Configuring Multi-Zone Control Plane Nodes in CAPI with vSphere Provider #11778

[deepakreddy88]

I am deploying workload clusters using Cluster API (CAPI) with the vSphere provider and aiming to achieve high availability (HA) by distributing control plane nodes across multiple zones (i.e., different vSphere clusters within the same data center).

However, based on my understanding, the KubeadmControlPlane resource allows specifying only a single VSphereMachineTemplate, which seems to restrict control plane nodes to a single zone.

Questions:

1. Is there a way to specify multiple VSphereMachineTemplate resources in KubeadmControlPlane to distribute control plane nodes across multiple zones?
2. If not, what are the recommended approaches for deploying control plane nodes across multiple vSphere clusters/zones within a data center while using CAPI?

I appreciate any help you can provide.

[chrischdi]

We normally don't use github discussions, so please continue in an issue or in upstream slack instead.

I think it makes sense for you to take a look at VSphereDeploymentZone and VSphereFailureDomain. They allow to overwrite some settings per failure domain and KubeadmControlPlane (KCP) distributes over CAPI failure domains if they are there.
More information should be in this doc https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/cluster-api-provider-vsphere/blob/main/docs/proposal/20201103-failure-domain.md

[deepakreddy88]

Thank you for getting back to me and pointing me to VSphereDeploymentZone and VSphereFailureDomain. I will check it out and take up further questions in Slack.