7 ms·
Google Kubernetes Engine adds support for Arm nodes
- FooBarWidget 4y agoGreat. Hopefully Azure is next, so we can get ARM Github Actions runners on which I can build ARM binaries. I can already do it with qemu-user but it's slow.
- cagataygurturk 4y agoYou can already self-host GH Runners on ARM.
- FooBarWidget 4y agoThe point is to not have to self-host. It costs money, is a pain because maintenance is required, and there are security issues with running CI for public pull requests.
- alexeldeib 4y agoAzure already has ARM VMs (as well as AKS)? The equivalent would be cloud build, not GKE <-> GH actions, right? does cloud build support arm runners?
- Klasiaster 4y agoWith garm (https://github.com/cloudbase/garm https://github.com/cloudbase/garm) you can spawn ephemeral runner VMs, be it as Azure/GCE ARM instances or as lxc VMs (or lxc containers).
- jrockway 4y agoWhat kind of ARM machine should I buy if I want to self-host an ARM server? My not-that-recent look at the market shows everyone kind of doing their own thing; Amazon makes Amazon's ARM servers, Apple makes Apple's ARM chips, etc. As some random guy who wants to test on ARM, it's annoying. Maybe things have improved recently, though? (I'm guessing self-host realistically means "get a VM on AWS", which is probably fine for CI if you already use AWS. A little annoying to have another monthly bill to pay if you don't, though.)
- psanford 4y agoBuy a Mac mini and install Linux on it? That feels like it is (or will soon be) the best option.
- aseipp 4y agoYour best options IMO are either 1) a Mac Mini with 16GB of RAM running a Linux VM or Asahi Linux connected OR 2) an Nvidia Jetson Xavier AGX; you can get the 32GB version for like $700 USD I think. (The newer Orin is a fair bit more expensive.) You realistically want something with ARMv8.2 or better, these are relatively easy to acquire with the current supply chains, they're beefy, can be equipped with fast storage, and they are both small units you can put on your desk. Note that the Xavier will require you to fiddle with the usual Nvidia bullshit through their SDK but it's otherwise a standard Ubuntu machine. It should be possible to get another distro on there too. The M1 will almost certainly perform better overall watt-for-watt though.
- cagataygurturk 4y agoThe ARM nodes which are exactly the topic of this submission could be a place where you can self-host your GH runners :) https://github.com/actions-runner-controller/actions-runner-controller https://github.com/actions-runner-controller/actions-runner-... works quite well with its autoscaling. You could create a zonal GKE cluster, which is in free tier, and create a small spot vm node pool with ARM nodes. It wouldn't be entirely free but it would cost quite low amount of money.
- Aissen 4y agoPricing is in line with the cloud: expensive. That's it, they made it: now Arm servers are mainstream.
- mathnode 4y agoI am very ignorant of the current ARM cloud offerings. Is it similar prices but less power usage? Or have they had to ramp up the watts to compete?
- justizin 4y agonot sure about pricing here, but graviton on aws has generally offered more performance at a lower price point, which is likely linked to lower power usage and perhaps lower cost of custom silicon vs intel. the notion, "the cloud is expensive", ignores the fact that the cloud is not just rented hardware, but staff, facilities, planning, management, etc.. there are businesses where it makes more sense to own hardware and employ your own staff, but if you just want generic compute and storage, you're unlikely to do it as well for less. also you cannot easily source arm hardware commercially, there is the honeycomb lx2, and its' lead time is months for a single unit. if you want hundreds of nodes, you're gonna use a cloud provider who manufactures their own silicon.
- vbezhenar 4y ago> you cannot easily source arm hardware commercially Buy Mac Minis and run virtual linux inside?
- throwaway894345 4y agoI've been passively curious about this for a homelab--does linux virtualize on apple silicon today? I was of the impression this didn't work when they announced m1 in 2020, but I could be misremembering.
- vbezhenar 4y ago
- Klasiaster 4y agoIt's quite light on details: What properties does the (virtualized) ARM CPU that one gets have? Can it do KVM itself (meaning the underlying real CPU has support for nested KVM)? Can it do ARMv8.3 pointer authentication?
- my123 4y agoIt's an Ampere Altra for those first instances. So no on both.
- Klasiaster 4y agoThey could have named Ampere and give credit to them, I think it's common in cloud instance offerings to have AMD or Intel also being named as underlying physical CPUs, even with the generation.
- milesward 4y agoThey did in the docs, 2nd paragraph of the blog post, etc https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/tau-t2a-is-first-compute-engine-vm-on-an-arm-chip https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/tau-t2a-is-fi...
- Klasiaster 4y agoThanks, yes, makes sense to look at the GCE announcement instead of the GKE announcement for this info.
- bogomipz 4y agoI'd be curious to hear what the use case is for nested KVM. What hardware support is required for that as well?
- vocram 4y agoThe instance exposed by GCE is virtualized. If you want to run any hw virtualized workload inside it, you need nested virtualization.
- wmf 4y agoPeople would probably be more interested in the underlying Google Cloud ARM announcement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32084887 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32084887
- milesward 4y agoYup, my team did a little copy-paste lab if folks want to kick the tires: https://github.com/sadasystems/gke-multiarch-guide https://github.com/sadasystems/gke-multiarch-guide
- Cidan 4y agoAlso, the PM's are going to do an AMA for this on reddit tomorrow: https://www.reddit.com/r/googlecloud/comments/vy8hx3/ama_with_cloud_pms_on_gcps_arm_release_this/ https://www.reddit.com/r/googlecloud/comments/vy8hx3/ama_wit... Come join us! Also, hi Moles :)
- markdog12 4y agoLooks like it's only available in NA central for now, boooo: https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/regions-zones#available https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/regions-zones#availabl...
- milesward 4y agoWhere did you want it?
- BillinghamJ 4y agoIn every zone, obviously. AWS has had widespread ARM support for many years.
- ksec 4y agoI mean first gen Graviton was announced in late 2018 during reInvent. And it wasn’t even generally available until mid 2019. It was underwhelming, but layering some required software foundation. Graviton 2 was in late 2019 and wasn’t GA and available in many region until 2021. Hardly widespread support for many years.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]