Runs on the Supervisor and gives DevOps teams declarative virtual machines through kubectl, each defined by a class, an image and a storage class. It is also where VKS clusters get their control-plane and worker-node machines.
Also called Virtual Machine Service.
Read more: Broadcom TechDocs
In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains VM Service in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- Agents (classic) API
First-generation Foundry Agent Service API, based on threads, messages and runs. It is deprecated, replaced by conversations and responses, and retires on 31 March 2027.
- Declarative
Describing the result wanted (as Terraform configurations and Bicep files do) and letting tooling work out the steps. Microsoft favours this over imperative scripting.
- Virtual machines
Infrastructure-as-a-service compute giving complete control of the operating system, making it a fit for lift-and-shift moves and for software relying on OS-level pieces like COM.
- kubectl
Command-line tool for working with workloads in a Kubernetes cluster, installed by running
az aks install-cli. Cluster-level AKS settings like the cluster autoscaler are set through Azure instead. - General-purpose v1
The older storage account kind (
Storage), which lacks access tiers, Archive and premium file shares and retires on 13 October 2026. Converting to ZRS requires first upgrading to GPv2, a one-way change. - WHERE
Limits a SELECT, UPDATE or DELETE to just the rows meeting a condition. Omit it, and the statement hits every row.
- VKS
Supervisor service, previously the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Service, that deploys and looks after VMware-supported upstream Kubernetes clusters inside vSphere Namespaces.
- Get
Key Vault permission on secrets that allows a single secret to be read; App Service Key Vault references need nothing beyond it.
Related terms
- Cluster API
An open-source Kubernetes project for managing the lifecycle of clusters declaratively. VKS relies on it, running over the VM Service, to build, scale and upgrade its clusters.
- simplified Supervisor
Lightweight Supervisor option for vSphere, quicker and cheaper to deploy because there is just one VM for the control plane, with one network interface, VM Service as its sole service, no load balancer, and full features available to add afterwards. Foundation Load Balancer in its single-NIC, one-arm layout is supported only with this option.
- Worker node
In Kubernetes, the machines that run application pods are worker nodes. On VMware, VKS clusters use VM Service VMs for this, and Supervisor hosts take the role through the Spherelet.