Kubernetes

Learn how to deploy ZenML pipelines on a Kubernetes cluster.

The ZenML Kubernetes Orchestrator allows you to run your ML pipelines on a Kubernetes cluster without writing Kubernetes code. It's a lightweight alternative to more complex orchestrators like Airflow or Kubeflow.

If you only want to run individual steps of your pipeline in Kubernetes, check out our Kubernetes Step Operator.

Prerequisites

To use the Kubernetes Orchestrator, you'll need:

• ZenML kubernetes integration installed (zenml integration install kubernetes)

• Docker installed and running

• kubectl installed

• A remote artifact store and container registry in your ZenML stack

• A deployed Kubernetes cluster

• A configured kubectl context pointing to the cluster (optional, see below)

Deploying the Orchestrator

The Kubernetes orchestrator requires a Kubernetes cluster in order to run. There are many ways to deploy a Kubernetes cluster using different cloud providers or on your custom infrastructure, and we can't possibly cover all of them, but you can check out our cloud guide.

Configuring the Orchestrator

There are two ways to configure the orchestrator:

1. Using a Service Connector to connect to the remote cluster. This is the recommended approach, especially for cloud-managed clusters. No local kubectl context is needed.

zenml orchestrator register <ORCHESTRATOR_NAME> --flavor kubernetes
zenml service-connector list-resources --resource-type kubernetes-cluster -e
zenml orchestrator connect <ORCHESTRATOR_NAME> --connector <CONNECTOR_NAME>
zenml stack register <STACK_NAME> -o <ORCHESTRATOR_NAME> ... --set

2. Configuring kubectl with a context pointing to the remote cluster and setting the kubernetes_context in the orchestrator config:

zenml orchestrator register <ORCHESTRATOR_NAME> \
    --flavor=kubernetes \
    --kubernetes_context=<KUBERNETES_CONTEXT>

zenml stack register <STACK_NAME> -o <ORCHESTRATOR_NAME> ... --set

Running a Pipeline

Once configured, you can run any ZenML pipeline using the Kubernetes Orchestrator:

python your_pipeline.py

This will create a Kubernetes pod for each step in your pipeline. You can interact with the pods using kubectl commands.

For more advanced configuration options and additional details, refer to the full Kubernetes Orchestrator documentation.