This document gives an example of how to configure a Google Distributed Cloud cluster to use VM-Host affinity.
VM-Host Group affinity is one of the mechanisms that Google Distributed Cloud provides to ensure high availability. With VM-Host Group affinity, you create groups of physical ESXi hosts. Then you configure your cluster to associate VM groups with host groups.
For example, you could configure all VMs in one node pool to run on a particular host group. And you could configure all VMs in a second node pool to run on a different host group. You could then treat each node pool as a failure domain. To differentiate the failure domains, you could add labels to the VMs in the various node pools.
Before you begin
For this exercise, you need to have at least six ESXi hosts in your vSphere environment.
Create host groups
Create two or more host DRS groups in your vSphere environment. For this exercise, two host groups with three hosts each would be appropriate. For instructions, see Create a Host DRS Group.
Create a user cluster
This section gives an example of how to create a user cluster that uses VM-Host Group affinity. The cluster in this example uses Controlplane V2. The cluster has a high-availability control plane, so there are three control-plane nodes. In addition to the control-plane nodes, there are six worker nodes: three in one node pool and three in a second node pool. All nodes use static IP addresses.
Start by following the instructions in Create a user cluster (Controlplane V2).
As you fill in your user cluster configuration file:
- Specify two node pools for worker nodes. For each node pool, set
replicas
to3
, and provide the name of an existing host group.
Example configuration file
Here is an example of an IP block file and a portion of a user cluster configuration file.
user-ipblock.yaml
blocks: - netmask: 255.255.255.0 gateway: 172.16.21.1 ips: - ip: 172.16.21.2 - ip: 172.16.21.3 - ip: 172.16.21.4 - ip: 172.16.21.5 - ip: 172.16.21.6 - ip: 172.16.21.7 - ip: 172.16.21.8
user-cluster-yaml
apiVersion: v1 kind: UserCluster ... network: hostConfig: dnsServers: - "203.0.113.2" - "198.51.100.2" ntpServers: - "216.239.35.4" ipMode: type: "static" ipBlockFilePath: "user-ipblock.yaml" controlPlaneIPBlock: netmask: "255.255.255.0" gateway: "172.16.21.1" ips: - ip: "172.16.21.9" hostname: "cp-vm-1" - ip: "172.16.21.10" hostname: "cp-vm-2" - ip: "172.16.21.11" hostname: "cp-vm-3" loadBalancer: vips: controlPlaneVIP: "172.16.21.40" ingressVIP: "172.16.21.30" kind: MetalLB metalLB: addressPools: - name: "address-pool-1" addresses: - "172.16.21.30-172.16.21.39" ... enableControlplaneV2: true masterNode: cpus: 4 memoryMB: 8192 replicas: 3 nodePools: - name: "worker-pool-1" enableLoadBalancer: true replicas: 3 vsphere: hostgroups: - "hostgroup-1" labels: failuredomain: "failuredomain-1" - name: "worker-pool-2" replicas: 3 vsphere: hostgroups: - "hostgroup-2" labels: failuredomain: "failuredomain-2" ...
These are the important points to understand in the preceding example:
The static IP addresses for the worker nodes are specified in an IP block file. The IP block file has seven addresses even though there are only six worker nodes. The extra IP address is needed during cluster upgrade, update, and auto repair.
The static IP addresses for the three control-plane nodes are specified in the
network.controlPlaneIPBlock
section of the user cluster configuration file. There is no need for an extra IP address in this block.The
masterNode.replicas
field is set to3
, so there will be three control-plane nodes.A cluster controller will create a VM DRS group that has the three nodes in the
worker-pool-1
node pool. A controller will also create a VM-Host affinity rule that ensures nodes inworker-pool-1
will run on hosts that are inhostgroup-1
. The nodes inworker-pool-1
have the labelfailuredomain: "failuredomain-1"
A cluster controller will create a VM DRS group that has the three nodes in the
worker-pool-2
node pool. A controller will also create a VM-Host affinity rule that ensures nodes inworker-pool-2
will run on hosts that are inhostgroup-2
. The nodes inworker-pool-2
have the labelfailuredomain: "failuredomain-2"
Continue creating your user cluster as described in Create a user cluster (Controlplane V2).