ACK clusters - Container Service for Kubernetes - Alibaba Cloud Documentation Center

Container Service for Kubernetes offers multiple cluster types. These clusters come with different features, O&M requirements, and service level agreements (SLAs), making them suitable for various scenarios. This topic compares cluster types to help you select the one that best suits your business needs.

Cluster types

ACK provides two types of clusters, which are distinguished by whether Alibaba Cloud manages the control plane:

ACK managed clusters: The control plane of an ACK managed cluster is fully managed by Alibaba Cloud. They are available in Pro and Basic editions, which differ in control plane availability and advanced customization features. The Pro edition supports the reserved control plane feature (Pro XL / Pro 2XL / Pro 4XL), which allows you to pre-allocate and reserve control plane resources to ensure predictable control plane performance.
ACK dedicated clusters: You must create and maintain the control plane of an ACK dedicated cluster.
Important
ACK dedicated clusters can no longer be created. For more information, see Product Announcement: Discontinuation of New ACK Dedicated Clusters.

The following table describes the differences between the cluster types.

Item	ACK managed cluster		ACK dedicated cluster
	Pro	Basic
Cluster scale	Up to 100 clusters per account. By default, each cluster supports up to 5,000 worker nodes. You can request a quota increase in Quota Center.	Up to 2 clusters per account. By default, each cluster supports up to 10 worker nodes. Quota increases are not supported.	Up to 100 clusters per account. By default, each cluster supports up to 5,000 worker nodes. You can request a quota increase in Quota Center.
Management scope	Supports auto mode: Enabled: You only need to perform simple planning and configuration to create the cluster. The cluster control plane and key components are fully managed, and a node pool with auto mode enabled is created by default. Disabled: The cluster control plane is fully managed, and you are responsible for maintaining the worker nodes. Supports reserved control plane: By reserving control plane resources and API Server baseline configurations, this feature provides predictable performance by design and eliminates the uncertainty of reactive scaling. You can upgrade or downgrade between Pro, Pro XL, Pro 2XL, and Pro 4XL editions.	The cluster control plane is fully managed. You are responsible for maintaining the worker nodes.	The cluster control plane is not managed. You are responsible for maintaining both the master and worker nodes.
Scenarios	Enterprise production and testing environments. Scenarios where cost reduction is a priority. Scenarios where you want to focus on business applications and reduce investment in cluster O&M.	Suitable for personal learning and testing due to its small cluster scale.	Ideal for users with the Kubernetes expertise to independently plan, manage, and maintain clusters, especially when cost is not a primary concern. Scenarios that require research and deep customization of Kubernetes, such as custom requirements for the cluster control plane (master nodes).
Billing	You are charged cluster management fees based on the number of clusters. You are also charged for other Alibaba Cloud services used by worker nodes and some components, such as Simple Log Service (SLS).	Cluster management is free of charge. You are charged for other Alibaba Cloud services used by worker nodes and some components, such as Simple Log Service (SLS).	Cluster management is free of charge. You are charged for master nodes, worker nodes, and other Alibaba Cloud services used by some components, such as Simple Log Service (SLS).
SLA	A service availability of 99.95% is guaranteed for regional clusters, and 99.50% for zonal clusters. For more information, see Container Service for Kubernetes Service Level Agreement.	No SLA is provided.

ACK managed Pro cluster advantages

The following table compares the capabilities of ACK managed Pro clusters and ACK managed Basic clusters.

Note

In the following table, indicates that a feature is supported, and indicates that a feature is not supported.

Feature	ACK managed Pro	ACK managed Basic
Custom parameter settings for control plane components
API Server monitoring metrics
High-frequency hot and cold backups with geo-disaster recovery for etcd
etcd observability monitoring metrics
Gang scheduling policy
CPU topology-aware scheduling
GPU topology-aware scheduling
GPU sharing with fine-grained scheduling
At-rest encryption for Secrets by using KMS
Managed node pool

Hot migration

Both ACK managed Basic clusters and ACK dedicated clusters support hot migration to ACK managed Pro clusters. For more information, see the following topics:

Auto mode

When you create an ACK managed cluster, you can enable auto mode. After you enable this mode, you can quickly create a Kubernetes cluster that complies with best practices, requiring only simple network planning. Auto mode provides the following features:

Fully managed O&M: The cluster control plane and key components are fully managed. By default, a node pool with auto mode enabled, known as an auto mode node pool, is created. This node pool dynamically scales in or out based on workload demands, and ACK handles O&M tasks such as OS upgrades and security patching.
Intelligent resource provisioning: Optimal instance types are automatically recommended, eliminating the need for manual configuration.
Optimized base software stack: The immutable root file system of ContainerOS enhances security. A streamlined system and configuration accelerate node startup, while an optimized kernel maximizes hardware performance.

Use auto mode in the following scenarios:

Dynamic and elastic resource scheduling: In scenarios where workload demands fluctuate significantly, auto mode can quickly respond to changes by automatically scaling computing resources, which reduces cluster resource costs.
DevOps and CI/CD pipelines: In continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) environments, auto mode can automatically adjust resources based on build and testing requirements to improve development efficiency and reduce costs.

Auto mode is designed based on the concepts of elastic capacity, immutable infrastructure, and zero-O&M. If your business heavily relies on node environment customization or node-local persistent storage, perform a comprehensive application assessment to identify potential compatibility risks before migration.

Important

Auto mode is designed to provide automated and intelligent O&M for Kubernetes clusters. However, you still have some responsibilities in certain scenarios. For more information, see Shared responsibility model.

Features

Feature	Description
Cluster management	Cluster creation: You can create various types of clusters based on your business requirements. ACK allows you to configure custom cluster settings and select different types of Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances as worker nodes. For more information, see Create an ACK managed cluster and Create an ACK dedicated cluster (discontinued). Cluster upgrade: You can manually or automatically upgrade the Kubernetes version of your cluster. ACK allows you to update your system components in a centralized manner. For more information, see Manually upgrade an ACK cluster and Automatically upgrade a cluster. Auto scaling: You can vertically scale your clusters in the console to handle unexpected business fluctuations. You can also configure service-level affinity rules and horizontal scaling settings for your business. Scheduling: ACK supports hybrid scheduling of different elastic resources, fine-grained scheduling of heterogeneous resources, and scheduling of batch computing tasks. This improves the performance of applications and the overall resource utilization of clusters. Multi-cluster management: You can register clusters that are deployed in data centers and clusters in multiple clouds or regions in a centralized manner. Permission management: ACK integrates Resource Access Management (RAM) and role-based access control (RBAC) for permission management.
Nodes and node pools	You can manage the lifecycle of node pools and configure node pools with different specifications in the same cluster, such as vSwitches, container runtimes, OSes, and security groups. For more information, see Nodes and Node pools.
Application management	Application creation: You can create various types of applications from images or templates. ACK allows you to configure custom application settings, such as environment variables, health checks, disk mounting, and logging. Lifecycle management: You can use ACK to manage the lifecycle of applications. For example, you can view, update, replace, and delete applications, roll back application versions, view application events, perform rolling updates, and use triggers to redeploy applications. Pod scheduling: ACK supports pod scheduling based on pod affinity, node affinity, and pod anti-affinity. Application pod scaling: You can scale the number of application pods manually or by using the Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA). Application release: ACK supports canary releases and blue-green deployments. You can use these features to manage the application release lifecycle in a more efficient manner. Application catalog: ACK provides the application catalog feature to facilitate application deployment and cloud service integration. Application center: The application center provides a centralized management panel for deploying applications and monitoring the topology of your applications. You can use the application center to facilitate centralized version management and rollback in continuous deployment scenarios. Application backup and recovery: You can back up applications and restore applications from backup data. For more information, see Back up and restore applications.
Storage	The Container Storage Interface (CSI) plug-in is supported. For more information, see Storage. Operations on volumes and persistent volume claims (PVCs): You can create the following types of volumes: Block Storage, Apsara File Storage NAS (NAS), Object Storage Service (OSS), and Cloud Paralleled File System (CPFS). You can mount a volume to a PVC. You can dynamically create and migrate volumes. You can run scripts to view and update volumes and PVCs.
Network	Flannel and Terway are supported. For more information, see Network. You can specify CIDR blocks for services and pods. You can use the network policy feature. For more information, see Use network policies in ACK clusters. You can use Ingresses. For more information, see Ingress management. You can perform DNS-based service discovery. For more information, see DNS-based service discovery.
Auto scaling	ACK automatically adjusts elastic computing resources based on business requirements and policies. This includes: Workload scaling (scheduling-layer elasticity): Modifies the scheduling capacity for workloads. Node scaling (resource-layer elasticity): Scales out node resources to provide more capacity when the cluster's current capacity cannot meet scheduling demands. For more information, see Auto scaling.
Scheduling	ACK provides various scheduling policies for different workloads, such as task scheduling, QoS-aware scheduling, and rescheduling, to improve application performance and overall cluster resource utilization. For more information, see Scheduling.
O&M and security	Observability: Monitoring: ACK integrates Managed Service for Prometheus (Prometheus) to monitor clusters, nodes, applications, and pods. Logging: ACK integrates Simple Log Service(SLS) to collect and store logs of clusters and containers. Alerting: ACK supports alerting based on cluster events and container metrics. For more information, see ACK alert management. Cluster inspections and diagnostics Cluster check: You can use this feature to check whether your ACK cluster meets the requirements before you perform an operation, such as upgrading or migrating a cluster. Cluster inspection: You can use this feature to view the status of ACK clusters and identify potential risks in the clusters, such as insufficient quotas of cloud resources or high usage of key resources in ACK clusters. You can troubleshoot the risks and fix the issues based on the recommended solutions. Cluster diagnostics: You can use this feature to diagnose nodes, pods, Services, Ingresses, memory, and networks with a few clicks to identify issues in your ACK clusters. Cost suite: ACK visualizes the resource usage and cost distribution of your clusters and improves resource utilization. Security center: ACK actively inspects your applications for security risks and provides security policies for runtime monitoring and alerting. Sandboxed containers: Sandboxed-Container is a container runtime developed by ACK to enhance container security. You can use Sandboxed-Container to run an application in a sandboxed and lightweight VM, which has a dedicated kernel. Sandboxed-Container is suitable for isolating untrusted applications, unhealthy applications, low-performance applications, and workloads among users. ACK-TEE confidential computing: ACK provides a cloud-native, all-in-one solution for confidential computing based on Intel Software Guard Extensions (Intel SGX). This solution ensures data security, integrity, and confidentiality when you develop, manage, and deliver trusted applications and confidential computing tasks. The confidential computing capabilities provided by ACK allow you to isolate sensitive data and code by using a trusted execution environment.
Heterogeneous computing	GPU: You can create clusters with GPU instances as worker nodes and use features such as GPU scheduling, GPU monitoring, GPU auto scaling, and GPU O&M. For more information, see Add GPU nodes to a cluster. GPU sharing: You can use a GPU sharing and scheduling framework to run multiple containers on the same GPU device in clusters on the cloud or in your data centers. For more information, see GPU sharing. Cloud-native AI: ACK provides cloud-native AI capabilities to support the orchestration and management of data computing tasks. For more information, see Overview of the cloud-native AI suite.
Developer tools	API CLI SDK Terraform