Azure Kubernetes Service

This guide offers recommended configurations and settings unique to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). These should be used to augment the generic requirements offered on our primary requirements page.

Instance types

  • Minimum: Standard_D8s_v4

  • Recommended: Standard_D16s_v4

Storage

Unfortunately, we have found that Azure’s built in managed NFS service, Azure Files NFS, does not provide an acceptable performance level for use with Anaconda Enterprise. We have not yet had the opportunity to evaluate Azure NetApp Files.

For this reason, Anaconda recommends creating a separate Virtual Machine for hosting NFS storage. Follow the recommendations offered in this document, with these Azure-specific recommendations:

  • The Standard_D4s_v3 machine type is suitable for this purpose.

  • As suggested in the general recommendations, Azure tightly couples disk size and IOPS performance. Anaconda recommends a disk size of at least 1 TiB to ensure good performance; or more if possible.

This server can then become the administration server as well.

Network

Azure offers two different networking options for AKS clusters. Both approaches are compatible with Anaconda Enterprise, so the determination depends upon your larger networking needs.

Note

AKS uses a LoadBalancer which by default sets TCP idle timeouts to 4 minutes, and enables TCP resets. This may affect any user workload that depends on a continuous TCP connection.

GPUs

Please see this Azure guide for adding GPU resources to your AKS cluster.