Abstract: An example method of establishing trust between a cross-cluster control plane (xCCP) and a cluster control plane (CCP) of an autonomous cluster of hosts in a virtualized computing system includes: providing, by the xCCP, trust data of the xCCP to a hypervisor of a host in the autonomous cluster that is executing the CCP; providing, by the hypervisor, the trust data to the CCP through a volume attached to a virtual machine (VM) that executes the CCP; persisting, by the CCP, the trust data in a database; and accessing, by a security token service (STS) of the CCP, the trust data in the database to authenticate access to the CCP by the xCCP.

Abstract: An example method of fault-handling for an autonomous cluster of hosts in a virtualized computing system includes: detecting, by a second plurality of infravisors in a second plurality of the hosts, lack of network connectivity with a first cluster control plane (CCP) executing on a first host in a first plurality of the hosts; electing, among the second plurality of infravisors, a second primary infravisor, a first primary infravisor executing on the first host; running, by the second primary infravisor, a second CCP on a second host in the second plurality of hosts; providing, by the second primary infravisor, a CCP configuration to the second CCP; and applying, by an initialization script of the second CCP, the CCP configuration to the second CCP to create a second autonomous cluster having the second plurality of hosts, the first CCP managing a first autonomous cluster having the first plurality of hosts.

Abstract: An example method of creating an autonomous cluster of hosts in a virtualized computing system includes: enabling, by a virtualization management server executing a cross cluster control plane (xCCP), an infravisor in a seed host of the hosts, the infravisor a component of a hypervisor executing on the seed host; running, by the infravisor, a cluster control plane (CCP) pod on the seed host executing a CCP; providing, by the infravisor, a CCP configuration to the CCP pod; applying, by an initialization script of the CCP pod, the CCP configuration to the CCP to create the autonomous cluster having the seed host as a single node thereof; and extending the autonomous cluster with remaining hosts of the hosts other than the seed host as additional nodes thereof, the CCP applying a cluster personality to each of the remaining hosts derived from the seed host.