Run SimKube on EC2

Run SimKube in AWS EC2

This guide is intended for users who want to run SimKube in EC2 for one off simulations or longer-lived simulation environments.

Assumptions

you have collected a trace from the cluster you want to simulate, if you still need to do this see the sk-tracer docs.
you have sufficient permissions to managed the AWS resources described, for more on this see the AWS Permissions section on our usage page.

0. Locate the SimKube AMI

Via the AWS CLI

aws ec2 describe-images \
  --owners 174155008850 \
  --filters "Name=name,Values=simkube-x86-64-*" \
  --query "Images[].{
    ImageId: ImageId,
    Name: Name,
    CreationDate: CreationDate
  }" \
  --region us-west-2 \
  --output table

Via the AWS Console

Open the EC2 Console
Navigate to AMIs
Filter by: Owner: Owned by another account Owner ID: 174155008850
Search by name: simkube-ami-*

1. Launch an EC2 instance from the AMI

we recommend using the latest available SimKube AMI
choose an instance type appropriate for your workload
attach a keypair for ssh access

2. Connect to the instance

ssh ubuntu@<instance-public-ip>

Note

The default username to use to connect to your EC2 instance ubuntu, not ec2-user.

3. Load your trace

Note

For simplicity and ease of use, we recommend using AWS S3 to store your trace files. If your trace files are in S3, you can skip this step; SimKube will need additional IAM permissions to access your S3 bucket.

Copy your trace to the instance, the default SimKube trace location is /var/kind/cluster/trace:

scp your_trace_file ubuntu@<instance-ip>:/var/kind/cluster/trace

Warning

The trace file path on the EC2 host is not the same as the trace file path specified in the Simulation custom resource. This is because there’s three layers of indirection for running on a local trace: the EC2 host gets mounted into the kind docker container which gets mounted into the SimKube pod.

4. Run your simulation

skctl run my-simulation --trace-path s3://your-simkube-bucket/path/to/trace

Note

–trace-path defaults to file:///data/trace so this field is optional for local simulations

More information on running simulations with SimKube can be found here.

You can check the status of your simulation by running:

kubectl get simulation my-sim-name

Note

Simulations will start in the Initializing state progress to Running once they have been scheduled. Finally, the simulation will complete with either a Failed or Finished state.

5. Evaluate your results

Prometheus and Grafana are installed natively. Users can view simulation results by connecting to the Grafana pod on your EC2 instance.

See Evaluate your results.

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