Installing on IBM Cloud Private

PowerAI Enterprise can be deployed in Docker containers in a Kubernetes-managed cluster of IBM® Power® Systems servers with GPUs. To deploy your containers, you need to use IBM Cloud Private, version 3.1 or later to install the PowerAI Enterprise using an archive that can be downloaded from IBM Passport Advantage after you procure the necessary licenses.

  • Do not install Anaconda Distribution in the docker containers that are part of a deployment on IBM Cloud Private because it is already installed as part of PowerAI.
  • Do not change any Spark instance group configuration parameters, such as creating consumers or resource groups, changing plan configurations, adding packages from a repository, or changing the Jupyter notebook configuration from the IBM Spectrum Conductor user interface because these are preconfigured through Helm charts when the product is deployed on IBM Cloud Private.
  • The Notebook user interface is not supported in ingress proxy mode
  • The IBM Spectrum Conductor user interface is not supported in ingress proxy mode if authentication and authorization are enabled for the Spark instance group.

To install PowerAI Enterprise with IBM Cloud Private, complete the following steps:

  1. Install Docker version 1.13.1 and higher, published by Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Configure the storage driver for docker engine to be device_mapper in direct_lvm mode. For more information, see Use the Device Mapper storage driver.
  2. Prepare GPU worker nodes for deployments. See the Configuring a GPU worker node topic.
  3. Install IBM Cloud Private. For more information, see the Installing IBM Cloud Private topic.
  4. Disable NFS version 4 on all the nodes by editing the /etc/sysconfig/nfs file and adding this line: RPCNFSDARGS="--no-nfs-version 4". Restart the NFS service.

    To verify that NFS version 3 is active in all the nodes, run this command: rpcinfo -u localhost nfs.

  5. Download the PowerAI Enterprise PPA file from IBM Passport Advantage.
  6. To make the PowerAI Enterprise Docker image available in IBM Cloud Private, see topic cloudctl catalog load-archive --archive TGZ_ARCHIVE [--registry REGISTRY] [--repo HELM_REPO_NAME].
  7. PowerAI Enterprise Docker image is now visible in the IBM Cloud Private administration console. Go to Menu > Manage > Images. Change the scope of the image to global.
  8. Go to IBM Cloud Private administration console, go to Menu > Manage > Helm Repositories and click Sync Repositories.
  9. PowerAI Enterprise Helm Chart is now listed in the IBM Cloud Private administration console. Go to catalog and search for ibm-powerai-enterprise-prod.
  10. Review the PowerAI Enterprise Helm Chart readme file for PowerAI Enterprise carefully. It documents prerequisites, requirements, and limitations of PowerAI Enterprise in IBM Cloud Private.
  11. Create Persistent volumes as instructed in the Helm chart readme file.

    On the NFS server, ensure that the NFS volumes have the no_root_squash flag set in /etc/exports; for example, /var/nfs *(rw,no_root_squash,no_subtree_check).

  12. Optionally create a custom pod security policy. For instructions, review the "PodSecurityPolicy Requirements" section in the PowerAI Enterprise Helm Chart readme file.
  13. Create the required secrets and service accounts as instructed in the Helm Chart readme file.
  14. Click Configure and enter information for the Helm Release name and the Namespace fields. The default user name is admin and the default password is admin. For more information, see Namespaces.
  15. Click Install.

    The proxy for accessing the cluster management console is by default, set to IngressProxy and the base port set to 30745.

    The IngressProxy base port number and ASCD debug port is unique to each deployment.

    To check the deployment status, go to Menu > Workload > Helm Release or Deployment, search by Helm release name and its current status as Deployed.

    For information about accessing PowerAI Enterprise user interface, go to Menu > Workload > Helm Releases, search for the helm release and click for details.

To access PowerAI Enterprise user interface, you need to complete some postinstallation configuration steps:

  1. Configure your client DNS server to resolve deployment name to any public IP of the Kubernetes cluster. Configure the host mapping in the client host/etc/hosts for a UNIX OS or /etc/hosts counterpart for Windows OS. For instance, replacing the x.x.x.x with any public IP of the Kubernetes cluster.
    $ cat /etc/hosts
x.x.x.x deployment name
    For example, for a Helm release name by powerai-enterprise and base port to its default 30745 (in step 14), the host file has an entry similar to: powerai-enterprise-paiemaster
  2. Access the cluster by browser with the URL: https://deployment name:base-port/platform, where deployment name matches the Helm release deployment name and baseport matches the base port that is provided during the deployment.

    For example, for a Helm release name of powerai-enterprise and base port as default 30745 (in step 14), the URL to access will be https://powerai-enterprise-paiemaster:30745/platform

  3. If you are using the default self-signed certificate, refer to steps 3 and onward in Locating the cluster management console.
Parent topic: Introduction to IBM PowerAI Enterprise