POD DEPLOYMENT IN A GUEST CLUSTER EXECUTING AS A VIRTUAL EXTENSION OF MANAGEMENT CLUSTER IN A VIRTUALIZED COMPUTING SYSTEM

An example virtualized computing system includes a host cluster having hosts and a virtualization layer executing on hardware platforms of the hosts, the virtualization layer supporting execution of virtual machines (VMs), the VMs including pod VMs, the pod VMs including container engines supporting execution of containers in the pod VMs; and an orchestration control plane integrated with the virtualization layer, the orchestration control plane including a master server configured to manage the pod VMs and first VMs of the VMs. The virtualized computing system further includes a guest cluster executing in the first VMs and managed by the orchestration control plane, the guest cluster including a guest master server configured to, in cooperation with the master server, deploy first pods in the pod VMs.