A virtualized computing system according to an example 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); a container image registry configured to manage container images for deploying containers in the host cluster; an orchestration control plane integrated with the virtualization layer, the orchestration control plane including a master server executing in a first VM of the VMs, the master server configured to manage image secrets based on accounts in the container image registry; and a guest cluster, managed by the orchestration control plane and executing in second VMs of the VMs, the guest cluster configured to receive the image secrets from the master server and access the container image registry using the image secrets.