Deploy a Managed Kubernetes Cluster

Overview

LightYear Managed Kubernetes (LMK) provisions a fully managed control plane with worker nodes running on high-performance GPU or CPU instances.

Prerequisites

• LightYear account with sufficient wallet balance
• kubectl installed locally
• helm installed locally (optional)

Step 1 — Create a Cluster

1. Navigate to Kubernetes → Create Cluster.
2. Choose a Kubernetes version (1.29 recommended).
3. Select a region.
4. Configure the node pool:
   • Node plan: vcpu-4-8gb (minimum) or GPU plan
   • Node count: 3 (for HA)
5. Click Deploy Cluster.

Provisioning takes 3–5 minutes.

Step 2 — Download kubeconfig

$# From the cluster detail page, download kubeconfig.yaml
$export KUBECONFIG=~/kubeconfig.yaml
$kubectl get nodes

Expected output:

Step 3 — Deploy a Sample Application

# nginx-deployment.yaml
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: nginx
spec:
  replicas: 3
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: nginx
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: nginx
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: nginx
        image: nginx:1.25
        ports:
        - containerPort: 80
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: nginx-lb
spec:
  type: LoadBalancer
  selector:
    app: nginx
  ports:
  - port: 80
    targetPort: 80

$kubectl apply -f nginx-deployment.yaml
$kubectl get svc nginx-lb

Step 4 — GPU Workloads on Kubernetes

Install the NVIDIA device plugin:

$kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NVIDIA/k8s-device-plugin/v0.14.3/nvidia-device-plugin.yml

Request GPU in your pod spec:

resources:
  limits:
    nvidia.com/gpu: 1

Scaling Node Pools

$# Scale via control panel: Kubernetes → [Cluster] → Node Pools → Edit

Upgrading Kubernetes

LightYear supports in-place minor version upgrades. Go to Kubernetes → [Cluster] → Upgrade.