Introduction:

In this post, we’ll outline the procedures necessary for deploying an upstream Kubernetes cluster on Rocky Linux 9 to support NSX Application Platform. We will use MetalLB for load balancing, Antrea CNI for intra-cluster communication, and NFS for storage. This guide covers preparing the OS, installing Kubernetes, adding the necessary components, and deploying a sample application.

1. Preparing the OS:

We’ll need to enable overlay and b_netfilter kernel extensions and allow IP forwarding on iptables before deploying the containerd daemon and installing the required packages for Kubernetes.

2. Installing Kubernetes:

We’ll add the repo, install the required packages in version 1.27.15, and create a new namespace for our deployment.

3. Adding necessary components:

To provide intra-cluster communication, we’ll use Antrea CNI, and to load balance our application, we will deploy MetalLB. We’ll also add an NFS storage class to give our pods network-backed storage.

4. Deploying a sample application:

To test the cluster, we’ll deploy two applications, one for a three-tier Yelb application and another for a test Pod using the nfs-subdir-external-provisioner plugin.

5. Conclusion:

This guide has shown you how to set up an Upstream Kubernetes Cluster on Rocky Linux 9 to support NSX Application Platform. You should now have a fully functional cluster ready for the actual deployment of the NSX Application Platform. The second part of this tutorial series will cover deploying Harbor Registry and the actual NSX Application Platform.