Getting Started with Karpenter

Set up a cluster and add Karpenter

Karpenter automatically provisions new nodes in response to unschedulable pods. Karpenter does this by observing events within the Kubernetes cluster, and then sending commands to the underlying cloud provider.

This guide shows how to get started with Karpenter by creating a Kubernetes cluster and installing Karpenter. To use Karpenter, you must be running a supported Kubernetes cluster on a supported cloud provider. Currently, only EKS on AWS is supported.

Create a cluster and add Karpenter

This guide uses eksctl to create the cluster. It should take less than 1 hour to complete, and cost less than $0.25. Follow the clean-up instructions to reduce any charges.

1. Install utilities

Karpenter is installed in clusters with a Helm chart.

Karpenter requires cloud provider permissions to provision nodes, for AWS IAM Roles for Service Accounts (IRSA) should be used. IRSA permits Karpenter (within the cluster) to make privileged requests to AWS (as the cloud provider) via a ServiceAccount.

Install these tools before proceeding:

AWS CLI
kubectl - the Kubernetes CLI
eksctl - the CLI for AWS EKS
helm - the package manager for Kubernetes

Configure the AWS CLI with a user that has sufficient privileges to create an EKS cluster. Verify that the CLI can authenticate properly by running aws sts get-caller-identity.

2. Set environment variables

After setting up the tools, set the Karpenter version number:

export KARPENTER_VERSION=v0.28.1

Then set the following environment variable:

export AWS_PARTITION="aws" # if you are not using standard partitions, you may need to configure to aws-cn / aws-us-gov
export CLUSTER_NAME="${USER}-karpenter-demo"
export AWS_DEFAULT_REGION="us-west-2"
export AWS_ACCOUNT_ID="$(aws sts get-caller-identity --query Account --output text)"
export TEMPOUT=$(mktemp)

Warning

If you open a new shell to run steps in this procedure, you need to set some or all of the environment variables again. To remind yourself of these values, type:

echo $KARPENTER_VERSION $CLUSTER_NAME $AWS_DEFAULT_REGION $AWS_ACCOUNT_ID $TEMPOUT

3. Create a Cluster

Create a basic cluster with eksctl. The following cluster configuration will:

Use CloudFormation to set up the infrastructure needed by the EKS cluster.
Create a Kubernetes service account and AWS IAM Role, and associate them using IRSA to let Karpenter launch instances.
Add the Karpenter node role to the aws-auth configmap to allow nodes to connect.
Use AWS EKS managed node groups for the kube-system and karpenter namespaces. Uncomment fargateProfiles settings (and comment out managedNodeGroups settings) to use Fargate for both namespaces instead.
Set KARPENTER_IAM_ROLE_ARN variables.
Create a role to allow spot instances.
Run helm to install karpenter

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aws/karpenter/"${KARPENTER_VERSION}"/website/content/en/preview/getting-started/getting-started-with-karpenter/cloudformation.yaml  > $TEMPOUT \
&& aws cloudformation deploy \
  --stack-name "Karpenter-${CLUSTER_NAME}" \
  --template-file "${TEMPOUT}" \
  --capabilities CAPABILITY_NAMED_IAM \
  --parameter-overrides "ClusterName=${CLUSTER_NAME}"

eksctl create cluster -f - <<EOF
---
apiVersion: eksctl.io/v1alpha5
kind: ClusterConfig
metadata:
  name: ${CLUSTER_NAME}
  region: ${AWS_DEFAULT_REGION}
  version: "1.24"
  tags:
    karpenter.sh/discovery: ${CLUSTER_NAME}

iam:
  withOIDC: true
  serviceAccounts:
  - metadata:
      name: karpenter
      namespace: karpenter
    roleName: ${CLUSTER_NAME}-karpenter
    attachPolicyARNs:
    - arn:${AWS_PARTITION}:iam::${AWS_ACCOUNT_ID}:policy/KarpenterControllerPolicy-${CLUSTER_NAME}
    roleOnly: true

iamIdentityMappings:
- arn: "arn:${AWS_PARTITION}:iam::${AWS_ACCOUNT_ID}:role/KarpenterNodeRole-${CLUSTER_NAME}"
  username: system:node:{{EC2PrivateDNSName}}
  groups:
  - system:bootstrappers
  - system:nodes

managedNodeGroups:
- instanceType: m5.large
  amiFamily: AmazonLinux2
  name: ${CLUSTER_NAME}-ng
  desiredCapacity: 2
  minSize: 1
  maxSize: 10

## Optionally run on fargate
# fargateProfiles:
# - name: karpenter
#  selectors:
#  - namespace: karpenter
EOF

export CLUSTER_ENDPOINT="$(aws eks describe-cluster --name ${CLUSTER_NAME} --query "cluster.endpoint" --output text)"
export KARPENTER_IAM_ROLE_ARN="arn:${AWS_PARTITION}:iam::${AWS_ACCOUNT_ID}:role/${CLUSTER_NAME}-karpenter"

echo $CLUSTER_ENDPOINT $KARPENTER_IAM_ROLE_ARN

aws iam create-service-linked-role --aws-service-name spot.amazonaws.com || true
# If the role has already been successfully created, you will see:
# An error occurred (InvalidInput) when calling the CreateServiceLinkedRole operation: Service role name AWSServiceRoleForEC2Spot has been taken in this account, please try a different suffix.

4. Install Karpenter

# Logout of helm registry to perform an unauthenticated pull against the public ECR
helm registry logout public.ecr.aws

helm upgrade --install karpenter oci://public.ecr.aws/karpenter/karpenter --version ${KARPENTER_VERSION} --namespace karpenter --create-namespace \
  --set serviceAccount.annotations."eks\.amazonaws\.com/role-arn"=${KARPENTER_IAM_ROLE_ARN} \
  --set settings.aws.clusterName=${CLUSTER_NAME} \
  --set settings.aws.defaultInstanceProfile=KarpenterNodeInstanceProfile-${CLUSTER_NAME} \
  --set settings.aws.interruptionQueueName=${CLUSTER_NAME} \
  --set controller.resources.requests.cpu=1 \
  --set controller.resources.requests.memory=1Gi \
  --set controller.resources.limits.cpu=1 \
  --set controller.resources.limits.memory=1Gi \
  --wait

Warning

Karpenter creates a mapping between CloudProvider machines and CustomResources in the cluster for capacity tracking. To ensure this mapping is consistent, Karpenter utilizes the following tag keys:

karpenter.sh/managed-by
karpenter.sh/provisioner-name
kubernetes.io/cluster/${CLUSTER_NAME}

Because Karpenter takes this dependency, any user that has the ability to Create/Delete these tags on CloudProvider machines will have the ability to orchestrate Karpenter to Create/Delete CloudProvider machines as a side effect. We recommend that you enforce tag-based IAM policies on these tags against any EC2 instance resource (i-*) for any users that might have CreateTags/DeleteTags permissions but should not have RunInstances/TerminateInstances permissions.

5. Create Provisioner

A single Karpenter provisioner is capable of handling many different pod shapes. Karpenter makes scheduling and provisioning decisions based on pod attributes such as labels and affinity. In other words, Karpenter eliminates the need to manage many different node groups.

Create a default provisioner using the command below. This provisioner uses securityGroupSelector and subnetSelector to discover resources used to launch nodes. We applied the tag karpenter.sh/discovery in the eksctl command above. Depending how these resources are shared between clusters, you may need to use different tagging schemes.

The consolidation value configures Karpenter to reduce cluster cost by removing and replacing nodes. As a result, consolidation will terminate any empty nodes on the cluster. This behavior can be disabled by leaving the value undefined or setting consolidation.enabled to false. Review the provisioner CRD for more information.

Review the provisioner CRD for more information. For example, ttlSecondsUntilExpired configures Karpenter to terminate nodes when a maximum age is reached.

Note: This provisioner will create capacity as long as the sum of all created capacity is less than the specified limit.

cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: karpenter.sh/v1alpha5
kind: Provisioner
metadata:
  name: default
spec:
  requirements:
    - key: karpenter.sh/capacity-type
      operator: In
      values: ["spot"]
  limits:
    resources:
      cpu: 1000
  providerRef:
    name: default
  consolidation: 
    enabled: true
---
apiVersion: karpenter.k8s.aws/v1alpha1
kind: AWSNodeTemplate
metadata:
  name: default
spec:
  subnetSelector:
    karpenter.sh/discovery: ${CLUSTER_NAME}
  securityGroupSelector:
    karpenter.sh/discovery: ${CLUSTER_NAME}
EOF

Karpenter is now active and ready to begin provisioning nodes.

First Use

Create some pods using a deployment and watch Karpenter provision nodes in response.

Scale up deployment

This deployment uses the pause image and starts with zero replicas.

cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: inflate
spec:
  replicas: 0
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: inflate
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: inflate
    spec:
      terminationGracePeriodSeconds: 0
      containers:
        - name: inflate
          image: public.ecr.aws/eks-distro/kubernetes/pause:3.7
          resources:
            requests:
              cpu: 1
EOF
kubectl scale deployment inflate --replicas 5
kubectl logs -f -n karpenter -l app.kubernetes.io/name=karpenter -c controller

Scale down deployment

Now, delete the deployment. After a short amount of time, Karpenter should terminate the empty nodes due to consolidation.

kubectl delete deployment inflate
kubectl logs -f -n karpenter -l app.kubernetes.io/name=karpenter -c controller

Add optional monitoring with Grafana

This section describes optional ways to configure Karpenter to enhance its capabilities. In particular, the following commands deploy a Prometheus and Grafana stack that is suitable for this guide but does not include persistent storage or other configurations that would be necessary for monitoring a production deployment of Karpenter. This deployment includes two Karpenter dashboards that are automatically onboarded to Grafana. They provide a variety of visualization examples on Karpenter metrics.

helm repo add grafana-charts https://grafana.github.io/helm-charts
helm repo add prometheus-community https://prometheus-community.github.io/helm-charts
helm repo update

kubectl create namespace monitoring

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aws/karpenter/"${KARPENTER_VERSION}"/website/content/en/preview/getting-started/getting-started-with-karpenter/prometheus-values.yaml | tee prometheus-values.yaml
helm install --namespace monitoring prometheus prometheus-community/prometheus --values prometheus-values.yaml

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aws/karpenter/"${KARPENTER_VERSION}"/website/content/en/preview/getting-started/getting-started-with-karpenter/grafana-values.yaml | tee grafana-values.yaml
helm install --namespace monitoring grafana grafana-charts/grafana --values grafana-values.yaml

The Grafana instance may be accessed using port forwarding.

kubectl port-forward --namespace monitoring svc/grafana 3000:80

The new stack has only one user, admin, and the password is stored in a secret. The following command will retrieve the password.

kubectl get secret --namespace monitoring grafana -o jsonpath="{.data.admin-password}" | base64 --decode

Cleanup

Delete Karpenter nodes manually

If you delete a node with kubectl, Karpenter will gracefully cordon, drain, and shutdown the corresponding instance. Under the hood, Karpenter adds a finalizer to the node object, which blocks deletion until all pods are drained and the instance is terminated. Keep in mind, this only works for nodes provisioned by Karpenter.

kubectl delete node $NODE_NAME

Delete the cluster

To avoid additional charges, remove the demo infrastructure from your AWS account.

helm uninstall karpenter --namespace karpenter
aws cloudformation delete-stack --stack-name "Karpenter-${CLUSTER_NAME}"
aws ec2 describe-launch-templates --filters Name=tag:karpenter.k8s.aws/cluster,Values=${CLUSTER_NAME} |
    jq -r ".LaunchTemplates[].LaunchTemplateName" |
    xargs -I{} aws ec2 delete-launch-template --launch-template-name {}
eksctl delete cluster --name "${CLUSTER_NAME}"