kubectl get nodes” or H5C UI (Cluster >> Monitor >> Namespaces >> Overview) should not show this host as worker node.
  13. Only reference now pending is, this host is still part of Distributed switch (DVS/VDS) you configured as part of Supervisor Cluster. You can remove it from usual DVS UI workflow.
  14. At this stage, this host is completely free to go for maintenance or add into another Supervisor cluster. You can remove it now from vCenter server inventory as needed.
  15. To add host back into same Supervisor cluster again, it is better to have host in maintenance mode, make sure you add this host back to DVS/VDS configured. Move this host into cluster, exit from maintenance mode and it will automatically install spherelet and NSX-T vibs and after few min, it will be ready for taking k8s workloads.

Further reading:
1. vSphere with Kubernetes (now vSphere with Tanzu) 101 is here
2. Official documentation for vSphere with Kubernetes is here
3. Automation around Supervisor cluster
4. Read about new 70 U1 capability vSphere with Tanzu with vSphere (VDS) networking
5. Automating supervisor cluster workflows using Java