This topic describes how to quickly get started with Distributed Cloud Container Platform for Kubernetes ACK One and provides links to the references for ACK One.
Prerequisites
ACK One is activated. The default RAM role is assigned to ACK One and the Alibaba Cloud services used by ACK One are activated. For more information, see Manage the service-linked role for ACK One.
Quick start
The following figure shows how to quickly get started with ACK One.
How to use ACK One
ACK One provides the following features: registered clusters, Fleet management, Kubernetes clusters for distributed Argo workflows, and backup center. You can use these features separately or use them in a combination.
Registered clusters
You can register Kubernetes clusters that are deployed in data centers or Kubernetes clusters that are deployed on a third-party platform to ACK One. This way, you can manage clusters in a hybrid cloud environment.
Feature | Description | References |
Create a registered cluster and connect a Kubernetes cluster that is deployed in a data center to the registered cluster | This feature allows you to create a registered cluster and connect a Kubernetes cluster that is deployed in a data center or on a third-party platform to the registered cluster. This way, you can manage your clusters in ACK One in a centralized manner. | |
Elasticity | This feature allows you to scale self-managed Kubernetes clusters that are deployed in data centers by adding computing resources deployed in the cloud to the clusters. For example, you can manually or automatically adjust the number of Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances or ECS bare metal instances in self-managed Kubernetes clusters deployed in data centers. | |
Observability | This feature supports the following observability capabilities: Event Center, Ingress dashboards, log collection, application monitoring based on Application Real-Time Monitoring Service (ARMS), architecture characteristics discovery based on Application High Availability Service (AHAS), application throttling based on AHAS, Node Problem Detector (NPD), and Metrics Adapter. | |
Security management | This feature provides authentication based on Resource Access Management (RAM), authorization based on role-based access control (RBAC), cluster auditing based on Log Service, and cluster inspection. | |
Coordinated scheduling | This feature requires you to install ack-co-scheduler in the registered cluster and allows you to use the scheduling features of ACK in various types of applications, such as big data applications and AI applications, in a convenient manner and improve resource utilization. |
Fleet management
Fleet instances are fully-managed resources in ACK. You can use Fleet instances to manage Kubernetes clusters in any environments, which provides a consistent cloud-native application management experience.
Feature | Description | References |
Enable Fleet management | After you enable Fleet management, you can use Fleet instances provided by ACK One to schedule and distribute workloads, applications, and configurations among multiple clusters. | |
Associated cluster management | After you enable Fleet management, you can associate clusters with a Fleet instance and then distribute applications or workloads to the associated clusters from the Fleet instance. | Manage the clusters that are associated with a Fleet instance |
GitOps | After you enable GitOps on a Fleet instance of ACK One, you can manage versions of application manifests and Helm charts in Git repositories. GitOps also supports multi-cluster continuous delivery. | |
Multi-cluster gateways | ACK One uses a fully-managed MSE Ingress controller to manage MSE cloud-native gateways that serve as multi-cluster gateways. MSE cloud-native gateways can manage north-south traffic in multi-cluster deployments based on MSE Ingresses. This allows you to use features such as active zone-redundancy, multi-cluster load balancing, and header-based routing. | |
MCS | The multi-cluster Services (MCS) feature allows you to access Services across Kubernetes clusters without the need to create load balancers. | |
Job distribution | ACK One can automatically distribute various types of Jobs, such as Kubernetes Jobs and CronJobs, to multiple clusters. | |
Monitoring management | The global monitoring feature collects the metrics of different clusters, aggregates these metrics, and then displays global monitoring information about these clusters on a dashboard of Managed Service for Prometheus. This way, you can view the metrics of different clusters on one dashboard. |
Kubernetes clusters for distributed Argo workflows
Feature | Description | References |
Creating workflow clusters and obtaining kubeconfig files | Workflow clusters use a serverless architecture. This type of cluster runs Argo workflows on elastic container instances, optimizes cluster parameters to schedule large-scale workflows with efficiency and elasticity, and uses preemptible elastic container instances to reduce costs. | |
Workflows | Workflow clusters are developed based on open source Argo Workflows. You can refer to the documentation of Argo Workflows to customize workflows. | |
Argo Server | You can enable Argo Server to access workflow clusters, use the Argo Server API to automate workflow submission, and use the open source Argo UI to manage workflows. | |
Eventing | Workflow clusters support eventing. This allows you to build an automated system that automatically triggers workflows based on events. | |
Observability | Workflow clusters are integrated with Managed Service for Prometheus and Simple Log Service. You can view the status of clusters and their metrics in dashboards of Managed Service for Prometheus, and deliver the pod logs of workflows to Simple Log Service and analyze these logs anytime. |
Backup center
The backup center is a one-stop solution that helps you back up, restore, and migrate stateful or stateless applications. The backup center also provides disaster recovery and application migration capabilities for stateful applications in hybrid cloud and multi-cluster environments.
Feature | Description | References |
Enabling the backup center | The backup center is a one-stop solution that helps you back up, restore, and migrate stateful or stateless applications. The backup center also provides disaster recovery and application migration capabilities for stateful applications in hybrid cloud and multi-cluster environments. | |
Backup and restoration of applications and data | This feature allows you to back up and restore stateful applications that are deployed in a cluster. This feature provides an all-in-one solution to achieve crash consistency, application consistency, and cross-region disaster recovery for stateful applications that are deployed in Kubernetes clusters. | |
Cross-cluster application migration | This feature allows you to back up and restore stateful applications that are deployed in a cluster. This feature provides an all-in-one solution to achieve crash consistency, application consistency, and cross-region disaster recovery for stateful applications that are deployed in Kubernetes clusters. |