According to the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 Architecture and Design Guide, the vSphere Supervisor leverages the Cluster API open-source project to provide declarative, Kubernetes-style APIs for the creation, configuration, and lifecycle management of VMware Kubernetes Service (VKS) clusters.
The documentation states:
“The Cluster API provides declarative, Kubernetes-style APIs for cluster creation, configuration, and management. The inputs to Cluster API include a resource describing the cluster, a set of resources describing the virtual machines that make up the cluster, and a set of resources describing cluster add-ons.”
This API-driven model allows for automated provisioning and scaling of Kubernetes clusters by defining the desired state through YAML manifests. Cluster API (CAPI) is a CNCF open-source project that VMware has extended and integrated into vSphere Supervisor to deliver infrastructure-level automation, ensuring consistency, repeatability, and lifecycle management for VKS clusters.
In contrast, Grafana is used for monitoring, Contour for ingress control, and Kubeadm is a bootstrapping tool for standalone Kubernetes clusters — none of which provide cluster lifecycle automation in VKS.
References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):
VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 Architecture and Design Guide — “VKS Architecture and Components.” (pp. 5635–5637)
VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 Supervisor Components — “Cluster API Integration for VKS Lifecycle Management.”
