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Overview

This documentation provides an overview of the template in the template catalog for Rafay Managed Kubernetes Clusters on VMware vSphere. This template is designed to automate and simplify the provisioning, configuration, and management of Kubernetes clusters on VMware vSphere.

Architecture

The customer specific variables are dynamically injected into the template which is then forwarded to the Rafay Agent in the customer's infrastructure. The template's IaC is executed here using provided credentials. The agent connects to the VMware vCenter platform using APIs to provision VMs and then deploy Rafay's Kubernetes Distribution on it. See image below for high level architecture.

Architecture

Unique Capabilities

The unique and differentiated capabilities of this templates are described below.

Turnkey Automation

Platform admins can use these turnkey templates like ready to use Lego blocks. They do not have to invest time and effort in developing, testing and maintaining low level Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and related automation. Rafay's templates in the catalog are developed and maintained by Rafay's Engineering team. They are kept current and up to date.

Standardization & Hierarchical Propagation

Platform admins can configure and manage these version controlled templates centrally like "organization standards". They can propagate (share) the centrally managed templates downstream with other teams in their RBAC controlled projects. Downstream users can use the templates, but cannot make changes to it.

Centralized Management

Progressive Templating

Admins can "progressively" lock down input variables in the template before they are exposed to end users to power a simple, streamlined self service experience. In the example below, the platform admin locks down some input variables from the 47 possible inputs before handing off to the PaaS Admin. The PaaS admin only has to deal with 14 inputs and he/she locks this down further before making it available to the end developer who sees just 2 inputs.

Progressive Templating

End User Self Service

Leveraging the progressive templating capability and the PaaS studio, organizations can publish SKUs for end users who can benefit from a self service experience via the Developer Hub portal. Once they are logged in, they just need to click on the SKU/card, provide requested input and Deploy/use the cluster on VMware vSphere.

Developer Hub