I want to use Topology Aware Hints (TAH) in my Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) cluster.
Resolution
Note: TAH might not be suitable for clusters that have Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Spot Instances, Horizontal Pod Autoscaling, or auto scaling turned on. When you use these cluster configurations, you can't achieve an allocation that's proportional to the CPU cores allocated to nodes. You exceed the allowed overhead threshold. Also, if there are pod assignment constraints that prohibit endpoint redistribution, then kube-proxy doesn't use TAH.
Prerequisites
- Make sure that your Amazon EKS cluster version is 1.24 or later.
- Set up an Amazon EKS cluster and a managed node group with three nodes. Each node must have the same CPU capacity and must be distributed across three Availability Zones.
To use TAH in Amazon EKS, complete the following steps:
-
Create a new namespace:
Note: Replace example-namespace with your namespace name.
apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
name: "example-namespace"
labels:
pod-security.kubernetes.io/audit: restricted
pod-security.kubernetes.io/enforce: restricted
pod-security.kubernetes.io/warn: restricted
-
Use the BusyBox image to create a sample deployment:
Note: Replace example-deployment-name with your deployment name and example-namespace with your namespace name.
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: example-deployment-name
namespace: example-namespace
spec:
replicas: 3
selector:
matchLabels:
app: demo
template:
metadata:
labels:
app: demo
spec:
dnsPolicy: Default
enableServiceLinks: false
automountServiceAccountToken: false
securityContext:
seccompProfile:
type: RuntimeDefault
runAsNonRoot: true
runAsUser: 1000
runAsGroup: 1000
containers:
- name: busybox
image: public.ecr.aws/docker/library/busybox:latest
command: ["/bin/sh"]
args:
- "-c"
- |
echo "<html><body><h1>PodName: $MY_POD_NAME NodeName: $MY_NODE_NAME podIP:$MY_POD_IP</h1></body></html>" > /tmp/index.html;
while true; do
printf 'HTTP/1.1 200 OK\n\n%s\n' $(cat /tmp/index.html) | nc -l -p 8080
done
ports:
- containerPort: 8080
env:
- name: MY_NODE_NAME
valueFrom:
fieldRef:
fieldPath: spec.nodeName
- name: MY_POD_IP
valueFrom:
fieldRef:
fieldPath: status.podIP
- name: MY_POD_NAME
valueFrom:
fieldRef:
fieldPath: metadata.name
resources:
limits:
memory: "128Mi"
cpu: "500m"
requests:
memory: "64Mi"
cpu: "250m"
securityContext:
readOnlyRootFilesystem: true
allowPrivilegeEscalation: false
capabilities:
drop:
- ALL
volumeMounts:
- name: tmp
mountPath: /tmp
volumes:
- name: tmp
emptyDir: {}
-
Expose the deployment as a ClusterIP service type, and then add service.kubernetes.io/topology-mode: auto as an annotation:
Note: Replace example-service-name with your service name and example-namespace with your namespace name. In version 1.27 or later, the service.kubernetes.io/topology-aware-hints: auto annotation is changed to service.kubernetes.io/topology-mode: auto.
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: example-service-name
namespace: example-namespace
annotations:
service.kubernetes.io/topology-mode: auto
spec:
selector:
app: demo
ports:
- protocol: TCP
port: 80
targetPort: 8080
-
Check if the TAHs are populated in the endpoint:
Note: Replace example-namespace with your namespace name and example-service-name with your service name.
kubectl get 'endpointslices.discovery.k8s.io' -l kubernetes.io/service-name=example-service-name -n example-namespace -o yaml
Example output:
endpoints:
- addresses:
- 10.0.21.125
conditions:
ready: true
serving: true
terminating: false
hints:
forZones:
- name: eu-west-1b
nodeName: ip-10-0-17-215.eu-west-1.compute.internal
targetRef:
kind: Pod
name: example-deployment-name-5875bbbb7c-m2j8t
namespace: example-namespace
uid: 4e789648-965e-4caa-91db-bd27d240ea59
zone: eu-west-1b
-
Deploy a test pod to check if the traffic is routed to a pod in the same Availability Zone.
Note: Replace example-node-name with your node name.
kubectl run tmp-shell --rm -i --tty --image nicolaka/netshoot --overrides='{"spec": { "nodeSelector": {"kubernetes.io/hostname":"example-node-name"}}}'
-
Find the pod and node that your test pod connects to:
curl example-service-name.example-namespace:80
Example output:
PodName: 7b7b9bf455-c27z9 HTTP/1.1 200 OK
NodeName: ip-10-0-9-45.eu-west-1.compute.internal
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
podIP: example-10.0.11.140
-
Use PodName and NodeName from the preceding output to check whether traffic aligns with the same Availability Zone where your test pod is deployed.
-
Scale the deployment to four replicas, and then inspect the EndpointSlices:
Note: Replace example-namespace with your namespace name and example-deployment-name with your deployment name.
kubectl -n example-namespace scale deployments example-deployment-name --replicas=4
Note: A deployment that's scaled to four replicas results in at least one Availability Zone that has a 50% ratio of endpoints. Also, the overhead threshold of 20% is exceeded and TAHs aren't used for kube-proxy.
Related information
Topology Aware Routing on the Kubernetes website
Exploring the effect of Topology Aware Hints on network traffic in Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service