Onboard a Cluster

Once you have downloaded and configured tctl, the next step is to onboard a new workload cluster to your TSB installation.

Before You Begin

Ensure the following tools are available:

• kubectl
• helm

Set a variable with your chosen cluster name — it will be referenced throughout the steps below:

export CLUSTER_NAME=<cluster-name>

Cluster Prerequisites

AWS EKS

Tetrate recommends installing AWS Load Balancer Controller on each workload cluster.

For high-volume or production usage, establish a PrivateLink connection to reduce cross-region egress costs to the hosted Management Plane. Please contact Tetrate support to set this up.

Azure AKS

There are no prerequisites for Azure AKS clusters.

Google GCP

There are no prerequisites for Google GCP clusters.

Onboard the Cluster

1. Add the Tetrate Helm Repository

   helm repo add tetrate-tsb-helm 'https://charts.dl.tetrate.io/public/helm/charts/'
   helm repo update

2. Register the Cluster and Generate Defaults

   Create the cluster object in TSB, then generate the default Helm values. The defaults file contains the connection details and credentials derived from your Management Plane:

   tctl apply -f - <<EOF
   apiVersion: api.tsb.tetrate.io/v2
   kind: Cluster
   metadata:
     name: ${CLUSTER_NAME}
     organization: <ORGANIZATION>
   spec: {}
   EOF
   
   tctl x cluster-install-template --with-isolation-boundary ${CLUSTER_NAME} > ${CLUSTER_NAME}-defaults.yaml

3. Create the Values Override File

   Create a ${CLUSTER_NAME}-values.yaml file with the configuration required for the Hosted management plane:

   ${CLUSTER_NAME}-values.yaml

   spec:
     components:
       internalCertProvider:
         tsbManaged: {}
       spmAgent:
         enabled: true
       meshObservability:
         settings:
           apiEndpointMetricsEnabled: true

   Ambient Mode

   To enable Istio ambient mode, add the following to the components section:

       istio:
         ambient:
           enable: true

4. Install the Tetrate Control Plane

   helm upgrade --install controlplane tetrate-tsb-helm/controlplane \
     --namespace istio-system --create-namespace \
     --timeout 10m \
     --values ${CLUSTER_NAME}-defaults.yaml \
     --values ${CLUSTER_NAME}-values.yaml

5. Validate the Installation

   Check that all components are running:

   kubectl get pods -n istio-system

   Verify the cluster appears in TSB:

   tctl get cluster

   Your cluster status can also be viewed in the TSB UI:

   

Next steps

Once your cluster is onboarded you may wish to:

• Proceed with the Getting Started examples.
• Install the Tetrate Hosted Agent to expose services through annotation-driven gateway configuration.