Install Kubeflow

This guide describes how to use the kfctl golang cli to deploy Kubeflow on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Prerequisites

• Install kubectl
• Install and configure the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI):
  • Install the AWS Command Line Interface.
  • Configure the AWS CLI by running the following command: aws configure.
  • Enter your Access Keys (Access Key ID and Secret Access Key).
  • Enter your preferred AWS Region and default output options.
• Install eksctl (version 0.1.31 or newer) and the aws-iam-authenticator.

EKS cluster

There’re many ways to provision EKS cluster, using AWS EKS CLI, CloudFormation or Terraform, AWS CDK or eksctl. Here, we highly recommend you to create an EKS cluster using eksctl.

You are required to have an existing Amazon Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes (Amazon EKS) cluster before moving the next step.

The installation tool uses the eksctl command and doesn’t support the --profile option in that command. If you need to switch role, use the aws sts assume-role commands. See the AWS guide to using temporary security credentials to request access to AWS resources.

Kubeflow installation

In order to deploy Kubeflow on your existing Amazon EKS cluster, you need to provide AWS_CLUSTER_NAME, cluster region and worker roles.

1. Download the latest kfctl golang binary from Kubeflow release page and unpack it.

   # Add kfctl to PATH, to make the kfctl binary easier to use.
   tar -xvf kfctl_<release tag>_<platform>.tar.gz
   export PATH=$PATH:"<path to kfctl>"
   
   # Download config file
   export CONFIG="/tmp/kfctl_aws.yaml"
   wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubeflow/kubeflow/v0.6.2/bootstrap/config/kfctl_aws.yaml -O ${CONFIG}

   • kfctl_aws.yaml is one of setup manifests, please check kfctl_aws_cognito.yaml for the template to enable authentication.

2. Customize your config file. Retrieve the Amazon EKS cluster name, AWS Region, and IAM role name for your worker nodes.

   export AWS_CLUSTER_NAME=<YOUR EKS CLUSTER NAME>
   export KFAPP=${AWS_CLUSTER_NAME}

   Note: To get your Amazon EKS worker node IAM role name, you can check IAM setting by running the following commands. This command assumes that you used eksctl to create your cluster. If you use other provisioning tools to create your worker node groups, please find the role that is associated with your worker nodes in the Amazon EC2 console.

   aws iam list-roles \
       | jq -r ".Roles[] \
       | select(.RoleName \
       | startswith(\"eksctl-$AWS_CLUSTER_NAME\") and contains(\"NodeInstanceRole\")) \
       .RoleName"
   
   eksctl-kubeflow-example-nodegroup-ng-185-NodeInstanceRole-1DDJJXQBG9EM6

   Change cluster region and worker roles names in your kfctl_aws.yaml

     region: us-west-2
     roles:
       - eksctl-kubeflow-example-nodegroup-ng-185-NodeInstanceRole-1DDJJXQBG9EM6

   If you have multiple node groups, you will see corresponding number of node group roles. In that case, please provide the role names as an array.

3. Run the following commands to set up your environment and initialize the cluster.

   kfctl init ${KFAPP} --config=${CONFIG} -V
   cd ${KFAPP}
   
   kfctl generate all -V
   kfctl apply all -V

   • KFAPP - Use a relative directory name here rather than absolute path, such as kfapp. It will be used as eks cluster name.
   • CONFIG - Path to the configuration file

   Important!!! By default, these scripts create an AWS Application Load Balancer for Kubeflow that is open to public. This is good for development testing and for short term use, but we do not recommend that you use this configuration for production workloads.

   To secure your installation, Follow the instructions to add authentication.

4. Wait for all the resources to become ready in the kubeflow namespace.

   kubectl -n kubeflow get all
   

5. Get Kubeflow service endpoint and copy link in browser.

   kubectl get ingress -n istio-system
   
   NAMESPACE      NAME            HOSTS   ADDRESS                                                             PORTS   AGE
   istio-system   istio-ingress   *       a743484b-istiosystem-istio-2af2-xxxxxx.us-west-2.elb.amazonaws.com   80      1h
   

   This deployment may take 3-5 minutes to become ready. Verify that the address works by opening it in your preferred Internet browser. You can also run kubectl delete istio-ingress -n istio-system to remove the load balancer entirely.

Post Installation

Kubeflow 0.6 release brings multi-tenancy support and user are not able to create notebooks in kubeflow, default namespace. Instead, please create a Profile using kubectl apply -f profile.yaml and profile controller will create new namespace and service account which is allowed to create notebook in that namespace.

apiVersion: kubeflow.org/v1alpha1
kind: Profile
metadata:
  name: aws-sample-user
spec:
  owner:
    kind: User
    name: aws-sample-user

Understanding the deployment process

The deployment process is controlled by 4 different commands:

• init - The initial one-time set up.
• generate - Creates the configuration files that define your various resources.
• apply - Creates or updates the resources.
• delete - Deletes the resources.

With the exception of init, all commands take an argument which describes the set of resources to apply the command to; this argument can be one of the following:

• platform - All AWS resources; that is, anything that doesn’t run on Kubernetes. Like IAM policy attachments, Amazon EKS cluster creation, etc.
• k8s - All Kubernetes resources. Such as Kubeflow packages and add-on packages like fluentd or istio.
• all - Both AWS and Kubernetes resources.

App layout

Your Kubeflow app directory contains the following files and directories:

• app.yaml - Defines the configuration related to your Kubeflow deployment.
  • These values are set when you run kfctl init.
  • These values are snapshotted inside app.yaml to make your app self contained.
• ${KFAPP}/aws_config - A directory that contains a sample eksctl cluster configuration file that defines the AWS cluster and policy files to attach to your node group roles.
  • This directory is created when you run kfctl generate platform -V.
  • You can modify the cluster_config.yaml and cluster_features.yaml files to customize your AWS infrastructure.
• kustomize is a directory that contains the kustomize packages for Kubeflow applications.
  • The directory is created when you run kfctl generate.
  • You can customize the Kubernetes resources (modify the manifests and run kfctl apply again).

The provisioning scripts can either bring up a new cluster and install Kubeflow on it, or you can install Kubeflow on your existing cluster. We recommend that you create a new cluster for better isolation.

If you experience any issues running these scripts, see the troubleshooting guidance for more information.

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