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JOURNAL OF Intelligent Infrastructure Insights for the Modern Datacenter Era · by Dr Pranay Jha Explore the Guides

TKGI to OpenShift Migration, Complete Guide

A working path from Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Integrated (TKGI) to Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4, in 26 parts, for the platform engineer, Kubernetes operator or VMware admin who runs TKGI today and has picked OpenShift as the landing place. It treats the move as what it is, a migration rather than an in-place upgrade: there is no conversion path from BOSH and Ops Manager to OpenShift, so you stand OpenShift up beside the old platform, move workloads across in waves with Velero and OADP, cut traffic over, then decommission TKGI. Security Context Constraints, Routes and Operators get the attention they deserve, because those are what actually break a lift from a permissive TKGI cluster. Strategy and assessment come first, then hands-on runbooks with real commands and YAML. Browse every guide on the guides hub.

Complete · all 26 parts published
Phase 1 · Case for Moving
  1. 01What OpenShift Offers a TKGI Estate, and Why TKGI Is Winding Down
  2. 02TKGI and OpenShift Architecture Compared, Component by Component
  3. 03Why This Is a Migration, Not an Upgrade
  4. 04Business Case, Subscription Costs and a Phased Timeline
Phase 2 · Assess and Design
  1. 05Inventorying the TKGI Estate
  2. 06Application Assessment and Migration Waves
  3. 07Security Context Constraints and Pod Admission, the Biggest Portability Gap
  4. 08Networking Assessment, NSX-T and NCP to OVN-Kubernetes
  5. 09Storage and Data Assessment, vSphere CSI and Persistent Volumes
  6. 10Identity, RBAC and Multi-Tenancy, TKGI Plans to OpenShift Projects
  7. 11Target Reference Architecture, OpenShift 4 on vSphere
Phase 3 · Stand Up the Platform
  1. 12Installing OpenShift 4 on vSphere, IPI and UPI Compared
  2. 13Cluster Networking, OVN-Kubernetes, Routes and Load Balancing
  3. 14Projects, Quotas, MachineSets and Node Scaling
  4. 15Identity, OAuth, RBAC and Registry Choices
  5. 16Network Policy and Microsegmentation, NSX-T DFW to OVN-Kubernetes
Phase 4 · Migrate Workloads
  1. 17Migration Toolchain, Velero on TKGI and OADP on OpenShift
  2. 18Migrating a Stateless Application End to End
  3. 19Migrating a Stateful Application with Persistent Volumes
  4. 20Ingress to Routes, Load Balancing and DNS Cutover
  5. 21Secrets, Config and CI/CD Pipeline Migration to OpenShift
Phase 5 · Pilot, Cut Over and Operate
  1. 22Pilot Migration, One Non-Prod Cluster End to End
  2. 23Production Cutover, Traffic Shift, Validation and Rollback
  3. 24Day-2 on OpenShift, Operators, Upgrades and Scaling vs BOSH
  4. 25Observability, Backup and Disaster Recovery on OpenShift
Phase 6 · Land It
  1. 26Decommissioning TKGI and Ops Manager, and What Comes Next

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About the Author

Dr Pranay Jha

Dr. Pranay Jha is a Cloud and AI Consultant with 18+ years of experience in hybrid cloud, virtualization, and enterprise infrastructure transformation. He specializes in VMware technologies, multi-cloud strategy, and Generative AI solutions. He holds a PhD in Computer Applications with research focused on Cloud and AI, has published multiple research papers, and has been a VMware vExpert since 2016 and a VMUG Community Leader.