CPU QoS

Introduction

Kubernetes allows you to deploy various types of containerized applications on the same node. This causes applications with different priorities to compete for CPU resources. As a result, the performance of the applications with high priorities cannot be guaranteed. Koordinator allows you to use quality of service (QoS) classes to guarantee CPU resources for applications with high priorities. This topic describes how to configure the CPU QoS feature for pods.

Background

To fully utilize computing resources, workloads of different priorities are usually deployed on the same node. For example, latency-sensitive (LS) workloads (with high priorities) and best-effort (BE) workloads (with low priorities) can be deployed on the same node. However, this may cause these workloads to compete for computing resources. In Kubernetes, CPU requests and CPU limits are used to control the amount of CPU resources that pods can use. However, pods may still compete for CPU resources. For example, BE pods and LS pods can share CPU cores or vCPU cores. When the loads of the BE pods increase, the performance of the LS pods is compromised. As a result, the response latency of the application that uses the LS pods increases.

To reduce the performance impact on the BE pods in this scenario, you can use the CPU QoS feature provided by Koordinator to limit the CPU usage of the LS pods. The CPU QoS feature is based on Alibaba Cloud Linux 2 and Anolis OS. Koordinator allows you to use the group identity feature available in Alibaba Cloud Linux 2 to configure Linux scheduling priorities for pods. In an environment where both LS pods and BE pods are deployed, you can set the priority of LS pods to high and the priority of BE pods to low to avoid resource contention. The LS pods are prioritized to use the limited CPU resources to ensure the service quality of the corresponding application. For more information, see Group identity feature.

You can gain the following benefits after you enable the CPU QoS feature:

• The wake-up latency of tasks for LS workloads is minimized.
• Waking up tasks for BE workloads does not adversely impact the performance of LS pods.
• Tasks for BE workloads cannot use the simultaneous multithreading (SMT) scheduler to share CPU cores. This further reduces the impact on the performance of LS pods.

Setup

Prerequisites

• Kubernetes >= 1.18
• Koordinator >= 0.4
• Operating System：
  • Alibaba Cloud Linux 2（For more information, see Group identity feature）
  • Anolis OS >= 8.6
  • CentOS 7.9 (Need to install the CPU Co-location scheduler plug-in from OpenAnolis community, see best practice).

Installation

Please make sure Koordinator components are correctly installed in your cluster. If not, please refer to Installation.

Use CPU QoS

1. Create a configmap.yaml file based on the following ConfigMap content:

   # Example of the slo-controller-config ConfigMap.
   apiVersion: v1
   kind: ConfigMap
   metadata:
     name: slo-controller-config
     namespace: koordinator-system
   data:
     # Enable the CPU QoS feature.
     resource-qos-config: |
       {
         "clusterStrategy": {
           "lsClass": {
             "cpuQOS": {
               "enable": true,
               "groupIdentity": 2
             }
           },
           "beClass": {
             "cpuQOS": {
               "enable": true,
               "groupIdentity": -1
             }
           }
         }
       }

   Specify lsClass and beClass to assign the LS and BE classes to different pods. cpuQOS includes the CPU QoS parameters. The following table describes the parameters.

Configuration item	Parameter	Valid values	Description
enable	Boolean	truefalse	true: enables the CPU QoS feature for all containers in the cluster.false: disables the CPU QoS feature for all containers in the cluster.
groupIdentity	Int	-1~2	Specify group identities for CPU scheduling. By default, the group identity of LS pods is 2 and the group identity of BE pods is -1. A value of 0 indicates that no group identity is assigned.A greater group identity value indicates a higher priority in CPU scheduling. For example, you can set cpu.bvt_warp_ns=2 for LS pods and set cpu.bvt_warp_ns=-1 for BE pods because the priority of LS pods is higher than that of BE pods. For more information, see Group identity feature.

Note If koordinator.sh/qosClass is not specified for a pod, Koordinator configures the pod based on the original QoS class of the pod. The component uses the BE settings in the preceding ConfigMap if the original QoS class is BE. The component uses the LS settings in the preceding ConfigMap if the original QoS class is not BE

2. Check whether a ConfigMap named slo-controller-config exists in the koordinator-system namespace.

   • If a ConfigMap named slo-controller-config exists, we commend that you run the kubectl patch command to update the ConfigMap. This avoids changing other settings in the ConfigMap.

     kubectl patch cm -n koordinator-system slo-controller-config --patch "$(cat configmap.yaml)"

   • If no ConfigMap named slo-controller-config exists, run the kubectl patch command to create a ConfigMap named ack-slo-config:

     kubectl apply -f configmap.yaml

3. Create a file named ls-pod-demo.yaml based on the following YAML content:

   apiVersion: v1
   kind: Pod
   metadata:
     name: ls-pod-demo
     labels:
       koordinator.sh/qosClass: 'LS' # Set the QoS class of the pod to LS
   spec:  
     containers:
     - command:
       - "nginx"
       - "-g"
       - "daemon off; worker_processes 4;"
       image: docker.io/koordinatorsh/nginx:v1.18-koord-example
       imagePullPolicy: Always
       name: nginx
       resources:
         limits:
           cpu: "4"
           memory: 10Gi
         requests:
           cpu: "4"
           memory: 10Gi
     restartPolicy: Never
     schedulerName: default-scheduler

4. Run the following command to deploy the ls-pod-demo pod in the cluster:

   kubectl apply -f ls-pod-demo.yaml

5. Run the following command to check whether the CPU group identity of the LS pod in the control group (cgroup) of the node takes effect:

   cat /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu/kubepods.slice/kubepods-pod1c20f2ad****.slice/cpu.bvt_warp_ns

   Expected output:

   #The group identity of the LS pod is 2 (high priority). 
   2

6. Create a file named be-pod-demo.yaml based on the following content:

   apiVersion: v1
   kind: Pod
   metadata:
     name: be-pod-demo
     labels:
       koordinator.sh/qosClass: 'BE' # Set the QoS class of the pod to BE. 
   spec:
     containers:
       - args:
           - '-c'
           - '1'
           - '--vm'
           - '1'
         command:
           - stress
         image: polinux/stress
         imagePullPolicy: Always
         name: stress
     restartPolicy: Always
     schedulerName: default-scheduler
     # priorityClassName is required when ColocationProfile enabled (default).
     priorityClassName: koord-batch

7. Run the following command to deploy the be-pod-demo pod in the cluster:

   kubectl apply -f be-pod-demo.yaml

8. Run the following command to check whether the CPU group identity of the BE pod in the cgroup of the node takes effect:

   cat /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu/kubepods.slice/kubepods-besteffort.slice/kubepods-besteffort-pod4b6e96c8****.slice/cpu.bvt_warp_ns

   Expected output:

   #The group identity of the BE pod is -1 (low priority). 
   -1

   The output shows that the priority of the LS pod is high and the priority of the BE pod is low. CPU resources are preferably scheduled to the LS pod to ensure the service quality.