Lenovo Technical Brief for

AWS ECS-A and EKS-AHybrid Cloud Services
Running on ThinkAgile VX
Virtualization sprawl problem and a solution
As virtualization environments continue to expand organizations are looking for more efficient andmanageable platforms for their critical data and applications. The ease of deploying a virtual machineor container can result in a disorganized spread of virtual devices and resources. This can result insecurity vulnerabilities and wasted resources. Amazon’s Elastic Container Service - Anywhere (ECSA) on Lenovo ThinkAgile VX systems is a container orchestration solution that runs the AWS ECS
cloud service in your own data center. ECS makes deploying, managing and scaling containerized
workloads easier. Additionally, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service – Anywhere (EKS-A) on Lenovo
servers is a fully managed Kubernetes solution based on AWS EKS cloud service for running
Kubernetes clusters with VMware on-premises.
ECS-A can be run on a bare metal Lenovo server or virtual machine running a recent Linux
distribution, although the recommended one is Ubuntu 20.04. EKS-A currently only runs on a VMware
vSphere 7.0 cluster environment. However, bare metal support is planned for later in 2022. A Lenovo
deployment guide is planned in the coming months, covering detailed installation and configuration
steps for both ECS-A and EKS-A on Lenovo ThinkAgile VX systems hosting VMware clusters.
Lenovo Solutions for Amazon ECS and EKS Anywhere on ThinkAgile VX7531 are optimized for
virtualization workloads and high-performance throughput. The VX Systems are highly optimized
specifically for VMware environments. This technical brief features Amazon’s container andKubernetes offerings running on the Lenovo VX7531 dual-socket 2u rack mount enterprise server. The
server is configured with 3rd Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, TruDDR4 3200MHz
memory, 440-16i or 440-8i SAS HBAs, Mellanox CX6 (RoCE) or Qlogic (iWARP) RDMA NICs and avariety of storage options, including support for the PCIe 4.0 standard for I/O. These new processors
from Intel offer up to 40 cores and 16x 3200 MHz DDR4 per socket.

The VX7531 server is ideal for virtualized environments with its storage dense offering, 28 different
drive bays in the front, middle and rear of the server and 5 different slot configurations at the rear ofthe server. Onboard NVMe PCIe ports allow direct connections to 12x NVMe SSDs, which frees up
PCIe slots and lowers NVMe solution acquisition costs.

©2022 Lenovo. All rights reserved.

AMAZON ELASTIC CONTAINER SERVICE - ANYWHERE
Amazon ECS-A is an expandedfeature of the proven ECS solutionthat runs in the AWS Cloud. It takesthat same service and makes it easy
to run and manage container-based
applications on your own managed
infrastructure.
The setup process to get it up andrunning can be done without a lot ofeffort. The high-level steps are asfollows

The next steps below are completed
on the Linux server that will run ECSA.
On the ECS-A Lenovo server:
1. SSH into the server to set theactivation ID
2. Download the ECS-A installation
script3. Run the installation script
4. Exit the SSH session and returnto the management server

The server configuration features
the following main components:

••
•
•
•

On the Management system:
1. Install the AWS CLI on a Linux
management server or vm onpremises. The following steps
are all completed from themanagement system CLI
2. Set AWS variables for yourenvironment
3. Create an SSM Trust Policy
4. Create an IAM role using thetrust policy key
5. Create an ECS-A cluster
6. Create an SSM activation ID
code©2022 Lenovo. All rights reserved.

The remaining steps are completed
from the management server.

•

1. Setup the task by editing a JSON
file. Tasks are how containers
are defined and deployed inECS-A
2. Register the task
3. Run task. This launches thecontainer, our POC used nginx
4. From the AWS Console, thecluster resource can be viewed
and observe the runningcontainer•Server: Lenovo ThinkAgile
VX7531
Processor: 2x 3nd Gen Intel
Xeon Scalable, 40 core
Memory: 1 TB of TRUDDR43200 MHz memory
Primary Storage: 8x Intel P4510
4TB NVMe SSDs
Secondary Storage: 2x Intel
Optane p4800x 750GB NVMe
SSD Raid1
OS Storage: 2x 480GB M.2
SATA SSDs for the operating
system (RAID 1)
Software:• Ubuntu 20.04 LTS• Amazon ECS-A solution

AMAZON ELASTIC KUBERNETES SERVICE - ANYWHERE
Amazon EKS-A is also an expandedfeature of the proven EKS solutionthat runs in the AWS cloud. It takes
the same service and creates aneasily managed Kubernetes cluster
environment in your data center.

The EKS-A installation starts with aLinux administrative machine, which
can be a VM on the VMware cluster.
It uses the eksctl executable to build
a Kubernetes cluster on yoursystems.

At this point the management cluster
is ready to deploy the workloadcluster.

The main difference when installing
EKS-A is that it does not run on asingle system or VM. It currently
requires a VMware vSphere 7 cluster
to support all the control plane andworker nodes for Kubernetes.

The current version of EKS-Adeploys two clusters. One is themanagement cluster, which is also
the bootstrap cluster. The other is theworkloads cluster. This is a recentchange from the initial release thatused only one cluster for everything.

1. Generate a workload cluster
config file. Its important to use a
different cluster name than themanagement cluster, anddifferent VMware resources
2. Create a workload cluster anduse the management cluster’s
credentials. This will ensure thatworkload cluster is managed
from the management cluster
3. Verify the workload cluster
4. Deploy a test application
5. It is common to deploy more than
one workload cluster. This canbe done by following the samesteps and reusing the cluster
config file after renaming it andmodifying the resources section

The deployment process includes
the following main steps:
1. Create a bootstrap cluster on theadministrative machine
2. Create the EKS-A workload
cluster in vSphere
3. Create the EKS-A control plane
4. Create the EKS-A worker nodes
5. Setup networking
6. Setup storage

All of this is setup automatically
based on cluster config file settings.
With the EKS Connector, EKS-A onpremise cluster can be registeredand viewed in the Amazon Console> Container Services.

©2022 Lenovo. All rights reserved.

On the Administrative machine:
1. Install the EKS-A CLI tools
2. Generate the management
cluster config file
3. Set credential variables for theVMware environment
4. Set License environment variable
5. Create the management cluster
6. Setup KUBECONFIG
7. Verify the management cluster
nodes using kubectl
8. Verify the management cluster’s
CRD

The next steps create the workloads
cluster.

After the workload clusters are
deployed, the management cluster
remains in place so it can be used toupgrade, modify or delete workloadclusters.

Best practices for Amazon ECS-A and EKS-A on ThinkSystem VX7531 servers
For a high-performance and reliable solution, implement the following best practices:•••••••••

Configure UEFI (Bios) settings to custom mode and set Operating mode to Maximum performance.
Change UEFI processor mwait setting to enabled. By default, it is disabled. It must be in custom
mode to allow this setting change. This is a VMware requirement to allow the VMware CLS system
VMs to start.
Use the recommended Linux OS to avoid command and syntax issues across distributions. The
recommended distribution is currently Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.
Use the recommended version of VMware, which is vSphere 7.0 or later.
Neither solution is compatible with any other hypervisor other than VMware.
Plan the backend storage for the virtual machines on faster storage for the more demanding
workloads. This can be aligned when setting parameters in the EKS-A workload cluster generation
file.
EKS-A can only be setup on a VMware cluster, requiring multiple VMs to support Kubernetes.
ECS-A can run on a stand-alone bare metal server or VM.
Use a separate Linux management or administrative machine to deploy either solution.

Lenovo ThinkAgile VX7531

Solution Benefits• High performance and scalable virtualization platformfrom Lenovo• Balanced and optimized configuration for demanding
VMware clustered environments• A high-performance solution with 3nd Generation Intel
Xeon scalable processors, Intel P5600 NVMe storage for
VMware vSphere virtualization environments• Pre-tested for reduced time to value©2022 Lenovo. All rights reserved.

Bill of Materials
VX7531
VX offering type

Certified NodeTarget workloads

High performance

Base MTM

7Z63CTO5WW

Form Factor

2UBase platform

SR650 V2CPU

2x Intel Xeon SP Gen 3Memory

32x DDR4 3200 MHz(4TB maximum)

Drive Bays

40x 2.5" SAS/SATA
32x 2.5" NVMe
16x 3.5" SAS/SATA

Drive configurations

All FlashHybridDisk groups

1 to 5HBA

440-16i HBA Int
430-8i HBA

430-16i HBA
Boot drives

2x M.2 SATA
2x 7mm hot-swap

OCP networking

1x OCP 3.0 adapter
10Gb, 25Gb

PCIe networking

Up to 8x adapters
10GBASE-T, 10G, 25G, 100G

©2022 Lenovo. All rights reserved.

Optimized solution
with Lenovo
ThinkAgile VX
Systems featuringIntel 3nd Gen Xeon
Scalable processors
and NVMe SSDs

Why Lenovo?
Lenovo is a US$70 billion revenue Fortune Global 500 company
serving customers in 180 markets around the world. Focused on abold vision to deliver smarter technology for all, we are developingworld-changing technologies that power (through devices andinfrastructure) and empower (through solutions, services andsoftware) millions of customers every day.

For More Information
To learn more about this Lenovo ThinkAgile VX solution contact yourLenovo Business Partner or visit:https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/servers-storage/solutions/

References:
Lenovo VX Systems
https://lenovopress.com/lp1480-thinkagile-vx3530-g-vx5530-vx7530vx7531
Amazon AWS ECS-Anywhere
https://aws.amazon.com/ecs/anywhere/
Amazon AWS EKS-Anywhere
https://aws.amazon.com/eks/eks-anywhere/© 2022 Lenovo. All rights reserved.
Availability: Offers, prices, specifications and availability may change without notice. Lenovo is not responsible for photographic or typographicalerrors. Warranty: For a copy of applicable warranties, write to: Lenovo Warranty Information, 1009 Think Place, Morrisville, NC, 27560, Lenovo
makes no representation or warranty regarding third party products or services. Trademarks: Lenovo, the Lenovo logo, System x, ThinkServer are
trademarks or registered trademarks of Lenovo. The Intel logo, Xeon and Xeon Inside are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. andother countries. Other company, product, and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.
CRN: DBSMS21XX92
04/2022