Container Service for Kubernetes:Overview of ACK One

Entry point of the ACK One console

ACK One console

Benefits

• ACK One provides a unified user interface and APIs to help enterprises manage and maintain clusters, computing, networks, storage, security, monitoring, logs, jobs, applications, and traffic.

• ACK One can automatically scale cloud resources to handle traffic fluctuations. You can also set ACK One to scale cloud resources at the specified time. This improves the cost-effectiveness of your businesses.

• The backup center is an out-of-the-box feature provided by ACK One to protect applications and application data. This feature allows you to migrate an application together with the application data across regions. You can also use this feature to deploy an application on multiple servers for high redundancy.

• ACK One can distribute applications, schedule jobs, and manage network traffic across all regions. This helps enterprises build a secure, standardized, and advanced IT framework for cloud-native applications to meet business architecture and data management requirements.

• ACK One allows you to quickly deploy large numbers of enterprise-class products or components that are verified by Alibaba Cloud in Kubernetes clusters. This enhances security, improves scheduling efficiency, and accelerates AI computing and big data computing.

Features

To meet challenges in distributed cloud scenarios, ACK One provides the following features.

Registered clusters

You can connect Kubernetes clusters provided by different service providers or deployed in different locations to the Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) console through registered clusters of ACK One. This enables you to centrally manage Kubernetes clusters and use a variety of scaling features provided by ACK to scale compute resources on Alibaba Cloud.

• Consistent O&M experience: Kubernetes clusters deployed in data centers and on third-party platforms can use the following features in the same way as ACK clusters.

  • Observability: You can monitor the control planes and data planes of ACK clusters, monitor applications in real time, collect and query logs, and perform cost analysis based on FinOps.

  • Security compliance: You can perform authorization and authentication, cluster auditing, policy management, and configuration inspection.

  • Backup and recovery: You can build a disaster recovery system on Alibaba Cloud to back up, restore, and migrate applications and application data.

  • Microservice governance: You can use Service Mesh or Microservices Engine (MSE) to manage microservices in Kubernetes clusters.

• On-cloud scaling: You can add Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances and elastic container instances to external Kubernetes clusters and schedule Alibaba Cloud compute resources in these clusters in case on-premises resources are insufficient or traffic spikes occur.

• Intelligent scheduling

  • The ACK scheduler provides advanced scheduling features, such as gang scheduling, topology-aware CPU scheduling, and Elastic Container Instance-based scheduling.

  • You can use ACK Fluid to accelerate access and reduce bandwidth usage through distributed cache system orchestration in scenarios where computing and storage are decoupled.

For more information about registered clusters, see Overview.

Multi-cluster Fleet instances

You can associate multiple Kubernetes clusters with a multi-cluster Fleet instance of ACK One and use the multi-cluster Fleet instance to manage these Kubernetes clusters through a unified control plane.

• The control plane is built based on Kubernetes control planes and provides Kubernetes APIs.

• You can connect external Kubernetes clusters to a multi-cluster Fleet instance through a registered cluster.

• GitOps for application distribution: You can host open source ArgoCD in ACK One. This allows you to distribute multi-cluster applications through GitOps.

• Traffic management: You can use MSE cloud-native gateways to manage north-south traffic for multi-cluster applications and create multi-cluster Services to manage east-west traffic.

• Job distribution: You can run jobs in multiple clusters at a scheduled time.

• Global monitoring: You can view the metrics of all clusters in one dashboard.

For more information about multi-cluster Fleet instances, see Fleet management overview.

Kubernetes clusters for distributed Argo workflows

Kubernetes clusters for distributed Argo workflows adopt a serverless architecture to run workflows on elastic container instances at a scheduled time.

• Cost optimization: Control planes are free of charge and data planes are billed based on the actual usage. You can also use preemptible instances to optimize costs.

• High I/O bandwidth: Distributed cache is used to provide more than 20 Gbit/s aggregated bandwidth for read operations and support cross-region access.

• Resource demand prediction: The system can automatically adjust resource specifications based on load awareness.

• High concurrency: You can run thousands of concurrent workflows and tens of thousands of concurrent computing tasks.

• Eventing: Workflows can be automatically triggered by events of Git, Message Service (MNS), and Object Storage Service (OSS).

For more information about Kubernetes clusters for distributed Argo workflows, see Overview.

Usage scenarios

Scenario 2: Use registered clusters and Alibaba Cloud services to extend the capability of external clusters and provide consistent O&M experience

Scenario

• Consistent O&M experience: You can use O&M capabilities provided by ACK One in Kubernetes clusters deployed in data centers or third-party public clouds.

• Enhanced observability: ACK One allows you to collect logs, monitoring data, and events, and offers consistent O&M experience across different environments.

• Enhanced security: You can enable auditing, security inspection, node risk detection, and policy governance with a few clicks.

• Microservice governance: You can use Service Mesh and MSE to conduct microservice governance.

Scenario 5: Use multi-cluster Fleet instances to distribute applications to multiple clusters through GitOps

Scenario

• High reliability: You can deploy applications from Git repositories and use features such as version control, application change approval, code rollback, and auditing.

• High security: Developers need only Git repository permissions. No Kubernetes cluster permissions are required.

• Continuous deployment: The status of applications in Git repositories is synchronized with the applications deployed in Kubernetes clusters.

• Multi-cluster application distribution: You can distribute an application to multiple clusters and configure these applications to use different configurations.

Scenario 6: Use multi-cluster Fleet instances and multi-cluster gateways to implement zone-disaster recovery

Scenario

• Multi-cluster gateways: You can use multi-cluster gateways to schedule north-south traffic to reduce costs.

• Global Ingresses: You can create Ingress routing rules to control Layer 7 traffic based on weights and the number of replicated pods. You can also configure automatic fallback.

Scenario 7: Use Kubernetes clusters for distributed Argo workflows to orchestrate and schedule standard jobs and complex workflows

Scenario

• Managed Serverless Argo control plane: The control pane complies with the orchestration standards of open source Argo Workflow.

• Multiple regions and zones: You can use resources across regions and zones and use preemptible instances to reduce costs.

• Distributed cache: Distributed cache can decouple computing and storage, accelerate access, and reduce computing costs.

• Applicable scenarios: A variety of scenarios are supported, including simulation, scientific computing, data processing, and continuous integration.

Contact us

If you have any questions about ACK One, join the DingTalk group 35688562.