virtuallypotato/content/posts/2022/logging-in-tce-cluster-from-new-device/index.md

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Logging in to a Tanzu Community Edition Kubernetes Cluster from a new device	2022-02-01	The Tanzu Community Edition documentation does a great job of explaining how to authenticate to a newly-deployed cluster at the tail end of the installation steps, but how do you log in from another system once it's set up?	false	false	false	true	tanzu.png	tanzu.png	false	Tips	vmware kubernetes tanzu	true

When I set up my Tanzu Community Edition environment, I did so from a Linux VM since the containerized Linux environment on my Chromebook doesn't support the kind bootstrap cluster used for the deployment. But now that the Kubernetes cluster is up and running, I'd like to be able to connect to it directly without the aid of a jumpbox. How do I get the appropriate cluster configuration over to my Chromebook?

The Tanzu CLI actually makes that pretty easy - once I figured out the appropriate incantation. I just needed to use the tanzu management-cluster kubeconfig get command on my Linux VM to export the kubeconfig of my management (tce-mgmt) cluster to a file:

tanzu management-cluster kubeconfig get --admin --export-file tce-mgmt-kubeconfig.yaml

I then used scp to pull the file from the VM into my local Linux environment, and proceeded to install kubectl and the tanzu CLI (making sure to also enable shell auto-completion along the way!).

Now I'm ready to import the configuration locally with tanzu login on my Chromebook:

❯ tanzu login --kubeconfig ~/projects/tanzu-homelab/tanzu-setup/tce-mgmt-kubeconfig.yaml --context tce-mgmt-admin@tce-mgmt --name tce-mgmt
✔  successfully logged in to management cluster using the kubeconfig tce-mgmt

{{% notice tip "Use the absolute path" %}} Pass in the full path to the exported kubeconfig file. This will help the Tanzu CLI to load the correct config across future terminal sessions. {{% /notice %}}

Even though that's just importing the management cluster it actually grants access to both the management and workload clusters:

❯ tanzu cluster list
  NAME      NAMESPACE  STATUS   CONTROLPLANE  WORKERS  KUBERNETES        ROLES   PLAN
  tce-work  default    running  1/1           1/1      v1.21.2+vmware.1  <none>  dev

❯ tanzu cluster get tce-work
  NAME      NAMESPACE  STATUS   CONTROLPLANE  WORKERS  KUBERNETES        ROLES
  tce-work  default    running  1/1           1/1      v1.21.2+vmware.1  <none>
ℹ

Details:

NAME                                                         READY  SEVERITY  REASON  SINCE  MESSAGE
/tce-work                                                    True                     24h
├─ClusterInfrastructure - VSphereCluster/tce-work            True                     24h
├─ControlPlane - KubeadmControlPlane/tce-work-control-plane  True                     24h
│ └─Machine/tce-work-control-plane-vc2pb                     True                     24h
└─Workers
  └─MachineDeployment/tce-work-md-0
    └─Machine/tce-work-md-0-687444b744-crc9q                 True                     24h

❯ tanzu management-cluster get
  NAME      NAMESPACE   STATUS   CONTROLPLANE  WORKERS  KUBERNETES        ROLES
  tce-mgmt  tkg-system  running  1/1           1/1      v1.21.2+vmware.1  management


Details:

NAME                                                         READY  SEVERITY  REASON  SINCE  MESSAGE
/tce-mgmt                                                    True                     23h
├─ClusterInfrastructure - VSphereCluster/tce-mgmt            True                     23h
├─ControlPlane - KubeadmControlPlane/tce-mgmt-control-plane  True                     23h
│ └─Machine/tce-mgmt-control-plane-7pwz7                     True                     23h
└─Workers
  └─MachineDeployment/tce-mgmt-md-0
    └─Machine/tce-mgmt-md-0-745b858d44-5llk5                 True                     23h


Providers:

  NAMESPACE                          NAME                    TYPE                    PROVIDERNAME  VERSION  WATCHNAMESPACE
  capi-kubeadm-bootstrap-system      bootstrap-kubeadm       BootstrapProvider       kubeadm       v0.3.23
  capi-kubeadm-control-plane-system  control-plane-kubeadm   ControlPlaneProvider    kubeadm       v0.3.23
  capi-system                        cluster-api             CoreProvider            cluster-api   v0.3.23
  capv-system                        infrastructure-vsphere  InfrastructureProvider  vsphere       v0.7.10

And I can then tell kubectl about the two clusters:

❯ tanzu management-cluster kubeconfig get tce-mgmt --admin
Credentials of cluster 'tce-mgmt' have been saved
You can now access the cluster by running 'kubectl config use-context tce-mgmt-admin@tce-mgmt'

❯ tanzu cluster kubeconfig get tce-work --admin
Credentials of cluster 'tce-work' have been saved
You can now access the cluster by running 'kubectl config use-context tce-work-admin@tce-work'

And sure enough, there are my contexts:

❯ kubectl config get-contexts
CURRENT   NAME                      CLUSTER    AUTHINFO         NAMESPACE
          tce-mgmt-admin@tce-mgmt   tce-mgmt   tce-mgmt-admin
*         tce-work-admin@tce-work   tce-work   tce-work-admin

❯ kubectl get nodes -o wide
NAME                             STATUS   ROLES                  AGE   VERSION            INTERNAL-IP     EXTERNAL-IP     OS-IMAGE                 KERNEL-VERSION   CONTAINER-RUNTIME
tce-work-control-plane-vc2pb     Ready    control-plane,master   23h   v1.21.2+vmware.1   192.168.1.132   192.168.1.132   VMware Photon OS/Linux   4.19.198-1.ph3   containerd://1.4.6
tce-work-md-0-687444b744-crc9q   Ready    <none>                 23h   v1.21.2+vmware.1   192.168.1.133   192.168.1.133   VMware Photon OS/Linux   4.19.198-1.ph3   containerd://1.4.6

Perfect, now I can get back to Tanzuing from my Chromebook without having to jump through a VM. (And, thanks to Tailscale, I can even access my TCE resources remotely!)