Kubeflow Deployment Process

How kubeflow installation works

Understanding the Kubeflow deployment process

The deployment process is controlled by the following commands:

• build - (Optional) Creates configuration files defining the various resources in your deployment. You only need to run kfctl build if you want to edit the resources before running kfctl apply.
• apply - Creates or updates the resources.
• delete - Deletes the resources.

App layout

Your Kubeflow application directory ${KF_DIR} contains the following files and directories:

• ${CONFIG_FILE} is a YAML file that defines configurations related to your Kubeflow deployment.

  • This file is a copy of the GitHub-based configuration YAML file that you used when deploying Kubeflow. For example, https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubeflow/manifests/v1.1-branch/kfdef/kfctl_ibm.v1.1.0.yaml .
  • When you run kfctl apply or kfctl build, kfctl creates a local version of the configuration file, ${CONFIG_FILE}, which you can further customize if necessary.

• kustomize is a directory that contains the kustomize packages for Kubeflow applications.

  • The directory is created when you run kfctl build or kfctl apply.
  • You can customize the Kubernetes resources (modify the manifests and run kfctl apply again).

Kubeflow installation

As of Kubeflow 1.3, the official installation documentation uses a combination of kustomize and kubectl to install Kubeflow. Using kfdef and kfctl will also continue to be a way to install Kubeflow.

Install kfctl

Note: kfctl is currently available for Linux and macOS users only. If you use Windows, you can install kfctl on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Refer to the official instructions for setting up WSL.

Run the following commands to set up and deploy Kubeflow:

1. Download the latest kfctl v1.3.0 release from the Kubeflow releases page.

Note: You’re strongly recommended to install kfctl v1.2 or above because kfctl v1.2 addresses several critical bugs that can break the Kubeflow deployment.

1. Extract the archived TAR file:

   tar -xvf kfctl_v1.2.0-0-gbc038f9_<platform>.tar.gz

2. Make kfctl binary easier to use (optional). If you don’t add the binary to your path, you must use the full path to the kfctl binary each time you run it.

   export PATH=$PATH:<path to where kfctl was unpacked>

Install kubectl and kustomize

• Install kubectl
• Download kustomize 3.2.0

To use the kustomize binary, you need to make it executable and move it to your path.

To add kustomize to your global path, run the following commands:

wget https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/kustomize/releases/download/v3.2.0/<distribution>
chmod +x <distribution>
mv <distribution> /usr/local/bin/kustomize

Your machine might already have kustomize installed. If you want to temporarily add this version of kustomize to your path, run the following commands:

wget https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/kustomize/releases/download/v3.2.0/<distribution>
chmod +x <distribution>
mv <distribution> /some/path/kustomize
# /some/path should not already be in path. 
export PATH=/some/path:$PATH
# order is important here. $PATH needs to be the last thing. We are trying to put our kustomize before the kustomize installtion in system.

Next Steps

1. Go here for installing Kubeflow on IKS
2. Go here for installing Kubeflow on IBM OpenShift

Last modified 09.07.2021: [IBM] fix kfctl url in ibm docs (#2817) (4be295bf)