Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) Pro clusters are developed based on ACK standard clusters. ACK Pro clusters are covered by the service level agreement (SLA) that supports compensation clauses. This type of cluster is suitable for enterprise users that require higher stability and security for large-scale production environments.

ACK Pro clusters offer all benefits of ACK standard clusters. For example, control planes are highly available and managed by ACK. In addition, ACK Pro clusters provide higher reliability, security, and schedulability and are covered by SLA terms for compensation. ACK Pro clusters are suitable for enterprises that require higher security and stability for large-scale workloads in production environments.

Scenarios

  • Internet enterprises. These enterprises deploy their business in large-scale production environments and require business management with high stability, security, and observability.
  • Big data computing enterprises. These enterprises deploy large-scale data computing services, high-performance data processing services, and other services with high elasticity. These services require clusters with high stability, high performance, and efficient computing capabilities.
  • International enterprises that run their business in China. These enterprises prioritize security and services that provide SLAs with compensation clauses.
  • Financial enterprises. These enterprises require SLAs that include compensation clauses.

Features

  • Managed control planes with high reliability: The management of large-scale clusters is supported. etcd is a reliable store for disaster recovery and data restoration. etcd uses cold backups and hot backups to ensure data availability for ACK Pro clusters. Key metrics are collected for you to gain insights from control components. This allows you to detect potential risks.
  • Clusters with higher security: By default, etcd uses encrypted disks in the control plane. In the data plane, kms-plugin is installed to encrypt Kubernetes Secrets. ACK provides security management for this type of cluster. The advanced security management feature allows you to inspect containers in the running state and enable auto repairing.
  • More intelligent pod scheduling: kube-scheduler is integrated to provide better pod scheduling capabilities. This allows you to schedule pods in bulk, set multiple scheduling algorithms, and schedule pods to NPU-accelerated nodes. This also enhances the pod scheduling capability in scenarios where large-scale data computing or high-performance data processing is required.
  • SLA guarantees: ACK Pro clusters are covered by the SLA that supports compensation clauses. A level of 99.95% uptime is guaranteed for the cluster API server.

Pricing

For more information about the pricing of ACK Pro clusters, see Billing.

Comparison

The following table compares ACK Pro clusters with ACK standard clusters.

CategoryFeatureACK Pro clusterACK standard cluster
Cluster sizeN/AUp to 5,000 nodes by default.

To increase the quota, go to Quota Center and submit a ticket.

Up to 10 nodes for each new cluster. A maximum of 5,000 nodes can be deployed in an existing ACK standard cluster. Existing ACK standard clusters can be upgraded to ACK Pro clusters.
SLAN/A99.95% (supports compensation)99.90% (does not support compensation)
API ServerCustom parameter settingsSupportedNot supported
Availability monitoringSupportedNot supported
etcdHigh-frequency cold backups, high-frequency hot backups, and geo-disaster recoverySupportedNot supported
Observability metricsSupportedNot supported
Kube-schedulerGang schedulingSupportedNot supported
Topology-aware CPU schedulingSupportedNot supported
Topology-aware GPU schedulingSupportedNot supported
cGPU Professional EditionSupportedNot supported
Security managementThe advanced security management feature that supports data encryption. For more information, see Use KMS to encrypt Kubernetes Secrets.SupportedNot supported
Managed node poolManaged node poolSupportedNot supported
Note