Getting started with ACK using kubectl

Prerequisites

You are familiar with the basic concepts of Kubernetes. For more information, see Basic concepts.

Procedure

Step 1: Activate and grant permissions to ACK

If this is the first time you use ACK, you must activate ACK and grant ACK the permissions to access cloud resources.

1. Go to the Container Service for Kubernetes page.
2. Read and select Container Service for Kubernetes Terms of Service.
3. Click Activate Now.
4. Log on to the ACK console.
5. On the Container service needs to create default roles page, click Go to RAM console. On the Cloud Resource Access Authorization page, click Confirm Authorization Policy.
   After you assign the Resource Access Management (RAM) roles to ACK, log on to the ACK console again to get started with ACK.

Step 2: Create a professional Kubernetes cluster

This step shows how to create a professional Kubernetes cluster. Default settings are used for most cluster parameters. For more information about cluster parameters, see Create a professional managed Kubernetes cluster.

1. Log on to the ACK console.
2. In the left-side navigation pane of the ACK console, click Clusters.
3. In the upper-right corner of the Clusters page, click Create Kubernetes Cluster.
4. On the Managed Kubernetes tab, set cluster parameters as described in the following table. Use default settings for the parameters that are not included in the table.
   

   Parameter	Description
   Cluster Name	Enter a name for the cluster. In this example, the name is set to ACK-Demo.
   Cluster Specification	Select the cluster type. In this example, Professional is selected. For more information about professional Kubernetes clusters, see Introduction to professional managed Kubernetes clusters.
   Region	Select a region to deploy the cluster. In this example, the China (Beijing) region is selected.
   VPC	ACK clusters can be deployed only in virtual private clouds (VPCs). You must specify a VPC in the same region as the cluster. In this example, a VPC named vpc-ack-demo is created in the China (Beijing) region. To create a VPC, click Create VPC. For more information, see Create and manage a VPC.
   vSwitch	Select vSwitches for nodes in the cluster to communicate with each other. In this example, a vSwitch named vswitch-ack-demo is created in the vpc-ack-demo VPC. Select vswitch-ack-demo in the vSwitch list. To create a vSwitch, click Create vSwitch. For more information, see Work with vSwitches.
   Access to API Server	Specify whether to expose the Kubernetes API server of the cluster to the Internet. If you want to manage the cluster over the Internet, you must expose the Kubernetes API server with an elastic IP address (EIP). In this example, Expose API Server with EIP is selected.

5. Click Next:Node Pool Configurations. Configure the following parameters as described. Use default parameters for the remaining parameters.
   

   Parameter	Description
   Instance Type	Select instance types that are used to deploy nodes. To ensure the stability of the cluster, we recommend that you select instance types with at least 4 vCPUs and 8 GiB of memory. For more information about Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance types and how to select instance types, see Instance family and Select ECS instances to create the master and worker nodes of an ACK cluster. In this example, the ecs.g5.xlarge instance type is selected to deploy worker nodes. You can enter ecs.g5.xlarge in the search box and click the search icon.
   Quantity	Specify the number of worker nodes. In this example, the number is set to 2 to avoid service interruptions caused by single points of failure (SPOFs).
   System Disk	Set the system disk for nodes. In this example, the enhanced SSD is selected and the disk size is set to 40 GiB, which is the smallest size available.
   Logon Type	Select the logon type for nodes. In this example, password logon is selected as the logon type and a password is specified.

6. Click Next:Component Configurations. Use default settings for all component parameters.
7. Click Next:Confirm Order, read and select Terms of Service, and then click Create Cluster.
   Note It requires approximately 10 minutes to create a cluster. After the cluster is created, you can view the cluster on the Clusters page.

Step 3: Connect to the cluster

This step shows how to connect to the ACK cluster by using a kubectl client or Cloud Shell. For more information, see Connect to ACK clusters by using kubectl and Use kubectl on Cloud Shell to manage ACK clusters.

Method 1: Connect to the cluster by using a kubectl client

1. Log on to the ACK console.
2. In the left-side navigation pane of the ACK console, click Clusters.
3. On the Cluster Information page, click the Connection Information tab. Click Copy on the Public Access tab. This way, the credential used to access the cluster over the Internet is copied.
4. Paste the credential to the config file in the $HOME/.kube directory, save the file, and then exit.
   Note If the .kube folder and the config file do not exist in the $HOME/ directory, you must manually create the folder and file.
5. Run a kubectl command to connect to the cluster.
   Run the following command to query the namespaces of the cluster:

   kubectl get namespace

   Expected output:

   NAME              STATUS   AGE
   arms-prom         Active   4h39m
   default           Active   4h39m
   kube-node-lease   Active   4h39m
   kube-public       Active   4h39m
   kube-system       Active   4h39m

Method 2: Connect to the cluster by using Cloud Shell

1. Log on to the ACK console.
2. In the left-side navigation pane of the ACK console, click Clusters.
3. On the Clusters page, find the cluster that you want to manage and choose More > Open Cloud Shell in the Actions column.
   It requires a few seconds to start Cloud Shell. After Cloud Shell is started, you can run kubectl commands on the Cloud Shell interface to manage the cluster and applications deployed in the cluster.

Step 4: Deploy and expose an application

This step shows how to use kubectl to deploy a stateless application by creating a Deployment and use a LoadBalancer Service to expose the application. For more information about how to expose an application, see Use an automatically created SLB instance to expose an application.

1. Use the following YAML template to create an ack-cube.yaml file:

   apiVersion: apps/v1 # for versions before 1.8.0 use apps/v1beta1
   kind: Deployment
   metadata:
     name: ack-cube # The name of the application. 
     labels:
       app: ack-cube
   spec:
     replicas: 2 # The number of replicated pods. 
     selector:
       matchLabels:
         app: ack-cube  # You must specify the same value for the selector of the Service that is used to expose the application. 
     template:
       metadata:
         labels:
           app: ack-cube
       spec:
         containers:
         - name: ack-cube
           image: registry.cn-hangzhou.aliyuncs.com/acr-toolkit/ack-cube:1.0 # Replace with the address of the image that you want to use in the format of <image_name:tags>. 
           ports:
           - containerPort: 80 # The container port that you want to open. 
           resources:
             limits: # The resource limits of the application. 
               cpu: '1'
               memory: 1Gi
             requests: # The resource requests of the application.
               cpu: 500m
               memory: 512Mi        

2. Run the following command to deploy the ack-cube application:

   kubectl apply -f ack-cube.yaml

3. Run the following command to query the status of the application:

   kubectl get deployment ack-cube

   Expected output:

   NAME       READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
   ack-cube   2/2     2            2           96s

4. Use the following YAML template to create an ack-cube-svc.yaml file. Set selector to the value of matchLabels in the ack-cube.yaml file. In this example, the value is app: ack-cube. This adds the application to the backend of the Service.

   apiVersion: v1
   kind: Service
   metadata:
     labels:
       app: ack-cube
     name: ack-cube-svc
     namespace: default
   spec:
     ports:
     - port: 80
       protocol: TCP
       targetPort: 80
     selector:
       app: ack-cube # You must specify the value of the matchLabels parameter in the YAML file that is used to create the Deployment. 
     type: LoadBalancer

5. Run the following command to create a Service named ack-cube-svc and use the Service to expose the application.
   ACK automatically creates an Internet-facing Server Load Balancer (SLB) instance and associates the instance with the Service.

   kubectl apply -f ack-cube-svc.yaml

6. Run the following command to verify that the LoadBalancer Service is created.
   The application that you created is exposed by using the IP address in the EXTERNAL-IP column in the output.

   kubectl get svc ack-cube-svc

   Expected output:

   NAME           TYPE           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP     PORT(S)        AGE
   ack-cube-svc   LoadBalancer   172.16.72.161   47.94.xx.xx   80:31547/TCP   32s

Step 5: Test the application

Enter the IP address (EXTERNAL-IP) in the address bar of your browser and press Enter to start the magic cube game.

Step 6: Monitor the application

For more information, see Step 5: Monitor the application.

References

• To enable the auto scaling of application pods, you can configure the Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA), Cron Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (CronHPA), and Vertical Pod Autoscaler (VPA). For more information, see Auto scaling overview.
• In addition to exposing applications through Services, you can use Ingresses to enable application traffic routing at Layer 7. For more information, see Create an Ingress.
• In addition to monitoring container performance, you can also monitor the cluster infrastructure, application performance, and your business operations. For more information, see Observability overview.
• To avoid unnecessary costs, we recommend that you delete clusters no longer in use. For more information, see Delete an ACK cluster.