Concepts

• 1: Smart Cost & Emission Optimization
• 2: Cloud Controller
• 3: Core functionalities
• 4: Core Manager
• 5: Distribution Controller

sequenceDiagram
    participant cm as Manager Cluster Managed
    participant cc as Provision Controller
    cm->>cc: transfers specs from user or machine
    cc->>cc: to create the cloud infra (network, subnet, firewall, cluster)
    cc->>cm: 'kubeconfig' and other cluster access to the state
    cc->>cm: status of creation

sequenceDiagram
    participant csm as Manager Cluster Self-Managed
    participant cc as Provision Controller
    participant bc as Bootstrap Controller
    csm->>cc: transfers specs from user or machine
    cc->>cc: to create the cloud infra (network, subnet, firewall, vms)
    cc->>csm: return state to be used by BootstrapController
    csm->>bc: transfers infra state like ssh key, pub IPs, etc
    bc->>bc: bootstrap the infra by either (k3s or kubeadm)
    bc->>csm: 'kubeconfig' and other cluster access to the state
    bc->>csm: status of creation

1 - Smart Cost & Emission Optimization

Smart Cost & Emission Optimization

Ksctl provides intelligent optimization features that help you minimize infrastructure costs and environmental impact when deploying Kubernetes clusters. These features ensure that your clusters run in both the most cost-effective and environmentally friendly configurations.

Dynamic Region Switching (v2.4+)

Introduced in Ksctl v2.4, Dynamic Region Switching optimizes costs and emissions by intelligently selecting the most efficient region for your Kubernetes clusters without changing your instance type.

Key Benefits

• 🚀 Automatic Region Optimization: Ksctl intelligently identifies and switches to the most cost-effective and environmentally friendly regions.
• 🛠️ Flexible Region Control: You can opt to keep your cluster in your preferred region if needed.
• 💰 Cost Savings: Dynamically adapts to pricing changes across regions, reducing your infrastructure expenses.
• 🌱 Eco-Friendly Operations: Minimizes carbon footprint through smart region selection.

How It Works

The Dynamic Region Switching feature evaluates regions based on multiple metrics to determine the optimal location for your Kubernetes clusters:

1. Direct Carbon Intensity (Lower is better): Measures the carbon emissions from energy production.
2. LCA Carbon Intensity (Lower is better): Evaluates the lifecycle carbon emissions of energy sources.
3. Renewable Power Percentage (Higher is better): Highlights regions with higher renewable energy usage.
4. Low CO₂ Power Percentage (Higher is better): Focuses on regions with a lower share of carbon-intensive power.

Visualization of dynamic region switching optimization

Smart Region and Instance Type Selection (v2.5+)

Introduced in Ksctl v2.5, this feature enhances the optimization capabilities through a card-based selection interface that helps you choose the best region and instance type for your Kubernetes clusters based on your specific requirements.

Smart Region Selection

This feature ranks regions based on emission optimization metrics, ensuring that your Kubernetes clusters are not only cost-effective but also environmentally friendly.

Key Benefits

• 🌱 Minimizes carbon footprint by prioritizing regions with lower emissions.
• 🚀 Automatically ranks regions using advanced emission metrics.

How It Works

The Smart Region Selection evaluates and ranks regions based on the same comprehensive emission metrics used in Dynamic Region Switching:

• Direct Carbon Intensity
• LCA Carbon Intensity
• Renewable Power Percentage
• Low CO₂ Power Percentage

Visualization of region selection optimization based on emission metrics

Smart Instance Type Selection

This feature helps you choose the most efficient instance type based on both cost and embodied emissions, ensuring that your Kubernetes clusters are optimized for efficiency and sustainability.

Key Benefits

• 💰 Cost Optimization: Adapts to pricing changes across instance types to reduce infrastructure costs.
• 🌱 Sustainability Focus: Prioritizes instance types with lower embodied emissions, minimizing your carbon footprint.

How It Works

The Smart Instance Type Selection evaluates and ranks instance types based on:

• Cost Efficiency: Analyzes and compares pricing across different instance types.
• Embodied Emissions: Evaluates the environmental impact of manufacturing and deploying each instance type.

Visualization of instance type selection optimization based on cost and embodied emissions

Using the Optimization Features

These optimization features are integrated with the ksctl cluster create command and work automatically when you create a new Kubernetes cluster.

When you run the cluster creation command, Ksctl will:

1. Analyze available regions and instance types
2. Evaluate cost and emission metrics for each option
3. Present optimized recommendations through an intuitive interface
4. Allow you to select the best options for your specific needs

This ensures you get maximum cost efficiency and minimum emissions while maintaining performance and reliability for all your Kubernetes deployments.

Upgrading to Access These Features

To access these optimization features, make sure you’re using Ksctl v2.4 or above by running:

ksctl self-update

This will ensure you have the latest version with all the optimization capabilities described in this document.

2 - Cloud Controller

3 - Core functionalities

Basic cluster operations

Create

• HA self-managed cluster (VM is provisioned and ssh into and configure them just like ansible)
• Managed (cloud provider creates the clusters and we get the kubeconfig in return)

Delete

• HA self managed cluster
• Managed cluster

Scaleup

• Only for ha cluster as the user has manual ability to increase the number of worknodes
• Example: if workernode 1 then it will create 2 then 3…

Scaledown

• Only for ha cluster as the user has manual ability to decrease the number of worknodes
• Example: if workernodes are 1, 2 then it will delete from the last to first aka 2 then 1

Switch

• It will just use the request from the user to get the kubeconfig from specific cluster and save to specific folder that is ~/.ksctl/kubeconfig

Get

• Both ha and manage cluster it will search folders in specific directory to get what all cluster have been created for specific provider

Example: Here for get request of azure it will scan the directory .ksctl/state/azure/ha and for managed as well to get all the folder names

4 - Core Manager

Types

ManagerClusterKsctl

Role: Perform ksctl getCluster, switchCluster

ManagerClusterKubernetes

Role: Perform ksctl addApplicationAndCrds Currently to be used by machine to machine not by ksctl cli

ManagerClusterManaged

Role: Perform ksctl createCluster, deleteCluster

ManagerClusterSelfManaged

Role: Perform ksctl createCluster, deleteCluster, addWorkerNodes, delWorkerNodes

5 - Distribution Controller