2.1 Verify the base stack¶

Time: 3 min

Load the environment the pre-work wrote, and make sure kubectl is pointed at the right cluster. Every command in the labs assumes you're in the repo root with these variables set.

cd gpu-eks-workshop
source .workshop.env
echo "$CLUSTER_NAME in $AWS_REGION, node role $KARPENTER_NODE_ROLE"
kubectl config current-context

gpu-workshop in us-east-1, node role KarpenterNodeRole-gpu-workshop
arn:aws:eks:us-east-1:123456789012:cluster/gpu-workshop

The platform pieces are running¶

kubectl get deploy -n karpenter
kubectl get deploy -n monitoring
kubectl get deploy -n keda

NAME        READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
karpenter   2/2     2            2           14h

NAME                                        READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
kube-prometheus-stack-grafana               1/1     1            1           14h
kube-prometheus-stack-kube-state-metrics    1/1     1            1           14h
kube-prometheus-stack-operator              1/1     1            1           14h

NAME                              READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
keda-admission-webhooks           1/1     1            1           14h
keda-operator                     1/1     1            1           14h
keda-operator-metrics-apiserver   1/1     1            1           14h

Karpenter has nothing to manage yet¶

kubectl get nodepools,ec2nodeclasses,nodeclaims

No resources found

That's the state we want: Karpenter is running, but you have not told it what it may provision. That's the NodePool, and it's yours to write.

And there are no GPUs¶

kubectl get nodes -o custom-columns='NAME:.metadata.name,INSTANCE:.metadata.labels.node\.kubernetes\.io/instance-type,GPU:.status.allocatable.nvidia\.com/gpu'

NAME                          INSTANCE     GPU
ip-10-0-11-23.ec2.internal    m6i.xlarge   <none>
ip-10-0-42-118.ec2.internal   m6i.xlarge   <none>

Open a second terminal now

In the second pane, start a watch that you'll leave running for the rest of the lab:

kubectl get nodeclaims,nodes -w

Nothing will happen for a while. That's the point — you'll see the exact moment Karpenter acts.

Next: 2.2 Create GPU capacity →