Knative is a serverless framework for applications on Kubernetes. Knative is intended for developing a cloud-native and cross-platform orchestration standard for serverless deployment. This topic describes how to enable Knative for a serverless Kubernetes (ASK) cluster.

Background information

Knative can be deployed in the following types of Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) clusters: dedicated Kubernetes clusters, managed Kubernetes clusters, and ASK clusters. You can deploy only Knative Serving in ASK clusters.

Deploy Knative when you create an ASK cluster

  1. Log on to the ACK console.
  2. In the left-side navigation pane, click Clusters.
  3. In the upper-right corner of the Clusters page, click Create Kubernetes Cluster.
  4. On the Serverless Kubernetes tab, configure the parameters. The following table describes the key parameters. For information about how to configure other parameters, see Create an ASK cluster.
    Parameter Description
    Kubernetes Version Select 1.15 or later.
    NAT Gateway Specifies whether to automatically create a NAT gateway and configure source network address translation (SNAT) rules for the virtual private cloud (VPC) where you want to deploy the ASK cluster. This parameter is required only when you set VPC to Create VPC.
    • If you set VPC to Create VPC, you can select whether to automatically create a NAT gateway and configure SNAT rules for the VPC.
    • If you clear this check box, you must manually create a NAT gateway and configure SNAT rules for the VPC. Otherwise, the cluster deployed in the VPC cannot access the Internet.
    Access to the Internet Enable or disable Expose API Server with EIP.
    • If you select this check box, an elastic IP address (EIP) is created and port 6443 on master nodes is exposed. This port is used by the API server. You can connect to and manage the cluster by using kubeconfig over the Internet.
    • If you clear this check box, no EIP is created. You can connect to and manage the cluster by using kubeconfig only within the VPC.
    Knative Select Enable Knative to deploy Knative in the ASK cluster. 2
  5. Click Create Cluster in the upper-right corner of the page. In the Confirm message, click OK to start the deployment.

Deploy Knative in the ASK cluster

  1. Log on to the Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) console.
  2. In the left-side navigation pane, click Clusters.
  3. On the Clusters page, click the name of a cluster or click Details in the Actions column.
  4. In the left-side navigation pane of the details page, choose Applications > Knative.
  5. On the Components tab, click Deploy Knative.
  6. After you select the Knative components that you want to install, click Deploy.

    You can use Knative Serving to manage serverless workloads. Pods can be automatically scaled for serverless applications upon Knative events and user requests. If no workload is processed, the number of pods can be scaled to zero.

Verify the result

After Knative is deployed, you can go to the Knative Components page and verify that the state of Knative is Installed.