Introduction

The Local Consumption Interface (LCI) provides a graphical self-service interface for consuming Supervisor resources directly from the vSphere Client.Instead of manually creating Kubernetes manifests, users can deploy VMware Kubernetes Service (VKS) clusters through a guided wizard

Bill of Materials (BOM) used in Demo

• VKS 3.6.2
• VKr 1.35.5
• VCF 9.0.2
• LCI 9.0.2

Important Note : From VCF 9.1 onwards, LCI is supervisor core service and installed by default with supervisor enablement hence Phase 1 mentioned below is not required.

Phase 1: Installing & Enabling the Local Consumption Interface (LCI)

Step 1: Download the Service Definition File from Broadcom Support Portal

• LCI runs as a vSphere Supervisor service but it is not installed by default on vSphere version < 9.1
• Free LCI deployment manifest is available on https://support.broadcom.com/ under My Downloads->Free Downloads->vSphere Supervisor Services->Local Consumption Interface

Step 2: Register the LCI supervisor Service in vSphere UI

• Log into your vSphere Client as an administrator.

• Go to Supervisor Management from the main menu and select the Services tab

• Under the Supervisor Services dashboard, click the Add New Service card.

• In the Register Service wizard, click the Upload button and select the LCI service file you downloaded in Step 1.

Once the manifest file has been uploaded, Review the service details and click Finish.

Step 3: Enable the LCI Service on Your Supervisor

• Once registered, find the Consumption Interface card under the Supervisor Services dashboard.
• Click the Actions dropdown on that card and select Manage Service
• Select the target Supervisor Cluster where you want to deploy the interface.

Click Next, review the configuration, and click Finish to kick off the installation.

Wait for few minutes and validate service is configured successfully under Supervisor Management -> Click on your Supervisor Cluster -> Configure -> Supervisor Services -> Overview

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Once completed, click Refresh Browser to reload the vSphere Client plugin elements.

Phase 2: Deploying a VKS Cluster via LCI

Step 1: Access the Local Consumption UI

With the Plugin active, any DevOps or infrastructure user assigned to a vSphere Namespace can start creating clusters natively through the browser

• In the vSphere UI Client, locate your designated vSphere Namespace from the inventory tree.
• Click on the namespace, and look horizontally across the tabs to select Resources.
• You will see an array of self-service capability blocks to create VM Service VM, VKS Cluster, PVCs, etc.

Step 2: Configure and Deploy the VKS Cluster

• In this article, we are focusing on Cluster API based VKS deployment with default configuration.

• Review the Default Configuration and generated yaml file, once done click on Finish.

Note : In following default configuration snippet, Kubernetes version, VM Class, Storage Policy values are depends on your infrastructure configuration.

Once VKS Cluster is up and running, we can now download the kubeconfig file to connect VKS Cluster using kubectl.

Run the kubectl command with downloaded kubeconfig file against VKS Cluster.

Disclaimer

This blog is for informational and educational purposes only. The configurations, examples, and architectural guidance provided are based on general best practices and publicly available references.

Always validate configurations in a non-production environment before applying them to live systems. Features and integrations may vary depending on the versions of VKS, VKr, LCI, Supervisor and vCenter Server being used. The author is not responsible for any unintended impact caused by the use of this information in production environments.