Serverless is great way to run your on-demand workload, especially if you don’t want to manage Kubernetes workers. In this article, we will explore 2 ways of installing the Alibaba Serverless Kubernetes cluster (ASK). We will deploy an application to the Kubernetes virtual node and expose it with a server load balancer and ingress. Prerequisite: Alibaba Cloud Account To make ASK work you need to activate the associated cloud services: After activating this service, you can deploy Serverless Kubernetes (ASK) clusters. Elastic Container Instance With this service you can create SLB instances for Kubernetes clusters. Server Load Balancer (SLB) - This service enables your cluster communication with the Internet NAT Gateway - Network service Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) with Log service you can collect and query log data of managed Kubernetes components and applications. This service is optional. Log Service Service for monitoring nodes and applications in Alibaba Kubernetes clusters. This service is optional. CloudMonitor will allow you to store application data in OSS buckets. This service is optional. Object Storage Service (OSS) , Capability to store application data in NAS file systems. This service is optional. Apsara File Storage NAS (NAS) service to run Virtual Machines for ACK clusters. (This service is optional for ASK Serverless Kubernetes) Elastic Compute Service (ECS) Method 1: install with Alibaba Cloud CLI For that method, I would suggest using Alibaba Cloud Shell. There we have Alibaba Cloud CLI already installed and configured. Step 1: create console user To deploy Alibaba Serverless Kubernetes with Aliyun CLI, we need to create a user with API access. Navigate to Resource Access Management to create that user. Click on and provide and to the cli user and check as shown in the screenshot below. Save the access key and the secret of the newly created user. Create User Logon name Display name Open API Access To provide permissions to the console user navigate to the Users, click on Add permissions. In the appeared menu, select and click . AdministratorAccess OK NOTE: In real life use the principle of the least privileged and grant fine-tuned permissions to the user. Without full admin permissions, you will avoid unnecessary security risks. Step 2: configure aliyun cli To open Cloud Shell you need to click the button in the top right corner of the Alicloud console. In Cloud Shell, we will start by configuring . Provide credentials from alibaba-cli-user you created in the previous step. aliyun cli aliyun configure Expected output: Step 3: provision ASK cluster In Cloud Shell, we need to create an ask.json file with the parameters of the ASK cluster. It should look like this: {
    "cluster_type":"Ask",
    "name":"mycli-ask-cluster",
    "region_id":"us-west-1",
    "endpoint_public_access":true,
    "private_zone":false,
    "nat_gateway":true,
    "deletion_protection":false,
    "zone_id":"us-west-1a"
} The following command will create an ASK cluster: aliyun cs  POST /clusters --header "Content-Type=application/json" --body "$(cat ask.json)" It takes about 3 minutes to create a Kubernetes cluster. Expected command output: Once Kubernetes cluster up and running, run the command to query information about the newly created cluster. aliyun cs GET <cluster_id> aliyun cs GET /clusters/cb2431df0d7334eeeb2e582b18cff8539 Step 4: get kubectl access To get cluster config run the following command: mkdir .kube/
KUBECONFIG=$HOME/.kube/config
aliyun cs GET /k8s/cb2431df0d7334eeeb2e582b18cff8539/user_config | jq -r '.config' > $KUBECONFIG In the ".kube" folder you can check the kubectl config: cat .kube/config Check virtual nodes available in the cluster with the command: get nodes kubectl get nodes Step 5: deploy application Let’s provision a simple Nginx deployment to the cluster: kubectl apply -f https://k8s.io/examples/controllers/nginx-deployment.yaml Check that the pods are running with the get pod command: kubectl get pod Expose with Server Load Balancer Now that we confirmed that the pods are running, let’s expose Nginx with Server Load Balancer. Create a svc.yml file with the following content: apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  annotations:
    service.beta.kubernetes.io/alibaba-cloud-loadbalancer-spec: slb.s1.small
  name: nginx-service
  namespace: default
spec:
  externalTrafficPolicy: Cluster
  ports:
    - name: nginx-port
      port: 80
      protocol: TCP
      targetPort: 80
  selector:
    app: nginx
  sessionAffinity: None
  type: LoadBalancer Apply svc.yml file with the kubectl kubectl apply -f svc.yaml Get the EXTERNAL-IP value from command kubectl get svc and paste it into a new browser tab Method 2: deploy ASK with console UI Let’s provision ASK cluster using just User Interface. Search for the in Alibaba Cloud console: Serverless Container Service Step 1: configure ASK cluster Then, on the left panel select and click on button Clusters Create Kubernetes Cluster On the page select and provide the name of the cluster. Click if you didn’t provision one beforehand. Check so you can get kubectl access to your cluster with cloud shell right out of the box Cluster configuration Serverless Kubernetes Create VPC Expose API Server with EIP Step 2: configure Nginx Ingress If you want to expose your serverless Kubernetes apps with Ingress, you need to select the button in the Component Configuration menu. Nginx Ingress Monitoring and Logging services configurations are available in the same section as well. Additionally, you can enable the knative plugin to get the support of the open-source Kubernetes-based serverless framework. In the Confirm Order menu, you just need to review the resources that you selected, check , and click in the bottom right corner: Terms of Service for Serverless Kubernetes Create Cluster Cluster provisioning might take a few mins. Once ready it should look like this: If you click on the name of the cluster you’ll see a nice dashboard with the status of the Kubernetes cluster. Step 3: get kubectl access using UI There are 2 ways you can get access to your cluster with kubectl. Navigate to the and select . You can copy public kubeconfig and paste it in your local Kubernetes config or alternatively you can  click which will open Cloud Shell with access to my-ask-ui cluster pre-configured already. Cluster Information Connection Information Open Cloud Shell Deploy form the console Since we are doing a web console run, let us create Kubernetes deployment in UI. On the left panel, navigate to the , and on the right-hand side, click button. Workloads\Deployments Create from YAML On the appeared page, you can provide deployment configuration. Once ready - go ahead and click on button. Create If you click on the Pods section of the left menu, you will see the Nginx pod up and running. Step 4: expose an app in UI with Ingress Let’s expose Nginx with Ingress using Web UI. For that, we need to create a Cluster IP service first. Go to the and create a new one. Add port mappings to the container for ports 443 and 80. Services Proceed to the Ingress and create a new one. Provide an Ingress name, pick ports to expose, and specify Domain. In this example, I’m going to use a custom domain provided by Alibaba Cloud with in front of it. serverlessnginx Open the URL domain that you provided in a new tab to see the  standard Nginx page. Summary: Deploy Kubernetes in Alibaba Cloud There are a few ways we can deploy managed Serverless Kubernetes clusters in Alibaba Cloud. Using UI might be helpful to explore available customization options for the first time. However, this article demonstrates that CLI provides a repeatable faster way for provisioning ASK and deploying applications on it. Clean-up To clean up Serverless Kubernetes and dependency resources created in this lab using Alibaba CLI tool, run and commands. kubectl delete aliyun cs DELETE kubecetl delete -f svc.yml
kubectl delete -f https://k8s.io/examples/controllers/nginx-deployment.yaml

aliyun cs DELETE /clusters/cb2431df0d7334eeeb2e582b18cff8539 To clean up using UI, you need to navigate to the Clusters menu. On the right side, select and click . More Delete On the pop-up screen, you can select resources that you want to retain To delete the ASK cluster, you need to delete the Elastic Container Instances workload first since it will complain that dependencies are blocking from deleting the cluster. That includes deleting Nginx Ingress Controller deployment and completed pods.

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2 Methods for Installing Serverless Kubernetes in Alibaba Cloud

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