K8s Cluster Manager
SMI operational components and microservices are deployed on VMs. (Refer to SMI VM Quantities and Sizing for details.)
The SMI Cluster Manager (CM) is also deployed as a VM and is used to bootstrap the deployment of other components and applications.
The CM works with the Virtual Infrastructure Manager (VIM) to instantiate the required VMs. In VMware environments, the CM instantiates the virtual machines (VMs) required for the cluster. In OpenStack environments, the CM makes an API call to an orchestrator or Virtual Network Function Manager (VNFM) to instantiate VMs.
The VMs are deployed with a guest OS that is provided with SMI. Once instantiated, the CM provisions the OS, and deploys or provisions the SMI microservices (for example, K8s control plane, K8s etcd, and so on.).
Once all VMs and K8s components are built, the CM can deploy 5G application Ops Centers, which enable NETCONF/RESTCONF interfaces for application configuration and management. All of these actions are API driven and all can be automated and orchestrated.

Scheduling rules such as affinity and anti-affinity help guide K8s for proper node placement, as well as adding node taint and tolerances. Because K8s uses a declarative method of deployment, operators simply need to update the desired number of services and K8s manages scheduling and maintains the correct number of services, even during failure scenarios.