Managed edge Kubernetes clusters are designed to bring cloud computing to terminal devices at the edge. Managed edge Kubernetes clusters can be created, managed, and maintained in the Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) console. ACK is a platform that integrates cloud computing with edge computing on top of the edge computing infrastructure. This topic describes how to create a managed edge Kubernetes cluster in the ACK console.

Prerequisites

ACK, Auto Scaling, and Resource Access Management (RAM) are activated.

ACK is activated in the ACK console. RAM is activated in the RAM console. Auto Scaling is activated in the Auto Scaling console.

Note
  • Server Load Balancer (SLB) instances that are created along with an ACK cluster support only the pay-as-you-go billing method.
  • ACK clusters support only virtual private clouds (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. To request a quota increase. Go to the Quota Center page to submit a ticket.
    • 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 elastic IP addresses (EIPs) with each account.

Background information

The sharp growth of smart devices connected to the Internet and the needs to deploy business and process data at edges have significant impacts on edge computing services. To meet these requirements, a variety of new edge computing services have emerged, such as edge intelligence, real-time edge computing, and edge analytics. Traditional cloud computing platforms provide computing and storage services in the cloud. However, this no longer meets the requirements of edge devices for time-efficient computing, larger storage capacity, and enhanced computing capacity. To meet these requirements, ACK provides managed edge Kubernetes clusters to coordinate services in the cloud and edges. A managed edge Kubernetes cluster is a standard, secure, and highly-available Kubernetes cluster deployed in the cloud. This type of cluster is integrated with features of Alibaba Cloud, such as virtualization, storage, networking, and security. This simplifies how to manage and maintain clusters and allows you to focus on your business development. In addition, quick access to a variety of heterogeneous edge computing services is supported at the edges. The cloud control center allows you to manage edge devices, such as IoT gateway devices, terminals, Content Delivery Network (CDN) resources, and data centers. The X86 and ARM architectures are supported. Managed edge Kubernetes clusters have been used in various fields, such as edge intelligence, intelligent buildings, intelligent factories, audio and video live streaming, online education, and CDN.

Procedure

  1. Log on to the ACK console and click Clusters in the left-side navigation pane.
  2. In the upper-right corner of the Clusters page, click Create Kubernetes Cluster.
  3. Click the Managed Edge Kubernetes tab and 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, hyphens (-), and underscores (_). The name cannot start with an underscore (_).
    Cluster Specification

    Select a cluster type. You can select Standard edition or Professional.

    Select Standard edition to create a managed edge Kubernetes cluster.

    Region

    Select a region to deploy the cluster.

    Resource Group
    Move the pointer over All Resources at the top of the page and select the resource group that you want to use. After you select a resource group, virtual private clouds (VPCs) and vSwitches are filtered based on the selected resource group. When you create a cluster, only the VPCs and vSwitches that belong to the selected resource group are displayed in the console. Resource group
    Kubernetes Version The supported Kubernetes versions are displayed.
    Containerd Runtime The supported containerd runtime are Docker, Containerd, and Sandboxed-Container. For more information about containerd, 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.

    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 blocks specified by Pod CIDR Block and Service CIDR cannot overlap with the CIDR block of the VPC and the CIDR blocks of the existing ACK clusters in the VPC. You cannot modify the CIDR blocks after the cluster is created. The Service CIDR block cannot overlap with the Pod CIDR block. For more information about subnetting for ACK clusters, see Plan CIDR blocks for an ACK cluster.

    Service CIDR
    Configure SNAT

    By default, an ACK cluster cannot access the Internet. If the VPC that you select for the cluster cannot access the Internet, you can select Configure SNAT for VPC. This way, ACK will create a NAT gateway and configure SNAT rules to enable Internet access for the VPC.

    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 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 master nodes. 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.
    Note Edge nodes interact with the API server in the cloud over the Internet. If you clear Expose API Server with EIP, the edge nodes cannot connect to the cluster in the cloud. As a result, the created cluster cannot be used in edge computing scenarios.
    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.
    Note To enable an ApsaraDB RDS instance to access the cluster, you must make sure that the instance is deployed in the VPC where the cluster is deployed.
    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.
    Note
    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.

    Resource Group

    The resource group that owns the cluster to be created. Each resource can belong only to one resource group. You can regard a resource group as a project, an application, or an organization based on your business scenarios. For more information, see Resource groups.

    Configure advanced settings of the cluster.

    Parameter Description
    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 cluster nodes. 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.
  4. Click Next:Worker Configurations to configure worker nodes.
    Note In a managed edge Kubernetes cluster, you must configure at least one worker node to deploy components.
    Parameter Description
    Instance Type

    You can select multiple instance types. For more information about, see Overview of instance families.

    Note To use advanced features such as logging, monitoring, and reverse tunneling, you must deploy the related components in the cloud. Therefore, you must create at least one Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance as a worker node.
    Selected Types

    The selected instance types are displayed.

    Quantity

    Specify the number of worker nodes (ECS instances) to be created.

    System Disk
    Enhanced SSD (ESSDs), standard SSDs, and ultra disks are supported.
    Note
    • You can select Enable Backup to back up disk data.
    • If you select enhanced SSD as the system disk type, you can set a custom performance level for the system disk.

      You can select higher performance levels for enhanced SSDs with larger storage capacities. For example, you can select performance level 2 for an enhanced SSD with a storage capacity of more than 460 GiB. You can select performance level 3 for an enhanced SSD with a storage capacity of more than 1,260 GiB. For more information, see Capacity and PLs.

    Mount Data Disk

    Enhanced SSDs, standard SSDs, and ultra disks are supported. You can enable disk encryption and disk backup when you mount a data disk. If you enable disk encryption, only the default customer master key (CMK) can be used.

    Logon Type
    • Key pair logon.
      • Key Pair: Select an SSH key pair from the drop-down list.
      • create a key pair: Create an SSH key pair if none is available. For more information about how to create an SSH key pair, 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 (_).
    Note You must set the logon type if you select Install CloudMonitor Agent on ECS Instance or Enable Log Service.
  5. Click Next:Component Configurations to configure components.
    Parameter Description
    CloudMonitor Agent Select whether to install the CloudMonitor agent. If you select Install the CloudMonitor Agent on ECS Nodes, you can view monitoring data about the nodes in the CloudMonitor console.
    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.

  6. Click Next:Confirm Order.
  7. Read Terms of Service, select the check box, and then click Create Cluster.
    Note It requires about 10 minutes to create a managed edge Kubernetes cluster.

Result

After the cluster is created, you can view the created cluster on the Clusters page in the ACK console. Clusters
Click View Logs in the Actions column. On the Log Information page, you can view the cluster log. To view detailed log information, click Stack events. View cluster details

On the Clusters page, find the newly created cluster and click Details in the Actions column. On the details page of the cluster, you can click the Basic Information tab to view basic information about the cluster and click the Connection Information tab to view information about how to connect to the cluster.

The following information is displayed:
  • API Server Public Endpoint: the IP address and port that the API server uses to provide services over the Internet. It allows you to manage the cluster by using kubectl or other tools on your terminal.
  • API Server Internal Endpoint: the IP address and port that the API server uses to provide services within the cluster. The IP address belongs to the SLB instance that is bound to the cluster.
  • Testing Domain: the domain name that is used to test Services. The suffix of the domain name is <cluster_id>.<region_id>.alicontainer.com.
    Note To remap the domain name, click Rebind Domain Name.
You can Connect to ACK clusters by using kubectl and run the kubectl get node command to view information about the nodes in the cluster. Check the results