How Fuzzball's HPC runs on Kubernetes (k8s)

CIQ HPC engineers Brian Phan and Jonathon Anderson explain in one minute how Fuzzball uses Kubernetes without the overhead of earlier containerized HPC attempts. Fuzzball Orchestrate runs as microservices on Rancher Kubernetes Engine and manages workflows plus the data and software images they need. Jobs are submitted to Orchestrate, which stages containers and data onto compute nodes running Fuzzball Substrate, a task runner that executes the work on bare metal.

Workflows are collections of jobs related by dependencies. Orchestrate processes the workflow, but every compute job and ancillary task such as pulling an image or handling data ingress and egress runs outside Kubernetes on the Substrate resources.

Key takeaways

• Fuzzball Orchestrate runs as microservices on Rancher Kubernetes Engine to manage workflows, data, and software images.
• Fuzzball Substrate acts as a task runner on compute nodes, receiving staged containers and data from Orchestrate.
• Compute jobs and ancillary tasks like image pulls and data ingress or egress execute outside Kubernetes on bare metal.

Questions this video answers

What runs on Kubernetes in Fuzzball and what does not?

Only Fuzzball Orchestrate, the set of microservices that manages workflows and stages data and software images, runs on Kubernetes. Jobs are executed by Fuzzball Substrate on your compute nodes, along with ancillary work such as pulling images and moving data, so workloads get bare-metal performance.

About this video

Fuzzball is an HPC workflow orchestration platform that runs on Kubernetes. It's designed so you get bare-metal performance without any of the overhead that's come with previous attempts at containerized HPC.

Learn more from Brian Phan & Jonathon Anderson, CIQ's HPC engineers.

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