Alibaba ACK Cluster Builder

ComputeAlibaba Cloud

Build ACK managed Kubernetes cluster configurations with node pools, networking, add-ons, and autoscaling.

Last verified: May 2026

Alibaba Cloud Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) Configuration

Build ACK managed Kubernetes cluster configurations with node pools, networking, add-ons, and autoscaling policies.

Required Fields

clusterNameclusterTypenodePools

{
  "clusterName": "prod-ack-cluster",
  "clusterType": "ManagedKubernetes",
  "kubernetesVersion": "1.28.3",
  "regionId": "cn-hangzhou",
  "vpcId": "vpc-bp1qpo0kug3a20qqe****",
  "podCidr": "172.20.0.0/16",
  "serviceCidr": "172.21.0.0/20",
  "nodePools": [
    {
      "name": "system-pool",
      "instanceTypes": ["ecs.g7.xlarge"],
      "scalingConfig": {
        "minSize": 2,
        "maxSize": 5,
        "desiredSize": 3
      },
      "systemDisk": {
        "category": "cloud_essd",
        "size": 120
      },
      "labels": [
        { "key": "nodepool-type", "value": "system" }
      ],
      "taints": []
    },
    {
      "name": "app-pool",
      "instanceTypes": ["ecs.g7.2xlarge", "ecs.g8a.2xlarge"],
      "scalingConfig": {
        "minSize": 3,
        "maxSize": 20,
        "desiredSize": 5
      },
      "systemDisk": {
        "category": "cloud_essd",
        "size": 120
      },
      "labels": [
        { "key": "nodepool-type", "value": "application" }
      ],
      "taints": []
    }
  ],
  "addons": [
    { "name": "flannel" },
    { "name": "csi-plugin" },
    { "name": "nginx-ingress-controller" },
    { "name": "arms-prometheus" }
  ],
  "loggingConfig": {
    "enableLogging": true,
    "slsProject": "k8s-log-prod"
  }
}

Generated Output

Output will appear here...

How It Helps

Alibaba Cloud Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) is the managed Kubernetes offering — managed control plane, configurable worker node pools, add-on integrations. The Alibaba ACK Cluster Builder produces complete cluster specs including version, region, VPC, worker pools, add-ons (Terway CNI, Cloud Monitor, log collection), and autoscaling configuration. Output is Terraform-ready and matches `alicloud_cs_managed_kubernetes` parameters.

Things Engineers Ask

What's the difference between ACK Pro and Standard?

ACK Pro provides SLA-backed managed control plane with HA, etcd backup, and security hardening features. Standard is suitable for development/test or small production workloads. For production at any scale, ACK Pro is the right choice — the cost differential is small compared to the operational benefit.

Which CNI should I pick — Terway or Flannel?

Terway is the Alibaba-native CNI with VPC-native pod networking — pods get VPC IPs and can be reached directly without NAT. Flannel is the standard overlay CNI. Terway is generally preferred for production: better integration with security groups, simpler debugging, and no overlay overhead. Flannel may be appropriate for compatibility with non-Alibaba tooling.

In Practice

A team running Kubernetes on raw ECS for two years has accumulated significant ops debt. You design an equivalent ACK Pro cluster with the builder — same workload sizes, similar topology, but with managed control plane and Terway CNI. Migration takes a sprint, including reworking some pod-IP-coupled networking that the previous overlay-CNI setup had hidden. After migration, on-call burden drops dramatically.

Practical Applications

1Standing up a new ACK cluster for a production workload with multiple worker pools (system, application, GPU) and autoscaling.
2Adding a node pool optimized for a specific workload (memory-intensive, GPU-equipped) to an existing cluster.
3Configuring add-ons (logging, monitoring, Service Mesh) consistently across multiple ACK clusters.
4Migrating workloads from a self-managed Kubernetes cluster on ECS to ACK for the operational handover.

Behind the Scenes

The builder collects cluster name, Kubernetes version, region, VPC, vSwitches per zone, CNI choice, and a list of node pools (each with instance type, count or min/max for autoscaling, taints, labels). Add-ons are specified as a list. The builder validates the Kubernetes version against supported ACK versions and emits the appropriate Terraform resources with dependencies.

Things the Docs Don’t Tell You

TIP

Use Terway CNI with VPC-native pod IPs from day one. Switching CNI after the cluster has workloads is operationally painful.

TIP

Spread worker pools across zones for HA. Each pool can target specific zones; running pools in three zones means a zone outage only takes down a fraction of capacity.

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