Create Windows-based ECI Pods in a Kubernetes cluster - - Alibaba Cloud Documentation Center

Elastic Container Instance (ECI) supports Windows-based instances. If your containers require a Windows environment, you can add a Windows virtual node to your cluster and schedule Pods to it. This action creates Windows-based ECI Pods (ECI instances) to run your containers.

Important

Windows instances are in invitational preview. To use this feature, submit a ticket.

Prerequisites

The version of Virtual Kubelet (the ACK Virtual Node component) in your cluster is v2.11.0-rc.0 or later. For more information, see Manage components and ACK Virtual Node.

Limitations

When you create a Windows-based ECI instance, the instance type must have at least 2 vCPUs and 4 GiB of memory. GPU-accelerated instance types, instance types with local disks, and ARM-based instance types are not supported.
The Windows container image version must be 10.0.20348.* (Windows Server 2022).

Add a Windows virtual node

To add a Windows virtual node to your cluster, modify the eci-profile.

Modify the eci-profile.
```
kubectl edit -n kube-system cm/eci-profile
```
In the data section of the eci-profile, set enableWindowsAmd64Node to "true". The following example shows the configuration:
```
data:
  ......
  enableWindowsAmd64Node: "true"   # Enable the Windows node.
  ......
```

Verify that the Windows virtual node is created.

kubectl get nodes -l kubernetes.io/os=windows

The output confirms that the Windows virtual nodes were automatically created in the cluster.

kubectl get nodes -l kubernetes.io/os=windows
NAME                                        STATUS   ROLES   AGE   VERSION
virtual-kubelet-cn-beijing-g-windows-amd64   Ready    agent   34s   v1.28.3-aliyun.1
virtual-kubelet-cn-beijing-h-windows-amd64   Ready    agent   34s   v1.28.3-aliyun.1

Create a Windows Pod

Windows virtual nodes have the "kubernetes.io/os": windows label. Use a nodeSelector to schedule the Pod to a Windows virtual node. This action creates a Windows-based ECI Pod to run your containers.

nodeSelector:
  kubernetes.io/os: windows

Example YAML:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: test-windows
  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-with-eip: "true"              # Associate an Elastic IP Address (EIP) to pull public images.
        k8s.aliyun.com/eci-use-specs: "ecs.c6.4xlarge"   # Specify the instance type.
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: test
        image: mcr.microsoft.com/windows/nanoserver:ltsc2022   # Use a Windows container image.
        command: ["ping","-t","localhost" ]
      nodeSelector:
        kubernetes.io/os: windows  # Schedule the Pod to the Windows virtual node.