Running Applications on Arm-based Nodes

Find out how to run applications on Arm-based worker nodes in clusters created using Kubernetes Engine (OKE).

To run applications on Arm-based worker nodes, you select a managed node pool and an Arm-based shape. The shape determines the number of CPUs and the amount of memory allocated to each node in the node pool. You can select Arm-based bare metal shapes and flexible VM shapes. These Ampere A1 Compute instances are based on the Ampere Altra processor (see Arm-Based Compute). For information about the OCPU count, memory, storage, and networking details of these shapes, see Compute Shapes.

You can specify an Arm-based shape for a node pool using the Console, the API, and the CLI when you create a new cluster. You can also specify an Arm-based shape when you create a new node pool. See the node pool configuration steps in Creating Kubernetes Clusters Using Console Workflows and Creating Worker Nodes with Updated Properties respectively.

To view the number of reservable Arm-based cores available to you, use the Console. Open the navigation menu and click Governance & Administration. Under Tenancy Management, click Limits, Quotas and Usage.

Compared to other shapes, Arm-based shapes provide better price-performance, greater security isolation (because each core is single-threaded), and more consistent performance. Typically, developers use Arm-based worker nodes in Kubernetes clusters to develop and test applications.

When you deploy an application on a cluster you've created with Kubernetes Engine, you have to specify in the pod spec the compute resources that are required. To deploy the application, the kube-scheduler determines which node has the necessary resources. If a cluster has node pools with Arm-based shapes and also node pools with other shapes (for example, AMD64 shapes), you can use a nodeSelector in the pod spec to specify that an application is to run on Arm-based worker nodes. See Defining a pod to run only on Arm-based nodes.

If you want to deploy an application on both Arm-based and non-Arm-based worker nodes in the same cluster, use multi-architecture images (sometimes known as manifest lists) stored in an Open Container Initiative-compliant registry like Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Registry (see Overview of Container Registry). You build multi-architecture images from a single source tree, with one image tag that includes images for both x86 and Arm architectures. You can build multi-architecture images using Docker Buildx, Podman, and Buildah.

Note the following:

• You can specify Arm-based shapes for node pools in clusters running Kubernetes version 1.19.7 or later. Do not specify an Arm-based shape for node pools running earlier versions of Kubernetes.
• Having created a node pool with an Arm-based shape, you cannot change the node pool to have a non-Arm-based shape. Likewise, you cannot change a node pool with a non-Arm-based shape to have an Arm-based shape.
• When you specify an Arm-based shape for a node pool, you also specify an image that is compatible with the shape. See Compute Shapes.

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: nginx
  labels:
    env: test
spec:
  containers:
  - name: nginx
    image: nginx
    imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
  nodeSelector:
    kubernetes.io/arch: arm64