On your VMware Tanzu Desktop, launch the 'Tanzu Mission Control' Chrome Shortcut

You will be redirected to the VMware Cloud Services login page. Use your email address associated  with your VMware ID account (or Customer Connect / Partner Connect account), followed by your VMware ID password. You can also look at the Login Credentials section at the top right of this activity page to find your VMware ID. 

[OPTIONAL] Once logged in, you should see a My Services page with 'VMware Tanzu  Mission Control' listed as a product in it. Launch the product.

[OPTIONAL] If you don't see it, then click on your username on the Cloud Services  page -> Change Organization and make sure you have selected  'Pathfinder Services' as your Organization. After that, you should see  the TMC product.

Now that you're logged in, you should see the 'Clusters' page as your default landing page. We will create a Tanzu Kubernetes Cluster next. Click on 'Create Cluster'

On the next screen that comes up, click the radio button next to pathfinder-tanzu and 'Continue to Create Cluster'

Choose the provisioner as pathfinder-tanzu from the dropdown and click 'NEXT'

Let's name your cluster. Use the format<your-username>-tanzu for your cluster name.

[IMPORTANT] Next we must click on Cluster Group, by default you will see "pathfinder-tanzu-demo"

Click on the 'X' to delete this entry value

Now click the drop down to select the Cluster Group name that should be auto-populated with the name formatted as<your-username>###. Click 'NEXT'

Note: Tanzu will not let you finish creating your cluster in the following steps if you leave the Cluster Group name as the default value of "pathfinder-tanzu-demo"

Under the configure section, select the following objects:

• Kubernetes version as v1.21.6
• Allowed storage classes as 'vsphere-with-tanzu-storage-policy' and click on 'Add Storage Class'
• Default storage class as 'vsphere-with-tanzu-storage-policy' and click on 'NEXT'

[IMPORTANT] NOTE: You have to select 'vsphere-with-tanzu-storage-policy' as your persistent volume storage.

On the Select Control Plane page, use the default configuration i.e. Single Node with Instance Type as 'best-effort-default-small (2vCPU, 4GB RAM)' and click 'NEXT'.

NOTE: Since this is a shared demo environment, we  request all users to follow the guidelines for selecting Instance Type to optimize resource usage.

On the Edit and Add Node Pools page, select the default configuration for Worker Instance Type as 'best-effort-default-small (2vCPU, 4GB RAM)' and number of worker nodes = 1 and click on 'CREATE CLUSTER'

NOTE: Since this is a shared demo environment, we  request all users to follow the guidelines for selecting Instance Type to optimize resource usage. Please do not create more than 1 worker node.

You will now see a screen with message 'Your cluster is being created'.  Please allow 7-10 minutes for the Tanzu Kubernetes Cluster status to show as  'Ready'

Note: You might see a temporary message of This cluster status is unknown. This message will go if you refresh the page. Continue to refresh the screen.

[IMPORTANT] While we wait for the cluster to get created, let us generate and save the API Token which will be used in upcoming steps to access our K8s cluster. To do this, click on your username -> My Account (under User Settings)  to launch the 'My Account' page.

On this page, navigate to 'API Tokens' tab and click on 'GENERATE TOKEN' to generate a new token. Give it a name (for e.g. <your-username>-tanzu) and select the 'All Roles' checkbox. Click on 'GENERATE'

Your token will be generated. Next, copy the token by clicking on the COPY button or highlighting it and using Ctrl + C (Windows) or Command (⌘) + C (macOS).

Next, open Notepad++ from your desktop and paste the API Token. It is recommended to save this file under your 'My Documents' folder or store the Token on your local machine if you want to try this experience again and save some effort.

[IMPORTANT] Do not exit this screen until you verify that you've saved your API Token. Also, please DO NOT save your token on the Demo Credentials text file.

To close the API Token popup screen click on the 'CONTINUE' or 'X' button to exit this screen. 

To navigate back to the TMC Console screen, click on the App Launcher at the top right of the screen and from the drop down click on "VMware Tanzu Mission Control"