Use labels to schedule pods to GPU nodes

To use Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) clusters for GPU computing, you must schedule pods to GPU nodes. To enable flexible and efficient scheduling, you can add labels to the GPU nodes.

1. Log on to the Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) console.
2. In the left-side navigation pane, click Clusters.
3. On the Clusters page, click the name of a cluster or click Details in the Actions column. The details page of the cluster appears.
4. In the left-side navigation pane, click Nodes.
5. On the Nodes page, find the GPU node that you want to manage, and choose More > Details in the Actions column for the node.
   Check the labels of the GPU node.

   

   You can also log on to a master node, and run the following command in the command-line interface (CLI) to view the labels on GPU nodes:

   Run the following command:

   kubectl get nodes

   Response:

   NAME                                STATUS    ROLES     AGE       VERSION
   cn-beijing.i-2ze2dy2h9w97v65uuaft   Ready     master    2d        v1.11.2
   cn-beijing.i-2ze8o1a45qdv5q8a7luz   Ready     <none>    2d        v1.11.2             # Compare these nodes with the nodes that are displayed in the console to identify GPU nodes.
   cn-beijing.i-2ze8o1a45qdv5q8a7lv0   Ready     <none>    2d        v1.11.2
   cn-beijing.i-2ze9xylyn11vop7g5bwe   Ready     master    2d        v1.11.2
   cn-beijing.i-2zed5sw8snjniq6mf5e5   Ready     master    2d        v1.11.2
   cn-beijing.i-2zej9s0zijykp9pwf7lu   Ready     <none>    2d        v1.11.2
                       

   Select a GPU node and run the following command to query the labels on the node:

   kubectl describe node cn-beijing.i-2ze8o1a45qdv5q8a7luz

   Response:

   Name:               cn-beijing.i-2ze8o1a45qdv5q8a7luz
   Roles:              <none>
   Labels:             aliyun.accelerator/nvidia_count=1                          # This field is important.
                       aliyun.accelerator/nvidia_mem=12209MiB
                       aliyun.accelerator/nvidia_name=Tesla-M40
                       beta.kubernetes.io/arch=amd64
                       beta.kubernetes.io/instance-type=ecs.gn4-c4g1.xlarge
                       beta.kubernetes.io/os=linux
                       failure-domain.beta.kubernetes.io/region=cn-beijing
                       failure-domain.beta.kubernetes.io/zone=cn-beijing-a
                       kubernetes.io/hostname=cn-beijing.i-2ze8o1a45qdv5q8a7luz
    ......

   In this example, the following labels are added to the GPU node:

   key	value
   aliyun.accelerator/nvidia_count	The number of GPU cores.
   aliyun.accelerator/nvidia_mem	The size of the GPU memory. Unit: MiB.
   aliyun.accelerator/nvidia_name	The name of the NVIDIA graphics card.

   GPU nodes of the same type have the same graphics card name. You can use this label to filter nodes.

   Run the following command:

   kubectl get no -l aliyun.accelerator/nvidia_name=Tesla-M40

   Response:

   
   NAME                                STATUS    ROLES     AGE       VERSION
   cn-beijing.i-2ze8o1a45qdv5q8a7luz   Ready     <none>    2d        v1.11.2
   cn-beijing.i-2ze8o1a45qdv5q8a7lv0   Ready     <none>    2d        v1.11.2
                       

6. Go to the Cluster Information page. In the left-side navigation pane, click Workload. The Deployments tab appears. Click Create from Template.
   1. Create a TensorFlow application and schedule this application to a GPU node.

      

      The following YAML template is used in this example:

      ---
      # Define the tensorflow deployment
      apiVersion: apps/v1
      kind: Deployment
      metadata:
        name: tf-notebook
        labels:
          app: tf-notebook
      spec:
        replicas: 1
        selector: # define how the deployment finds the pods it mangages
          matchLabels:
            app: tf-notebook
        template: # define the pods specifications
          metadata:
            labels:
              app: tf-notebook
          spec:
            nodeSelector:                                                  # This field is important.
              aliyun.accelerator/nvidia_name: Tesla-M40
            containers:
            - name: tf-notebook
              image: tensorflow/tensorflow:1.4.1-gpu-py3
              resources:
                limits:
                  nvidia.com/gpu: 1                                        # This field is important.
              ports:
              - containerPort: 8888
                hostPort: 8888
              env:
                - name: PASSWORD
                  value: mypassw0rdv

   2. You can also allow a GPU node to repel specific applications. The following example shows how to deploy an NGINX pod and schedules the pod based on node affinity. For more information, see the section that describes node affinity in Use an image to create a stateless application.

      The following YAML template is used in this example:

      apiVersion: v1
      kind: Pod
      metadata:
        name: not-in-gpu-node
      spec:
        affinity:
          nodeAffinity:
            requiredDuringSchedulingIgnoredDuringExecution:
              nodeSelectorTerms:
              - matchExpressions:
                - key: aliyun.accelerator/nvidia_name
                  operator: DoesNotExist
        containers:
        - name: not-in-gpu-node
          image: nginx

7. Click the Pods tab.
   On the Pods tab, the specified pods have been scheduled to the required nodes. You can use labels to schedule pods to specific GPU nodes with ease.