Creating a Subscribed Content Library for Tanzu Kubernetes Clusters

To provision a Tanzu Kubernetes cluster, you must create a subscribed content library and associate it with the Supervisor Cluster.

VMware publishes a content library that contains the latest distributions of Kubernetes and accompanying Python OS as an OVA package. If you want to create Tanzu Kubernetes cluster nodes, you must subscribe to the published content library by using the https://wp-content.vmware.com/v2/latest/lib.json subscription URL. For more information about how to create a subscribed content library, see Subscribe to a Content Library.

When you create the subscription, you configure the synchronization mechanism for downloading the content of the published library. You can select between on demand and automatic download of the virtual machine image for the Tanzu Kubernetes cluster nodes. If you choose to synchronize the subscribed library on demand, only the metadata for the library content is updated and as a result storage space is saved. This approach is an important consideration as more images containing different Kubernetes versions are published. However, the first time you decide to use a new virtual machine image version, you have to wait for it to download.

You associate the subscribed content library with the Supervisor Cluster on which you want to create a Tanzu Kubernetes cluster, when you first enable vSphere with Tanzu on a cluster. See Enable vSphere with Tanzu on a Cluster with NSX-T as the Networking Stack.

The size of the content library can grow over time as new Kubernetes versions and images are published. If the underlying storage runs out of space, you will need to move to a new subscribed content library. After you create a new subscribed content library that has sufficient capacity for the target cluster, update the library association of the Supervisor Cluster. See Reconfiguring a Supervisor Cluster.