Pre-provisioned: Create Managed Clusters Using the DKP CLI

These pages refer to DKP Enterprise and DKP Gov Advanced products.

After initial cluster creation, you have the ability to create additional clusters from the CLI. In a previous step, the new cluster was created as Self-managed which allows it to be a Management cluster or a stand alone cluster. Subsequent new clusters are not self-managed as they will likely be Managed or Attached clusters to this Management Cluster.

When creating Managed clusters, you do not need to create and move CAPI objects, or install the Kommander component. Those tasks are only done on Management clusters!

Make New Cluster Part of a Workspace

If you have an existing Workspace name, run this command to find the name:
⚠️ NOTE: If you need to create a new Workspace, follow the instructions to Create a New Workspace.
CODE
```
kubectl get workspace -A
```
When you have the Workspace name, set the WORKSPACE_NAMESPACE environment variable:
CODE
```
export WORKSPACE_NAMESPACE=<workspace_namespace>
```

Name Your Cluster

The cluster name may only contain the following characters: a-z, 0-9, ., and -. Cluster creation will fail if the name has capital letters. See Kubernetes for more naming information.

When specifying the cluster-name, you must use the same cluster-name as used when defining your inventory objects.

By default, the control-plane Nodes will be created in 3 different zones. However, the default worker Nodes will reside in a single Availability Zone. You may create additional node pools in other Availability Zones with the dkp create nodepool command.

Follow these steps:

Give your cluster a unique name suitable for your environment.
Set the environment variable:

CODE

export CLUSTER_NAME=preprovisioned-additional

Create a Kubernetes Cluster

After you have defined the infrastructure and control plane endpoints, you can proceed to creating the cluster by following these steps to create a new pre-provisioned cluster. This process creates a self-managed cluster to be used as the Management cluster.

Before you create a new DKP cluster below, choose an external load balancer (LB) or virtual IP and use the corresponding dkp create cluster command.

In a pre-provisioned environment, use the Kubernetes CSI and third party drivers for local volumes and other storage devices in your data center.

DKP uses local static provisioner as the default storage provider for a pre-provisioned environment. However, localvolumeprovisioner is not suitable for production use. You should use a Kubernetes CSI compatible storage that is suitable for production.

After disabling localvolumeprovisioner, you can choose from any of the storage options available for Kubernetes. To make that storage the default storage, use the commands shown in this section of the Kubernetes documentation: https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/administer-cluster/change-default-storage-class/

For Pre-provisioned environments, you define a set of nodes that already exist. During the cluster creation process, Konvoy Image Builder(KIB) is built into DKP and automatically runs the machine configuration process (which KIB uses to build images for other providers) against the set of nodes that you defined. This results in your pre-existing or pre-provisioned nodes being configured properly.

The following command relies on the pre-provisioned cluster API infrastructure provider to initialize the Kubernetes control plane and worker nodes on the hosts defined in the inventory YAML previously created.

This command uses the default external load balancer (LB) option:

CODE

dkp create cluster preprovisioned 
  --cluster-name ${CLUSTER_NAME} 
  --control-plane-endpoint-host <control plane endpoint host> 
  --control-plane-endpoint-port <control plane endpoint port, if different than 6443> 
  --pre-provisioned-inventory-file preprovisioned_inventory.yaml 
  --ssh-private-key-file <path-to-ssh-private-key>

Use the wait command to monitor the cluster control-plane readiness:

CODE

kubectl wait --for=condition=ControlPlaneReady "clusters/${CLUSTER_NAME}" --timeout=30m

Output:

CODE

cluster.cluster.x-k8s.io/preprovisioned-additional condition met

If your environment uses HTTP/HTTPS proxies, you must include the flags --http-proxy, --https-proxy, and --no-proxy and their related values in this command for it to be successful. More information is available in Configuring an HTTP/HTTPS Proxy.

NOTE: Depending on the cluster size, it will take a few minutes to create.

Manually Attach a DKP CLI Cluster to the Management Cluster

These steps are only applicable if you do not set a WORKSPACE_NAMESPACE when creating a cluster. If you already set a WORKSPACE_NAMESPACE, then you do not need to perform these steps since the cluster is already attached to the workspace.

Starting with DKP 2.6, when you create a Managed Cluster with the DKP CLI, it attaches automatically to the Management Cluster after a few moments.

However, if you do not set a workspace, the attached cluster will be created in the default workspace. To ensure that the attached cluster is created in your desired workspace namespace, follow these instructions:

Confirm you have your MANAGED_CLUSTER_NAME variable set with the following command:
CODE
```
echo ${MANAGED_CLUSTER_NAME}
```
Retrieve your kubeconfig from the cluster you have created without setting a workspace:
CODE
```
dkp get kubeconfig --cluster-name ${MANAGED_CLUSTER_NAME} > ${MANAGED_CLUSTER_NAME}.conf
```
You can now either [attach it in the UI](link to attaching it to workspace via UI that was earlier), or attach your cluster to the workspace you want in the CLI.
NOTE: This is only necessary if you never set the workspace of your cluster upon creation.
Retrieve the workspace where you want to attach the cluster:
CODE
```
kubectl get workspaces -A
```
Set the WORKSPACE_NAMESPACE environment variable:
CODE
```
export WORKSPACE_NAMESPACE=<workspace-namespace>
```
You need to create a secret in the desired workspace before attaching the cluster to that workspace. Retrieve the kubeconfig secret value of your cluster:
CODE
```
kubectl -n default get secret ${MANAGED_CLUSTER_NAME}-kubeconfig -o go-template='{{.data.value}}{{ "\n"}}'
```

This will return a lengthy value. Copy this entire string for a secret using the template below as a reference. Create a new attached-cluster-kubeconfig.yaml file:

CODE

apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: <your-managed-cluster-name>-kubeconfig
  labels:
    cluster.x-k8s.io/cluster-name: <your-managed-cluster-name>
type: cluster.x-k8s.io/secret
data:
  value: <value-you-copied-from-secret-above>

Create this secret in the desired workspace:

CODE

kubectl apply -f attached-cluster-kubeconfig.yaml --namespace ${WORKSPACE_NAMESPACE}

Create this kommandercluster object to attach the cluster to the workspace:

CODE

cat << EOF | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: kommander.mesosphere.io/v1beta1
kind: KommanderCluster
metadata:
  name: ${MANAGED_CLUSTER_NAME}
  namespace: ${WORKSPACE_NAMESPACE}
spec:
  kubeconfigRef:
    name: ${MANAGED_CLUSTER_NAME}-kubeconfig
  clusterRef:
    capiCluster:
      name: ${MANAGED_CLUSTER_NAME}
EOF

You can now view this cluster in your Workspace in the UI and you can confirm its status by running the below command. It may take a few minutes to reach "Joined" status:
CODE
```
kubectl get kommanderclusters -A
```

If you have several Essential Clusters and want to turn one of them to a Managed Cluster to be centrally administrated by a Management Cluster, refer to Platform Expansion: Convert a DKP Essential Cluster to a DKP Enterprise Managed Cluster.

Next Step:

Day 2 - Cluster Operations Management