VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, also known as TKG, lets you deploy Tanzu Kubernetes clusters across hybrid cloud or public cloud environments. TKG is installed as a management cluster, which is a Kubernetes cluster itself, that deploys and operates the Tanzu Kubernetes clusters. These Tanzu Kubernetes clusters are the workload Kubernetes clusters on which the actual workload is deployed.

Tanzu Kubernetes Grid builds on a few of the promising upstream community projects and delivers a Kubernetes platform that is developed, marketed, and supported by VMware. In addition to Kubernetes distribution, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid provides additional add-ons that are essential production-grade services such as registry, load balancing, authentication, and so on. VMware TKG with management cluster is widely used in vSphere 6.7 environments, and, even though it is supported, it is not a recommended deployment for vSphere 7 environments because TKGS has native integration capabilities with vSphere 7.

For more information on Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, refer to the documentation here.

Depending on whether the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid is being installed on-premises on vSphere cluster or in cloud environments, prepare and deploy Tanzu Kubernetes Grid by following the installation guide here.

After you have installed the management cluster for Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, deploy the user clusters or workload clusters as needed by following the documentation here. VMware TKG management cluster requires that an SSH key be provided for installation and operation of Tanzu Kubernetes clusters. This key can be used to log into the cluster nodes using the capv user.