Create an ACK managed cluster with GPU-accelerated nodes - Container Service for Kubernetes

This topic describes how to create an ACK managed cluster for heterogeneous computing in the Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) console.

Background information

ACK performs the following operations when a cluster is created:

Creates ECS instances, configures a public key to enable SSH logon from master nodes to other nodes, and then configures the ACK cluster through CloudInit.
Creates a security group that allows access to the VPC over Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP).
If you do not specify an existing VPC, ACK creates a VPC and a vSwitch and creates SNAT entries for the vSwitch.
Adds route entries to the VPC.
Creates a NAT gateway and EIPs.
Creates a Resource Access Management (RAM) user and an AccessKey pair. Grants the following permissions to the RAM user: permissions to query, create, and delete ECS instances, permissions to add and delete disks, and full permissions on SLB, CloudMonitor, VPC, Log Service, and Apsara File Storage NAS (NAS). The ACK cluster automatically creates SLB instances, disks, and VPC route entries based on your configuration.
Creates an internal-facing SLB instance and opens port 6443.
Creates an Internet-facing SLB instance and opens ports 6443, 8443, and 22. If you enable SSH logon over the Internet when you create the cluster, port 22 is opened. Otherwise, port 22 is not exposed.

Limits

ACK clusters support only VPCs.
By default, each account has specific quotas on cloud resources that can be created. You cannot create clusters if the quota is reached. Make sure that you have sufficient resource quotas before you create a cluster.
- For more information, see Resource quota limits.
  Important By default, you can add up to 200 route entries to a VPC. This means that you can deploy up to 200 nodes in an ACK cluster that uses Flannel. This limit does not apply to ACK clusters that use Terway. To deploy more nodes in a cluster, please go to Quota Center to apply for an increase on the quota of route entries in the VPC where the cluster is deployed.
- By default, you can create at most 100 security groups with each account.
- By default, you can create at most 60 pay-as-you-go SLB instances with each account.
- By default, you can create at most 20 EIPs with each account.
Limits on ECS instances:
The pay-as-you-go and subscription billing methods are supported.
Note After an ECS instance is created, you can change its billing method from pay-as-you-go to subscription in the ECS console. For more information, see Change the billing method of an ECS instance from pay-as-you-go to subscription.

Procedure

Log on to the ACK console.
In the left-side navigation pane of the ACK console, click Clusters.
In the upper-right corner of the Clusters page, click Cluster Template.
In the Select Cluster Template dialog box, find Heterogeneous Computing Cluster in the Managed Clusters section and click Create.

On the Managed Kubernetes tab, configure the cluster.

Configure basic settings of the cluster.


Parameter	Description
Cluster Name	Enter a name for the cluster. Note The name must be 1 to 63 characters in length, and can contain digits, letters, and hyphens (-).
Cluster Specification	Select the required edition. By default, the Standard edition is selected.
Region	Select a region to deploy the cluster.
Billing Method	The pay-as-you-go and subscription billing methods are supported. If you select the subscription billing method, you must set the following parameters: Note If you set Billing Method to Subscription, only Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances and Server Load Balancer (SLB) instances are billed on a subscription basis. Other cloud resources are billed on a pay-as-you-go basis. For more information about the billing rules of Alibaba Cloud resources, see Billing of cloud services. Duration: You can select 1, 2, 3, or 6 months. If you require a longer duration, you can select 1 year, 2 years, or 3 years. Auto Renewal: Specify whether to enable auto-renewal.
Resource Group	Move the pointer over All Resources at the top of the page and select the resource group to which the cluster belongs. The name of the selected resource group is displayed.
Kubernetes Version	Select a Kubernetes version.
Container Runtime	Select the container runtime based on the Kubernetes version that you use. If you use a Kubernetes version earlier than 1.24, the containerd, Docker, and Sandboxed-Container runtimes are supported. If you use Kubernetes 1.24 or later, the containerd runtime is supported for the Container Runtime parameter. For more information, see Comparison of Docker, containerd, and Sandboxed-Container.
VPC	Select a VPC to deploy the cluster. Standard VPCs and shared VPCs are supported. Shared VPC: The owner of a VPC (resource owner) can share the vSwitches in the VPC with other accounts in the same organization. Standard VPC: The owner of a VPC (resource owner) cannot share the vSwitches in the VPC with other accounts. Note ACK clusters support only VPCs. You can select a VPC from the drop-down list. If no VPC is available, click Create VPC to create one. For more information, see Create and manage a VPC.
vSwitch	Select vSwitches. You can select up to three vSwitches that are deployed in different zones. If no vSwitch is available, click Create vSwitch to create one. For more information, see Create and manage a vSwitch.
Network plug-in	Select a network plug-in for the cluster. Flannel and Terway are available. For more information, see Work with Terway. Flannel: a simple and stable Container Network Interface (CNI) plug-in that is developed by open source Kubernetes. Flannel provides a few simple features. However, it does not support standard Kubernetes network policies. Terway: a network plug-in that is developed by ACK. Terway allows you to assign elastic network interfaces (ENIs) of Alibaba Cloud to containers. It also allows you to customize Kubernetes network policies to regulate how containers communicate with each other and implement bandwidth throttling on individual containers. Note The number of pods that can be deployed on a node depends on the number of ENIs that are attached to the node and the maximum number of secondary IP addresses provided by these ENIs. If you select a shared VPC for a cluster, you must select Terway as the network plug-in.
IP Addresses per Node	If you select Flannel as the network plug-in, you must set IP Addresses per Node. Note IP Addresses per Node specifies the maximum number of IP addresses that can be assigned to each node. We recommend that you use the default value. After you select the VPC and specify the number of IP addresses per node, recommended values are automatically generated for Pod CIDR Block and Service CIDR. The system also provides the maximum number of nodes that can be deployed in the cluster and the maximum number of pods that can be deployed on each node. You can modify the values based on your business requirements.
Pod CIDR Block	If you select Flannel as the network plug-in, you must set Pod CIDR Block. The CIDR block specified by Pod CIDR Block cannot overlap with that of the VPC or those of the existing clusters in the VPC. The CIDR block cannot be modified after the cluster is created. The Service CIDR block cannot overlap with the pod CIDR block. For more information about how to plan CIDR blocks for an ACK cluster, see Plan CIDR blocks for an ACK cluster.
Terway Mode	If you set Network Plug-in to Terway, the Terway Mode parameter is available. When you set Terway Mode, you can select or clear Assign One ENI to Each Pod. If you select Assign One ENI to Each Pod, an elastic network interface (ENI) is assigned to each pod. If you clear Assign One ENI to Each Pod, an ENI is shared among multiple pods. A secondary IP address of the ENI is assigned to each pod. Note To use the Assign One ENI to Each Pod feature, please go to Quota Center.
Service CIDR	Set Service CIDR. The CIDR block specified by Service CIDR cannot overlap with that of the VPC or those of the existing clusters in the VPC. The CIDR block cannot be modified after the cluster is created. The Service CIDR block cannot overlap with the pod CIDR block. For more information about how to plan CIDR blocks for an ACK cluster, see Plan CIDR blocks for an ACK cluster.
Configure SNAT	Specify whether to configure SNAT rules for the VPC. If the specified VPC has a NAT gateway, ACK uses this NAT gateway. If the VPC does not have a NAT gateway, the system automatically creates one. If you do not want the system to create a NAT gateway, clear Configure SNAT for VPC. In this case, you must manually create a NAT gateway and configure SNAT rules to enable Internet access for the VPC. Otherwise, resources in the VPC cannot access the Internet and the cluster cannot be created.
Access to API Server	By default, an internal-facing SLB instance is created for the Kubernetes API server of the cluster. You can modify the specification of the SLB instance. For more information, see Instance specifications. Important If you delete the SLB instance, you cannot access the Kubernetes API server of the cluster. Specify whether to enable Expose API Server with EIP. The ACK API server provides multiple HTTP-based RESTful APIs, which can be used to create, delete, modify, query, and monitor resources, such as pods and Services. If you select this check box, an elastic IP address (EIP) is created and associated with an SLB instance. Port 6443 used by the API server is opened on control planes. You can connect to and manage the cluster by using kubeconfig files over the Internet. If you clear this check box, no EIP is created. You can connect to and manage the cluster by using kubeconfig files only from within the VPC.
RDS Whitelist	Configure the whitelist of the ApsaraDB RDS instance. Add the IP addresses of nodes in the cluster to a whitelist of the ApsaraDB RDS instance.
Security Group	You can select Create Basic Security Group, Create Advanced Security Group, or Select Existing Security Group. For more information about security groups, see Overview.
Deletion Protection	Specify whether to enable deletion protection for the cluster. Deletion protection prevents the cluster from being deleted in the console or by calling the API. This prevents user errors.

Configure advanced settings of the cluster.


Parameter	Description
Time Zone	Select a time zone for the cluster. By default, the time zone of your browser is selected.
Kube-proxy Mode	iptables and IPVS are supported. iptables is a mature and stable kube-proxy mode. It uses iptables rules to conduct service discovery and load balancing. The performance of this mode is restricted by the size of the Kubernetes cluster. This mode is suitable for Kubernetes clusters that manage a small number of Services. IPVS is a high-performance kube-proxy mode. It uses Linux Virtual Server (LVS) to conduct service discovery and load balancing. This mode is suitable for clusters that manage a large number of Services. We recommend that you use this mode in scenarios where high-performance load balancing is required.
Labels	Add labels to nodes in the cluster. Enter a key and a value, and then click Add. Note Key is required. `Value` is optional. Keys are not case-sensitive. A key must be 1 to 64 characters in length and cannot start with aliyun, http://, or https://. `Values` are not case-sensitive. A value cannot exceed 128 characters in length and cannot contain http:// or https://. A value can be empty. The keys of labels that are added to the same resource must be unique. If you add a label with a used key, the label overwrites the label that uses the same key. If you add more than 20 labels to a resource, all labels become invalid. You must remove excess labels for the remaining labels to take effect.
Cluster Domain	Set the domain name of the cluster. Note The default domain name is cluster.local. You can enter a custom domain name. A domain name consists of two parts. Each part must be 1 to 63 characters in length and can contain only letters and digits. You cannot leave these parts empty.
Custom Certificate SANs	You can enter custom subject alternative names (SANs) for the API server certificate of the cluster to accept requests from specified IP addresses or domain names. For more information, see Customize the SAN of the API server certificate when you create an ACK cluster.
Service Account Token Volume Projection	Service account token volume projection reduces security risks when pods use service accounts to access the API server. This feature enables kubelet to request and store the token on behalf of the pod. This feature also allows you to configure token properties, such as the audience and validity duration. For more information, see Enable service account token volume projection.
Secret Encryption	If you select Select Key, you can use a key that is created in the Key Management Service (KMS) console to encrypt Kubernetes Secrets. For more information, see Use KMS to encrypt Kubernetes Secrets.

Click Next:Node Pool Configurations to configure worker nodes.

Set worker instances.

If you select Create Instance, you must set the parameters as described in the following table.


Parameter	Description
Node Pool Name	The name of the node pool. Note The name must be 1 to 63 characters in length, and can contain digits, letters, and hyphens (-).
Instance type	You must select the instance types for heterogeneous computing, including GPU-accelerated, FPGA-accelerated, and NPU-accelerated instances. For more information about the instance types, see Overview of instance families. Note If no instance type is available, you can change vSwitches on the Cluster Configurations wizard page.
Selected Types	The selected instance types are displayed.
Quantity	Specify the number of worker nodes (ECS instances) to be created.
System Disk	ESSDs, standard SSDs, and ultra disks are supported. Note You can select Enable Backup to back up disk data. If you select ESSD as the system disk type, you can set a custom performance level for the system disk. You can select higher performance levels for ESSDs with larger storage capacities. For example, you can select performance level 2 for an ESSD with a storage capacity of more than 460 GiB. You can select performance level 3 for an ESSD with a storage capacity of more than 1,260 GiB. For more information, see Capacity and PLs.
Mount Data Disk	Enhanced SSD (ESSDs), standard SSDs, and ultra disks are supported. You can select Encrypt Disk and Enable Backup when you mount data disks.
Operating System	ACK supports the following node operating systems: Alibaba Cloud Linux 2.x. This is the default operating system. If you select Alibaba Cloud Linux 2.x, you can configure security reinforcement for the operating system: Disable: disables security reinforcement for Alibaba Cloud Linux 2.x. CIS Reinforcement: enables security reinforcement for Alibaba Cloud Linux 2.x. For more information about Center for Internet Security (CIS) reinforcement, see CIS reinforcement. Alibaba Cloud Linux 3.x Most Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 images are supported by most instance families. However, some Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 images are supported only by specific instance families. For more information, see Release notes of images that are suitable only for specific instance families. CentOS 7.x Note CentOS 8.x and later are not supported.
Logon Type	Key pair logon Set Logon Type to Key Pair. If no key pair is available, click create a key pair to create one in the ECS console. For more information, see Create an SSH key pair. After the key pair is created, set it as the credential that is used to log on to the cluster. Password logon Password: Enter the password that is used to log on to the nodes. Confirm Password: Enter the password again. Note The password must be 8 to 30 characters in length, and must contain at least three of the following character types: uppercase letters, lowercase letters, digits, and special characters. The password cannot contain underscores (_).
Key Pair

If you select Add Existing Instance, you must select ECS instances that are deployed in the specified region. Then, set the Operating System, Logon Type, and Key Pair parameters based on the preceding description.

Configure advanced settings.


Parameter	Description
Node Protection	Specify whether to enable node protection. Note By default, this check box is selected. Node protection prevents nodes from being accidentally deleted in the console or by calling the API. This prevents user errors.
User Data	For more information, see Overview of ECS instance user data.
Custom Image	You can select a custom ECS image. After you select a custom image, all nodes in the cluster are deployed by using this image. For more information about how to create a custom image, see Create a Kubernetes cluster by using a custom image. You can select a shared ECS image. After you select a shared image, all nodes in the cluster are deployed by using this image. For more information about shared images, see Procedure. Note Only custom images based on CentOS 7.x and Alibaba Cloud Linux are supported. To use this feature, please go to Quota Center to apply to be added to the whitelist.
Custom Node Name	Specify whether to use a custom node name. If you choose to use a custom node name, the name of the node, name of the ECS instance, and hostname of the ECS instance are changed. A custom node name consists of a prefix, an IP address, and a suffix. A custom node name must be 2 to 64 characters in length. The prefix and suffix can contain letters, digits, hyphens (-), and periods (.). The prefix and suffix must start with a letter and cannot end with a hyphen (-) or period (.). The prefix and suffix cannot contain consecutive hyphens (-) or periods (.). Due to the ECS instance limit, the prefix is required. The suffix is optional. For a Windows node that uses a custom node name, the hostname of the ECS instance is fixed to the IP address of the node. In the hostname, hyphens (-) are used to replace the periods (.) in the IP address. The hostname does not include the prefix or suffix. For example, the node IP address is 192.1xx.x.xx, the prefix is aliyun.com, and the suffix is test. If the node runs Linux, the name of the node, name of the ECS instance, and hostname of the ECS instance are aliyun.com192.1xx.x.xxtest. If the node runs Windows, the hostname of the ECS instance is 192-1xx-x-xx, and the names of the node and ECS instance are aliyun.com192.1xx.x.xxtest.
CPU Policy	Set the CPU management policy. none: This policy indicates that the default CPU affinity is used. This is the default policy. static: This policy allows pods with specific resource characteristics on the node to be granted with enhanced CPU affinity and exclusivity.
Taints	Add taints to all worker nodes in the cluster.

Click Next:Component Configurations to configure components.


Parameter	Description
Ingress	Specify whether to install the NGINX Ingress controller. By default, Install NGINX Ingress Controller is selected. For more information, see Advanced NGINX Ingress configurations. Note If you want to select Create Ingress Dashboard, you must first enable Log Service.
Service Discovery	Specify whether to install NodeLocal DNSCache. By default, NodeLocal DNSCache is installed. NodeLocal DNSCache runs a Domain Name System (DNS) caching agent to improve the performance and stability of DNS resolution. For more information about NodeLocal DNSCache, see Configure NodeLocal DNSCache.
Volume Plug-in	Select a volume plug-in. FlexVolume and CSI are supported. ACK clusters can be automatically bound to Alibaba Cloud disks, Apsara File Storage NAS (NAS) file systems, and Object Storage Service (OSS) buckets that are mounted to pods. For more information, see Storage management-FlexVolume and Storage management-CSI.
Monitoring Agents	Specify whether to install the CloudMonitor agent. By default, Install CloudMonitor Agent on ECS Instance and Enable Prometheus Monitoring are selected. After the CloudMonitor agent is installed on ECS nodes, you can view monitoring data about the nodes in the CloudMonitor console.
Alerts	Select Use Default Alert Rule Template to enable the alerting feature and use the default alert rules. For more information, see Alert management.
Log Service	Specify whether to enable Log Service. You can select an existing Log Service project or create one. By default, Enable Log Service is selected. When you create an application, you can enable Log Service with a few steps. For more information, see Collect log data from containers by using Log Service. After you select Enable Log Service, you can specify whether to select Create Ingress Dashboard and Install node-problem-detector and Create Event Center.
Log Collection for Control Plane Components	If you select Enable, the logs of control plane components are collected to the specified Log Service project that belongs to the current account. For more information, see Collect the logs of control plane components in ACK Pro clusters.
Workflow Engine	Specify whether to enable Alibaba Cloud Genomics Service (AGS). Note To use this feature, submit a ticket to apply to be added to a whitelist. If you select this check box, the system automatically installs the AGS workflow plug-in when the system creates the cluster. If you clear this check box, you must manually install the AGS workflow plug-in. For more information, see Introduction to AGS CLI.

Click Next:Confirm Order.
Select Terms of Service and click Create Cluster.
Note It requires approximately 10 minutes for the system to create an ACK managed cluster that contains multiple nodes.

What to do next

After the cluster is created, go to the Clusters page, find the created cluster, and then click the cluster name or click Details in the Actions column. In the left-side navigation pane of the details page, choose Nodes > Nodes. On the page that appears, select a worker node and choose More > Details in the Actions column. Then, you can view the GPUs that are provided by the node.