Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) allows you to use a node pool to manage multiple nodes in a cluster as a group. For example, you can centrally manage the labels and taints of the nodes in a node pool. This topic describes how to create and scale out a node pool in an ACK cluster.

Prerequisites

Notice
  • By default, a cluster can contain at most 100 nodes. To increase the quota, Submit a ticket.
  • When you add an Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance to a node pool, make sure that the ECS instance is associated with an elastic IP address (EIP) or a NAT gateway is configured for the virtual private cloud (VPC) where the ECS instance is deployed. In addition, make sure that the ECS instance can access the Internet. Otherwise, you cannot add the ECS instance.

Background information

ACK provides two types of node pools: regular node pools and managed node pools. Regular node pools include default node pools and custom node pools. You can enable auto scaling for custom node pools and managed node pools. For more information, see Node pool overview.

Create a node pool

  1. Log on to the ACK console.
  2. In the left-side navigation pane of the ACK console, click Clusters.
  3. On the Clusters page, find the cluster that you want to manage and click the name of the cluster or click Details in the Actions column. The details page of the cluster appears.
  4. In the left-side navigation pane of the details page, choose Nodes > Node Pools.
  5. In the upper-right corner of the Node Pools page, click Create Node Pool.
    In the upper-right corner of the Node Pools page, you can also click Create Managed Node Pool to create a managed node pool, or click Configure Auto Scaling to create an auto-scaling node pool.
  6. In the Create Node Pool dialog box, configure the node pool.
    For more information, see Create a dedicated Kubernetes cluster. The following table describes some of the parameters.
    Parameter Description
    Quantity Specify the initial number of nodes in the node pool. If you do not want to create nodes in the node pool, set this parameter to 0.
    Operating System Select the node operating system. The CentOS, Alibaba Cloud Linux, and Windows operating systems are supported.
    Public IP If you select Assign a Public IPv4 Address to Each Node, public IPv4 addresses are assigned to the nodes in the node pool. You can connect to the nodes by using the assigned IP addresses. For more information about public IP addresses, see Public IP addresses.
    Notice If you select Assign a Public IPv4 Address to Each Node, do not select Associate EIP when you configure an auto-scaling node pool. Otherwise, nodes cannot be added to the node pool.
    ECS Label You can add labels to the selected ECS instances.
    Node Label You can add labels to the nodes in the node pool.
    Custom Resource Group You can specify a resource group for scale-out. When the node pool is scaled out, nodes from the specified resource group are added to the node pool.
  7. Click Confirm Order.
    On the Node Pools page, if the state of the node pool is Initializing, it indicates that the node pool is being created. After the node pool is created, the state of the node pool changes to Active. nodepool

Scale out a node pool

  1. Log on to the ACK console.
  2. In the left-side navigation pane of the ACK console, click Clusters.
  3. On the Clusters page, find the cluster that you want to manage and click the name of the cluster or click Details in the Actions column. The details page of the cluster appears.
  4. In the left-side navigation pane of the details page, choose Nodes > Node Pools.
  5. Find the node pool that you want to scale out and click Scale Out in the Actions column.
  6. In the dialog box that appears, set the scale-out parameters.
    For more information, see Expand an ACK cluster. The following list describes some of the parameters:
    • Nodes to Add: the number of nodes that you want to add to the node pool. You can add up to 500 nodes at a time.
    • ECS Label: You can add labels to the ECS instances.
    • Node Label: You can add labels to the new nodes.
    • Taints: You can add taints to the new nodes.
      Note If you select Synchronize Node Labels and Taints, the specified labels and taints are synchronized to the existing and newly added nodes.
  7. Click Submit.
    On the Node Pools page, the state of the node pool is scaling This indicates that the scale-out event is in progress. After the scale-out event is complete, the state of the node pool changes to Active.

What to do next

On the Node pools page, you can select a node pool and perform the following operations on the node pool:
  • Click Details in the Actions column to view the details of the node pool.
  • Click Edit in the Actions column to modify the configurations of the node pool. For more information, see Create a node pool.
    Note When you modify the configurations of the node pool, you can update the image version of the node operating system.
  • Click the name of the node pool that you want to manage. You can perform the following operations on the details page of the node pool:
    • Click the Overview tab to view information about the cluster, node pool, node configurations, and auto scaling settings.
    • Click the Nodes tab to view information about the nodes in the node pool. You can select multiple nodes and remove them at a time.
    • Click the Nodes tab. In the upper-right corner of the tab, you can click Export to export node information as comma-separated values (CSV) files.
    • Click the Nodes tab. You can select Display Only Failed Nodes to view failed nodes.
    • Click the Scaling Activities tab to view the most recent scaling events of the nodes.