Configuring an optimize container cluster plan

Scope

Select a container platform cluster to optimize.

Scoping to a group within a cluster (such as a group of nodes) is currently not supported.

Optimization settings

Choose from the given optimization scenarios.

• Full optimization

  Turbonomic will recommend all relevant actions to optimize the cluster. For example, it can recommend provisioning nodes or resizing containers to meet application demand, or moving pods from one node to another to reduce congestion.

  Turbonomic can recommend the following actions:

  • Resize namespace compute resource quotas

  • Resize container limits and requests

  • Move pods

  • Provision or suspend nodes

  • Scale volumes

  Note:

  For a cluster in the public cloud, Turbonomic shows the cost impact of actions on nodes and volumes, to help you track your cloud spend. Turbonomic only reports the costs attached to these actions, and does not perform cost analysis on the cluster.

  For a cluster in an on-prem environment, Turbonomic can also recommend the following actions:

  • Move VMs

  • Provision or suspend hosts

  • Provision or suspend storage

• Optimize container spec size

  Turbonomic will only recommend resizing container limits and requests. This is ideal for application owners who manage the containers that their applications run on, but not the underlying container infrastructure.

• Optimize cluster resources, placement, and nodes

  Turbonomic will recommend all relevant actions, except resizing container limits and requests. This is ideal for teams who oversee the health of your container infrastructure, and want to evaluate the impact of not rightsizing workloads.

After selecting an optimization scenario, you can:

• Run the plan.

  Or

• Choose Skip to Configuration to configure additional settings. See the next section for details.

(Optional) Other plan settings

Before you run the plan, you can fine tune your selected scenario by configuring the following settings.

Add pods

See resource changes if you add more pods to the cluster. For example, you might need to provision nodes to accommodate the new pods.

Select an existing pod within or outside the selected cluster, and then specify how many copies to add. The plan simulates adding pods with the same resources as the selected pod.

Remove pods or nodes

See the effect of removing pods or nodes from the cluster. For example, pod density could improve significantly if you remove pods that you no longer need, or certain pods might become unplaced if you remove nodes.

Enable or disable actions

Fine tune your optimization scenario by enabling or disabling actions for containers, pods, or nodes. For example, you may have selected Full Optimization, but only for containers, nodes, and pods that are allowed to move. In this case, you would disable move actions for the pods that should never move.

For clusters in on-prem environments, you can also enable or disable actions for hosts and storage.

Import action mode

The import action mode setting allows you to configure a plan that respects any disabled actions defined in related automation policies. This configuration can help improve the reliability and consistency of your plan outcomes. You can access the setting by clicking Import action mode in the plan configuration toolbar. For on-prem plans, the setting is also available during the plan creation workflow.

The import action mode setting is available on a separate Import action mode page and includes the Import action mode from policy option. By default, this option is disabled.

• Enabled (set to On)

  Your plan imports action mode settings from your real-time market automation policies. With these settings imported, the action mode settings from your policies are respected. This behavior can help ensure that your plan results more accurately reflect your automation policy settings. For example, if you have an automation policy that disables actions for an entity, such as VM moves, the plan that you are configuring now avoids generating those actions for that entity.

  The import action mode is supported for only VM, host, and storage entities. For these entities, Turbonomic applies the following order of precedence to determine the action mode for an action type.

  • Action mode in the plan configuration
  • Action mode in a user-defined automation policy
  • Action mode in the default automation policy
  Note: Start action modes are not respected in plans, regardless of whether the import action mode setting is enabled. For example, if a Start action mode is disabled for VMs, start actions can still be generated by a plan when import action mode is enabled.

• Disabled (set to Off)

  The default behavior is in effect, and any action mode setting from your automation policies is ignored.

This setting is available for all on-prem, public cloud and container platform plans.