Skip to main content
Version: v1.0

Capacity-based Scheduling

Overview​

Using the policy-based scheduling mechanism, Nova provides for the capability to schedule a workload based on resource availability in a workload cluster. This means that a single Kubernetes resource or a group of Kubernetes resources will be placed on a target cluster that has sufficient capacity to host it.

If no target workload cluster has sufficient capacity for the requested placement, Nova chooses a target workload cluster that is running a cluster autoscaler, which can add cluster resources as needed. Nova currently recognizes the Kubernetes and the Luna cluster autoscalers. Workloads that may be handled by Luna need to be labeled for Luna management. For the simple case in which each Nova workload cluster runs at most one instance of Luna configured to use the default Luna management label, the Nova control plane supports the nova-scheduler option --luna-management-enabled (included by default) to automatically add the default Luna management label to incoming object pod specifications. For all other Luna configurations (e.g., non-default Luna management label or multiple instances of Luna per cluster), the workloads should be labeled for Luna management prior to being submitted for Nova placement.

Group Scheduling Based on Resource Availability Testing Example​

In this example we will see how Nova groups k8s objects into a ScheduleGroup and finds a workload cluster for the whole group. Let's say you have a group of microservices, which combine into an application. We will try to create two versions of the same application: microservices labeled color: blue and the same set of microservices labeled color: green. By adding .groupBy.labelKey to the SchedulePolicy spec, Nova will create two ScheduleGroups: one with all objects with color: blue and another one with color: green label.

apiVersion: policy.elotl.co/v1alpha1
kind: SchedulePolicy
metadata:
   ...
spec:
  groupBy:
    labelKey: color
  ...

Each group will be considered separately by Nova, and it is guaranteed that all objects in the group will run in the same workload cluster. In this tutorial, we will let Nova figure out which workload cluster has enough resources to host each group. This can be done by not setting .spec.clusterSelector. We will use GCP Microservice Demo App which includes 10 different microservices. Total resources requested in this app is 1570 millicores of CPU and 1368 Mi of memory. Manifests used in this tutorial can be found in examples directory in try-nova repository. If you installed Nova from release tarball, you should have those manifests already.

We will first export these environment variables so that subsequent steps in this tutorial can be easily followed.

export NOVA_NAMESPACE=elotl
export NOVA_CONTROLPLANE_CONTEXT=nova
export NOVA_WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1=wlc-1
export NOVA_WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_2=wlc-2

Export these additional environment variables if you installed Nova using the tarball.

export K8S_HOSTING_CLUSTER_CONTEXT=k8s-cluster-hosting-cp
export NOVA_WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1=wlc-1
export NOVA_WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_2=wlc-2

Alternatively export these environment variables if you installed Nova using setup scripts provided in the try-nova repository.

export K8S_HOSTING_CLUSTER_CONTEXT=kind-hosting-cluster
export K8S_CLUSTER_CONTEXT_1=kind-wlc-1
export K8S_CLUSTER_CONTEXT_2=kind-wlc-2

In this tutorial we assume that your Nova Control Plane kubeconfig context is named nova.

Optional

In case you have chosen to rename your Nova Control Plane context, then, in order to follow this tutorial, either replace "--context=${NOVA_CONTROLPLANE_CONTEXT}" in each command with your Nova Control Plane kube context name, or rename this context, using following command:

kubectl config rename-context [yourname] nova

Let's start with checking the status of workload cluster connected to the Nova Control Plane:

kubectl --context=${NOVA_CONTROLPLANE_CONTEXT} get clusters

Alternatively, you can look up available resources in cluster nodes, using our CLI:

kubectl nova --context=${NOVA_CONTROLPLANE_CONTEXT} get clusters
NAME    K8S-VERSION   K8S-CLUSTER   REGION   ZONE   READY   IDLE   STANDBY
wlc-1   1.28          wlc-1                         True    True   False
wlc-2   1.28          wlc-2                         True    True   False

and then create a namespace that we will use:

NOTE: If your workload clusters are not named ${NOVA_WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1} & ${NOVA_WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_2} please open examples/sample-group-scheduling/nginx-group-demo-ns.yaml in the text editor and edit them according to the instructions in the files.

  1. Create the namespace used in this example.
envsubst < "examples/sample-group-scheduling/nginx-group-demo-ns.yaml" > "./nginx-group-demo-ns.yaml"
kubectl --context=${NOVA_CONTROLPLANE_CONTEXT} apply -f ./nginx-group-demo-ns.yaml
rm -f ./nginx-group-demo-ns.yaml

Ensure that the namespace nginx-group-demo is created in your control plane and workload cluster.

  1. This policy is scheduling all objects with label microServicesDemo: "yes", and grouping them based on the value of the "color" label and scheduling the group to any cluster which has enough resources to run them.
kubectl --context=${NOVA_CONTROLPLANE_CONTEXT} apply -f examples/sample-group-scheduling/policy.yaml
  1. Now, let's create green and blue instances of our app:
kubectl --context=${NOVA_CONTROLPLANE_CONTEXT} apply -f examples/sample-group-scheduling/blue-app.yaml -n nginx-group-demo
kubectl --context=${NOVA_CONTROLPLANE_CONTEXT} apply -f examples/sample-group-scheduling/green-app.yaml -n nginx-group-demo
  1. Verifying whether the objects were assigned to the correct ScheduleGroup can be done by describing an object and looking at events:
kubectl --context=${NOVA_CONTROLPLANE_CONTEXT} describe deployment blue-nginx-deployment -n nginx-group-demo
Name:                   blue-nginx-deployment
Namespace:              nginx-group-demo
CreationTimestamp:      Fri, 11 Aug 2023 14:19:57 -0500
Labels:                 app.kubernetes.io/instance=blue
                        app.kubernetes.io/managed-by=kubernetes
                        app.kubernetes.io/name=nginx
                        app.kubernetes.io/part-of=blue
                        app.kubernetes.io/version=1.7.9
                        color=blue
                        nginxGroupScheduleDemo=yes
                        nova.elotl.co/target-cluster=wlc-2
Selector:               app=nginx,color=blue
Events:
Type    Reason                 Age    From            Message
----    ------                 ----   ----            -------
Normal  AddedToScheduleGroup   2m29s  nova-scheduler  added to ScheduleGroup demo-policy-69894944 which contains objects with groupBy.labelKey color=blue
Normal  SchedulePolicyMatched  2m29s  nova-scheduler  schedule policy demo-policy will be used to determine target cluster

  1. You can check if two ScheduleGroups were created:
kubectl --context=${NOVA_CONTROLPLANE_CONTEXT} get schedulegroups
NAME                   AGE
demo-policy-1be06c9f   9m17s
demo-policy-69894944   6m15s
  1. novactl CLI provides a bit more context about Schedule Groups:
kubectl nova --context=${NOVA_CONTROLPLANE_CONTEXT} get schedulegroups
  NAME                 NOVA WORKLOAD CLUSTER                   NOVA POLICY NAME
------------------    --------------------------------------  --------------------------------------
demo-policy-1be06c9f    wlc-1                                  demo-policy
demo-policy-69894944    wlc-2                                  demo-policy
------------------    --------------------------------------  --------------------------------------
  1. From the output above, we can see which workload cluster is hosting each ScheduleGroup.
  2. Now, imagine you need to increase resource request or replica count on one of the microservices in the second app. In the meantime, there was other activity in the cluster and after your update there won't be enough resources in the cluster to satisfy your update. You can simulate this scenario using examples/sample-group-scheduling/hog-pod.yaml manifest. You should edit it, so the hog-pod will take almost all resources in your cluster. Now, you can apply it to the same cluster where demo-policy-69894944 schedule group was scheduled (${NOVA_WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_2} in my case).
envsubst < "examples/sample-group-scheduling/hog-pod.yaml" > "./hog-pod.yaml"
kubectl --context=${NOVA_CONTROLPLANE_CONTEXT} apply -f ./hog-pod.yaml
cluster_name=$(kubectl --context=${NOVA_CONTROLPLANE_CONTEXT} get deployment -n nginx-group-demo green-nginx-deployment -o jsonpath='{.metadata.labels.nova\.elotl\.co/target-cluster}'); kubectl annotate pods --context=${NOVA_CONTROLPLANE_CONTEXT} -n default hog-pod nova.elotl.co/cluster=$cluster_name --overwrite
  1. Now let's increase replica count in green-app in the Nova control plane:
kubectl --context=${NOVA_CONTROLPLANE_CONTEXT} scale deploy/green-nginx-deployment --replicas=3 -n nginx-group-demo
  1. If there is enough resources to satisfy new schedule group requirements (existing resource request for 2 nginx + increased replica count of green deployment), watching schedule group will show you schedule group being rescheduled to another cluster:
kubectl nova --context=${NOVA_CONTROLPLANE_CONTEXT} get schedulegroups
  NAME                NOVA WORKLOAD CLUSTER                   NOVA POLICY NAME
------------------   --------------------------------------  --------------------------------------
demo-policy-1be06c9f  wlc-1                                    demo-policy
demo-policy-69894944  wlc-2                                    demo-policy
------------------   --------------------------------------  --------------------------------------
  1. We can wait for green app being available:
kubectl --context=${NOVA_CONTROLPLANE_CONTEXT} wait --for condition=available deployment -n nginx-group-demo green-nginx-deployment --timeout=90s
  1. To understand why the ScheduleGroup was rescheduled, we can use:
kubectl --context=${NOVA_CONTROLPLANE_CONTEXT} describe schedulegroups

and see the event message:

Name:                demo-policy-1be06c9f
Namespace:
Labels:             color=green
                    nova.elotl.co/matching-policy=demo-policy
                    nova.elotl.co/target-cluster=wlc-1
Annotations:         <none>
API Version:         policy.elotl.co/v1alpha1
Kind:                ScheduleGroup
...
Events:
Type     Reason                                Age                  From            Message
----     ------                                ----                 ----            -------
Normal   ScheduleGroupSyncedToWorkloadCluster  22m (x5 over 122m)   nova-scheduler  Multiple clusters matching policy demo-policy (empty cluster selector): wlc-2,wlc-1; Picked cluster wlc-2 because it has enough resources;
Warning  ReschedulingTriggered                 3m12s                nova-agent      deployment nginx-group-demo/green-nginx-deployment does not have minimum replicas available
Normal   ScheduleGroupSyncedToWorkloadCluster  108s                 nova-scheduler  Multiple clusters matching policy demo-policy (empty cluster selector): wlc-2,wlc-1; Cluster wlc-2 skipped, does not have enough resources; Picked cluster wlc-1 because it has enough resources;

  1. You can verify that green app is running by listing deployment in Nova Control Plane:
kubectl --context=${NOVA_CONTROLPLANE_CONTEXT} get deployments -n nginx-group-demo -l color=green
NAME                     READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
green-nginx-deployment   3/3     3            3           24m
  1. To remove all objects created for this demo, remove nginx-group-demo namespace:
kubectl --context=${NOVA_CONTROLPLANE_CONTEXT} delete ns nginx-group-demo
kubectl --context=${NOVA_CONTROLPLANE_CONTEXT} delete -f examples/sample-group-scheduling/policy.yaml
kubectl --context=${NOVA_CONTROLPLANE_CONTEXT} delete -f ./hog-pod.yaml
rm -f ./hog-pod.yaml