Scaling Worker Nodes in a TKG Management Cluster

Source -> VMware Doc

By default when we provision a TKG management cluster, it creates only one worker node and we might need to scale the number of worker node for different purposes. It was bit of troubles finding this and i thought to make it simple for you.

Steps to scale worker nodes in a TKG management cluster

First, access the management cluster and list it.

$ tanzu management-cluster get
  NAME              NAMESPACE   STATUS   CONTROLPLANE  WORKERS  KUBERNETES        ROLES
  tkg-cluster-mgmt  tkg-system  running  3/3           1/1      v1.20.5+vmware.1  management

It tells that there is 3 master nodes and only one worker node. Now, lets scale.

Note: There is no scale option directly with tanzu management-cluster flag in tanzu command and i figured out this needs to be done via tanzu cluster command.

Run the below command with desired number of worker nodes. e.g. i am scaling to 3

$ tanzu cluster scale tkg-cluster-mgmt -w 3
Successfully updated worker node machine deployment replica count for cluster tkg-cluster-mgmt
Workload cluster 'tkg-cluster-mgmt' is being scaled

Check the scaling status

$ tanzu management-cluster get
  NAME              NAMESPACE   STATUS    CONTROLPLANE  WORKERS  KUBERNETES        ROLES
  tkg-cluster-mgmt  tkg-system  updating  3/3           1/3      v1.20.5+vmware.1  management
Details:
NAME                                                                 READY  SEVERITY  REASON      SINCE  MESSAGE                                       
/tkg-cluster-mgmt                                                    True                         24d                                                  
├─ClusterInfrastructure - VSphereCluster/tkg-cluster-mgmt            True                         24d                                                  
├─ControlPlane - KubeadmControlPlane/tkg-cluster-mgmt-control-plane  True                         24d                                                  
│ └─3 Machines...                                                    True                         24d    See tkg-cluster-mgmt-control-plane-d4lhr, tkg-cluster-mgmt-control-plane-mfwv6, ...
└─Workers                                                                                                                                              
  └─MachineDeployment/tkg-cluster-mgmt-md-0                                                                                                            
    ├─2 Machines...                                                  False  Info      PoweringOn  9s     See tkg-cluster-mgmt-md-0-568bc754b5-clwpm, tkg-cluster-mgmt-md-0-568bc754b5-fv249
    └─Machine/tkg-cluster-mgmt-md-0-568bc754b5-dpk5x                 True                         24d
Providers:
NAMESPACE                          NAME                    TYPE                    PROVIDERNAME  VERSION  WATCHNAMESPACE
  capi-kubeadm-bootstrap-system      bootstrap-kubeadm       BootstrapProvider       kubeadm       v0.3.14
  capi-kubeadm-control-plane-system  control-plane-kubeadm   ControlPlaneProvider    kubeadm       v0.3.14
  capi-system                        cluster-api             CoreProvider            cluster-api   v0.3.14
  capv-system                        infrastructure-vsphere  InfrastructureProvider  vsphere       v0.7.7

Now, after few mins, run the below command again and you will notice that change in number of worker nodes.

$ tanzu management-cluster get
  NAME              NAMESPACE   STATUS   CONTROLPLANE  WORKERS  KUBERNETES        ROLES
  tkg-cluster-mgmt  tkg-system  running  3/3           3/3      v1.20.5+vmware.1  management

That’s all. So simple and quick. Thanks to Cluster API.

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