What is Karbon? | Nutanix Community
Skip to main content

 

Nutanix Karbon is a curated turnkey offering that provides simplified provisioning and operations of Kubernetes clusters. Kubernetes is an open source container orchestration system for deploying and managing container-based applications. You can also set up an offline Karbon environment using the Karbon airgap, Karbon uses the CentOS Linux-based operating systems for Karbon-enabled Kubernetes cluster creation. Linux containers provide the flexibility to deploy applications in different environments with consistent results. 

Karbon streamlines the deployment and management of Kubernetes clusters with a simple GUI integrated into Prism Central (PC). Kibana, the built-in add-on, lets you filter and parse logs for systems, pods, and nodes. Prometheus, another add-on, provides a monitoring mechanism that triggers alerts on your cluster. Karbon also uses Pulse, Prism's health-monitoring system, which interacts with Nutanix Support to expedite cluster issue resolutions.

To set up your Karbon environment, perform the following tasks:Ensure that your environment meets the requirements, see Requirements.

Meet the indicated requirements prior to enabling and deploying Karbon.

Cluster Requirements

Ensure that the configuration of the Prism Element (PE) cluster meets the following specifications:

  • AHV

  • A minimum 120 MB of memory and 700 MB of disk space in PC

Do the following before deploying Karbon:

  • See Karbon Software Compatibility in the Nutanix Karbon Release Notes for Prism Central (PC) and Prism Element (PE) compatibility requirements.

  • Register the PE cluster to PC.

  • Configure the cluster virtual IP address and the iSCSI data services IP address on the designated PE cluster. Note: Karbon does not recognize changes to the iSCSI Data Service IP. 

  • Configure the Network Time Protocol (NTP) and the Domain Name System (DNS) on the cluster in PE and PC.

  • Synchronize the time of the cluster, PC, and the clients that use kubectl.

  • Open the required ports and whitelist the required domains, see table below.

  • (Production clusters only) Configure an AHV network with IP address management (IPAM) enabled and IP pools configured.

  • (Development clusters only) Configure an AHV network with IPAM and IP address pools or with an external DHCP network.

  • (Airgap only) ensure you are using a Linux-based web server. 

Terms & Conditions