Table of Contents
UI Revamp
Wait, vCluster has a UI? It does, and it’s called vCluster Platform. There is a free 14-day trial to dig into the features, try out the UI, and make a pretty sweet POC with self-service. If you are looking for a demo to see what you can do with it, you can join our weekly demos - https://www.vcluster.com/weekly-demos (Surprise, it features me - Mike Petersen - so you can join and ask questions or just lurk and check out the features), or reach out to sales for a magic-filled demo from Kurt.
https://www.vcluster.com/enterprise-demo
If you were previously using vCluster Pro or Loft Enterprise then you are going to notice some updates to the UI. There are newly redesigned wizards for creating resources, editing the vCluster yaml to reconfigure virtual clusters, you can now select the version of vCluster in case you need to test something on older versions or alpha/beta versions, and you can inspect virtual cluster resources.
Add Externally Deployed Clusters
If you have been using vCluster OSS for a while, you probably have a lot of virtual clusters already deployed. What happens when you want to start using vCluster Platform for the UI and other enterprise features? With the latest version you can now import already created virtual clusters into vCluster Platform without taking over their lifecycle management. It doesn’t matter if you previously deployed using Helm, Argo CD, Rancher, or other methods, they can all be imported.
What are some of the benefits associated with this? Why would you want to import a bunch of already deployed clusters? If you are using something like Helm to deploy virtual clusters, then you may not want something else taking over the lifecycle of the cluster, but it may be beneficial to at least get a glance at what is going on with them. Quickly view the Kubernetes Version, give admins an overview of what is deployed, see which features are enabled, enable integrations such as Argo CD and Vault, inspect resources running with the virtual clusters, and more.
One of the main differences between vCluster OSS and vCluster Platform is that the Platform uses CRDs to create virtual clusters. Basically, anything you can create within the Platform is a CRD, which means you can automate the setup. With this new update, you don’t have to make a hard swap over to deploying with CRDs if you already have infrastructure running, you can bring what you have and then work on using the new features over time.
Subscribe to the changelog for more details about what you can do. It’s also a great way to keep up to date with what’s happening in vCluster and vCluster platform.
https://www.vcluster.com/releases
We have also created a video that goes over some of the benefits and has a demo showing how to import a cluster.
Dynamic OIDC
The OIDC providers were previously linked to the admin configuration in vCluster Platform. If you made updates to the configuration, then you would need to restart the Platform, which wasn’t ideal. Now you can configure them outside of the Platform using Kubernetes secrets, which will let you make updates / changes / test out new things without having to restart vCluster Platform.
To learn more, check out the docs.
https://www.vcluster.com/docs/platform/configure/single-sign-on/overview
Move from Loft CLI to vCluster CLI
Moving forward, you can use a single CLI for vCluster OSS and vCluster Platform. Previously, you installed the vCluster CLI and the Loft CLI. Now, they have been combined, and you can use the vCluster CLI for everything. When you upgrade to the latest version of vCluster Platform, make sure you also update the CLI to take advantage of all the new features added.
Conclusion
Now that vCluster Platform 4.0 is out, it’s time to try it. There’s a free trial to try out all of the enterprise features, and there is a free tier.
Here's a quick start guide.
https://www.vcluster.com/docs/platform/install/quick-start-guide
Here’s the pricing page for more information.
https://www.vcluster.com/pricing
After you’ve tried it out, we are interested in hearing your feedback. Join us on Slack (https://slack.loft.sh) where you can post in the #vcluster channel or follow us on any of our social media platforms. All of the social links are on the left, under the navigation. Keep an eye out for tutorials on our YouTube channel that can help you get up to speed faster.
