Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) allows you to create nodes that run the Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 operating system. These nodes use the high-performance kernel of Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 that is optimized for various scenarios. This topic describes the benefits and use scenarios of Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 and how to use Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 as the operating system image of the nodes in ACK clusters.
Overview
Alibaba Cloud Linux is a Linux operating system distribution developed by Alibaba Cloud. Alibaba Cloud Linux translates achievements from the open source community into enhanced open source features and maintains excellent quality by using a new comprehensive quality assurance system. Alibaba Cloud Linux is deeply optimized for the Alibaba Cloud infrastructure and provides 10-year enterprise-class support and maintenance to improve user experience. Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 inherits the features of Alibaba Cloud Linux 2, is compatible with Container Service for Kubernetes, and provides the following optimizations:
Provides new basic software, new applications, and new features developed by the community.
Optimizes the compatibility with Container Service for Kubernetes and performs continuous improvements for cloud computing scenarios and user scenarios.
Provides deep optimizations for 8th generation computing instances, such as Yitian, Sapphire Rapids, and Genoa.
Provides proprietary OS features, optimizes performance, and improves ease of use.
Provides detailed release notes to help you understand the changes and updates.
Benefits
Benefit | Description |
New basic software and new applications |
|
Optimized integration with ACK and Elastic Compute Service (ECS) | Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 works with ECS to accelerate the startup of ECS instances and provides built-in environment dependencies. The auto scaling feature of ACK also reduces the time required for creating individual nodes that run Alibaba Cloud Linux 3. |
Based on in-depth integration with ECS and the optimizations of kernel technologies, compilers, and configurations, Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 greatly improves the runtime performance of each node in an ACK cluster. This results in a performance improvement of over 30% in scenarios such as big data computing, web servers, databases, and AI. | |
New operating system technologies to improve user experience in the cloud | |
Sophisticated platform for AI development |
|
Others | Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 provides various system optimizations:
For more information, see Release notes for Alibaba Cloud Linux 3. |
Usage notes
In Alibaba Cloud Linux 3, iptables are incompatible with nftables. If you use the iptables component, network performance might be compromised.
Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 may use a partial hostname as the Domain Name System (DNS) search domain, which may increase the frequency of DNS resolutions.
Install Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 on nodes in ACK clusters
When you create an ACK cluster in the ACK console, set Operating System to Alibaba Cloud Linux 3.2104 to install Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 on the nodes in the cluster. For more information, see Create an ACK managed cluster and Create an ACK dedicated cluster.
If you select Alibaba Cloud Linux 3, when ACK creates clusters, adds nodes, or performs auto scaling, ACK automatically checks for security patches of Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 and installs the patches.