ACK AI Assistant (the AI assistant) is an intelligent assistant feature for Alibaba Cloud Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK), powered by a large language model. The assistant combines the ACK knowledge base, observability data, and the diagnostic expertise of cloud-native specialists. It provides large model-enhanced intelligent diagnostics and AIOps capabilities for ACK and Kubernetes.
The ACK AI Assistant feature will be upgraded and replaced by the Container Service Agent feature. For more information, see Introduction to the Container Service Agent feature.
Usage notes
Welcome to the ACK AI Assistant! Before you begin, please read the following notes carefully:
The content generated by this service is produced by a large language model. Due to technical limitations and the nature of large language models, Alibaba Cloud cannot guarantee the completeness or accuracy of the generated content. Use your own judgment when evaluating the content and do not rely on it excessively. You are solely responsible for any consequences or losses resulting from judgments or actions you take based on the generated content.
You are responsible for your use of the service. Ensure that the information you input is lawful and compliant, does not disrupt public order, infringe on the legal rights of others, or create or spread false information.
This service collects status data for resources in your account, such as ECS instances and ACK clusters, to answer questions and diagnose issues. Alibaba Cloud does not collect your business data.
Key features
Full-lifecycle operations and management
ACK AI Assistant is designed to lower the barrier to using and learning about ACK, and to simplify the management of clusters and Kubernetes resources. It provides intelligent assistance throughout the following phases.
Day-0 design and planning: Assists with planning and designing your cloud-native containerization strategy, such as recommending configurations for clusters and nodes.
Day-1 resource and application creation: Helps you design and write application configuration files, such as Terraform and Kubernetes YAML files.
Day-2 operations: Provides AIOps capabilities for rapid intelligent diagnostics, recommendations for cost and resource usage policies, and suggestions for optimizing high availability, stability, and security.
AI-assisted observability
ACK AI Assistant deeply integrates large language model capabilities with ACK observability best practices. You can query and analyze various types of observability data for your cluster using natural language, elevating the troubleshooting experience from simple data retrieval to intelligent insight.
Prometheus: Supports metric queries for both Alibaba Cloud Prometheus and self-managed Prometheus instances associated with your ACK cluster, and can convert natural language into PromQL.
Control plane logs: Supports querying control plane logs of your ACK cluster from Log Service (SLS), including SLS SQL queries and converting natural language to SLS SQL.
Audit log: Tracks Kubernetes API requests and user activity.
Intelligent diagnostics and health checks
In the ACK console, you can view the status of abnormal nodes, pods, and workloads, as well as their error messages and events. By clicking the Intelligent Diagnostics button, you can launch the ACK AI Assistant to quickly diagnose abnormal clusters and applications.
The ACK AI Assistant analyzes observability data from the cluster's nodes and applications, such as abnormal statuses and events, to provide a comprehensive intelligent diagnostics report. Typically, the assistant explains the cause of the current abnormal state and suggests solutions. If the assistant cannot identify the root cause or provide a workable solution, you can initiate a more in-depth diagnosis on the abnormal pod or node. This advanced diagnosis is based on the troubleshooting experience of ACK technical experts. For more information, see Use cluster diagnostics.
Agent features
Prerequisites
You have activated Container Service for Kubernetes and completed product authorization. For more information, see Quickly create an ACK managed cluster.
You have enabled the ACK AI Assistant Agent feature.
Alibaba Cloud account: No additional authorization is required.
RAM user: If you are using the ACK AI Assistant as a RAM user for the first time, ensure the user has a permission policy attached that includes
cs:CreateSessionMessageandcs:UpdateMessageFeedback. For more information, see Manage permissions for a RAM role.
Enable the ACK AI Assistant
ACK AI Assistant provides features such as intelligent Q&A and intelligent diagnostics. You can open the assistant from any page in the console to ask questions. You can also launch it through the intelligent diagnostics feature when a cluster resource, such as a node, pod, or workload, is in an abnormal state to quickly diagnose the issue.
Launch the assistant directly
On any page in the console, click the floating ACK AI Assistant icon and follow the on-screen instructions to start asking questions. On the cluster list page in the ACK console, click the ACK AI Assistant icon in the upper-right corner to open the assistant panel. The panel displays a welcome message and an input box at the bottom where you can enter questions about Kubernetes or ACK.
Launch the assistant through Intelligent Diagnostics
Navigate to a resource page in the console, for example, Workloads, locate the abnormal resource, and click Intelligent Diagnostics in the status column.
The ACK AI Assistant panel opens on the right and automatically analyzes the abnormal pod status. It displays diagnostic results that include the exception context (ExceptionContext), the cause (such as ImagePullBackOff), and detailed error information.
The ACK AI Assistant then provides intelligent answers about the anomaly to help you troubleshoot the issue.
Manage conversation history
Launching the ACK AI Assistant for Q&A or intelligent diagnostics starts a new session. The assistant saves recent conversations to its context history to inform future responses. To start a new conversation, you can refresh the page or click the clear history button.
Contact us
For feedback or suggestions about the ACK AI Assistant, join our DingTalk group (ID: 70080006301).