Create a pod with a specific GPU-accelerated instance type - Elastic Container Instance

This topic describes how to create an Elastic Container Instance (ECI) pod with a specific Elastic Compute Service (ECS) GPU-accelerated instance type and change the GPU driver version.

Supported instance families

GPU-accelerated instance types are suitable for scenarios such as deep learning and image editing. You can run Docker images for GPUs directly on ECI GPU-accelerated instances. A NVIDIA graphics card driver is pre-installed in each instance. The supported driver and CUDA versions vary by GPU instance type.

Note

The gn8ia and gn8is instance families in the following table are available only in some regions outside China. To use these instance families, contact Alibaba Cloud sales.

Category	GPU instance family	Driver and CUDA versions
vGPU-accelerated instance family	sgn7i-vws	GRID 470, CUDA 11.4 (default)
	vgn7i-vws
	vgn6i-vws
GPU-accelerated compute-optimized instance family	gn7e	Tesla 470, CUDA 11.4 (default) Tesla 535, CUDA 12.2 Tesla 550, CUDA 12.4
	gn7i
	gn7s
	gn7
	gn6v
	gn6e
	gn6i
	gn5i
	gn5
	gn8ia	Tesla 535, CUDA 12.2 (default) Tesla 550, CUDA 12.2
	gn8is	Tesla 535, CUDA 12.2 (default) Tesla 550, CUDA 12.2

Important

Starting March 17, 2025, specify only the major version number for GPU drivers, such as 535, instead of the full version number, such as 535.161.08. The created instance will use a driver with the specified major version, but the minor version may be updated. When an older driver is unpublished, a newer version is automatically used to create the instance. The support period for a driver version aligns with NVIDIA's official support. For more information, see NVIDIA Driver Documentation.

GPU driver update history

Update time	Update description
March 2025	The GRID 470 driver is updated to 470.239.06. The Tesla 470 driver is updated to 470.256.02, the Tesla 535 driver is updated to 535.230.02, and the Tesla 550 driver is updated to 550.127.08. The Tesla 525 driver is no longer supported. If you specify this driver, the system falls back to version 535.

For more information about ECS instance types, see the following topics:

Configurations

To specify a GPU-accelerated instance type, add the k8s.aliyun.com/eci-use-specs annotation to the pod's metadata. To request GPUs, add the nvidia.com/gpu field to the container's resources.

Important

The value of nvidia.com/gpu specifies the number of GPUs the container requires. If not set, the pod fails to start.
By default, multiple containers can share GPUs. Ensure the number of GPUs allocated to any single container does not exceed the total available in the specified instance type.

Example:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: test
  labels:
    app: test
spec:
  replicas: 2
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: nginx
  template:
    metadata:
      name: nginx-test
      labels:
        app: nginx
        alibabacloud.com/eci: "true" 
      annotations:
        k8s.aliyun.com/eci-use-specs: "ecs.gn6i-c4g1.xlarge,ecs.gn6i-c8g1.2xlarge" # Specify a maximum of five GPU-accelerated ECS instance types at a time. 
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: nginx
        image: registry.cn-shanghai.aliyuncs.com/eci_open/nginx:1.14.2
        resources:
            limits:
              nvidia.com/gpu: "1" # The number of GPUs required by the Nginx container. The GPUs are shared. 
        ports:
        - containerPort: 80
      - name: busybox
        image: registry.cn-shanghai.aliyuncs.com/eci_open/busybox:1.30
        command: ["sleep"]
        args: ["999999"]
        resources:
            limits:
              nvidia.com/gpu: "1" # The number of GPUs required by the BusyBox container. The GPUs are shared.

By default, ECI automatically installs a supported driver and CUDA version based on the specified GPU-accelerated instance type. In some cases, you may need to use different driver and CUDA versions for different workloads. To do this, add the k8s.aliyun.com/eci-gpu-driver-version annotation to specify a driver version. For example, if you specify the ecs.gn6i-c4g1.xlarge instance type, the default installation includes the Tesla 470 driver and CUDA 11.4. By adding the annotation k8s.aliyun.com/eci-gpu-driver-version: tesla=535, you can switch to the Tesla 535 driver and CUDA 12.2.

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: test
  labels:
    app: test
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: nginx
  template:
    metadata:
      name: nginx-test
      labels:
        app: nginx
        alibabacloud.com/eci: "true" 
      annotations:
        k8s.aliyun.com/eci-use-specs: ecs.gn6i-c4g1.xlarge # Specify the supported GPU-accelerated ECS instance types. The instance types support the change of driver version. 
        k8s.aliyun.com/eci-gpu-driver-version: tesla=535 # Specify the GPU driver version. 
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: nginx
        image: registry.cn-shanghai.aliyuncs.com/eci_open/nginx:1.14.2
        resources:
            limits:
              nvidia.com/gpu: "1" # The number of GPUs required by the container.