Robust Stateful AI Workload Management with ACID Zalando Operator

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

To achieve robust stateful AI workload management with the use of an ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) compliant database operator like Zalando Postgres Operator on Kubernetes, we will leverage cloud resources to create a managed Kubernetes cluster and deploy the Zalando Postgres Operator on it. Using Zalando Operator is beneficial as it automates the provisioning and management of Postgresql databases on Kubernetes, ensuring that the database is ACID-compliant which is crucial for stateful applications that require reliable and consistent transaction management.

In this program, we will use Pulumi to create an Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster, as well as deploy the Zalando Postgres Operator onto that cluster. We chose AKS due to its seamless integration with other Azure services and robust support for stateful applications.

Here's how we will accomplish this:

1. Create an AKS cluster on Azure using Pulumi’s `azure-native` package.
2. Deploy the Zalando Postgres Operator to the AKS cluster.

Below is the Pulumi program that carries out these steps:

```python
import pulumi
from pulumi_azure_native import containerservice as aks
from pulumi_azure_native import resources
from pulumi_kubernetes import Provider, helm

# Create an Azure Resource Group
resource_group = resources.ResourceGroup("resource_group")

# Create an AKS cluster
aks_cluster = aks.ManagedCluster(
    "aksCluster",
    resource_group_name=resource_group.name,
    agent_pool_profiles=[{
        "count": 3,
        "vm_size": "Standard_DS2_v2",
        "mode": "System",
    }],
    dns_prefix="akscluster",
    service_principal={
        "client_id": "YOUR_SERVICE_PRINCIPAL_CLIENT_ID",
        "client_secret": "YOUR_SERVICE_PRINCIPAL_CLIENT_SECRET",
    },
)

# Using the AKS cluster as a Kubernetes provider for Pulumi
k8s_provider = Provider("k8sProvider", kubeconfig=aks_cluster.kube_config_raw)

# Deploy the Zalando Postgres Operator using a Helm chart
zalando_postgres_operator_chart = helm.v3.Chart(
    "zalando-postgres-operator",
    helm.v3.ChartOpts(
        chart="postgres-operator",
        version="1.6.3",  # Specify the version you want to deploy
        fetch_opts=helm.v3.FetchOpts(
            repo="https://opensource.zalando.com/postgres-operator/charts/postgres-operator/"
        ),
    ),
    opts=pulumi.ResourceOptions(provider=k8s_provider)
)

# Export the kubeconfig to connect to the AKS cluster
pulumi.export("kubeconfig", aks_cluster.kube_config_raw)
```

In this program:

- We start by importing the required Pulumi modules for Azure and Kubernetes.
- We create an Azure Resource Group to contain our AKS cluster.
- We then define a ManagedCluster resource to provision an AKS cluster with 3 nodes of size "Standard_DS2_v2".
- We set up the necessary service principal credentials, which you will need to replace with your actual Azure service principal client ID and secret.
- We establish a Kubernetes provider instance `k8s_provider` using the AKS kubeconfig.
- We deploy the Zalando Postgres Operator using its Helm chart onto our AKS cluster with Pulumi's Helm Chart resource.
- Finally, we export the kubeconfig, which can be used to connect to the AKS cluster using `kubectl`.

Please remember to replace the placeholder service principal credentials with your actual credentials before deploying this program. You will also need to have Pulumi installed and configured for use with Azure. Running this program will set up a robust environment on Azure for managing stateful AI workloads with the Zalando Postgres Operator.