carbon-aware-karmada-operator

This is a Kubernetes operator that does carbon aware spatial shifting using Karmada so workloads run in clusters at physical locations with the lowest carbon intensity.

Carbon intensity measures how much carbon (CO2 equivalent) is emitted per kilowatt-hour (KWh) of electricity consumed. Carbon intensity varies by location depending on the electricity grid and by time depending on how much renewable energy is available. The operator uses the grid-intensity-go library from The Green Web Foundation to fetch carbon intensity data from the Electricity Maps or WattTime APIs.

⚠️ This operator is experimental and not intended for production usage yet.

See this blog post for more details.

How Does It Work?

Karmada runs in a control plane cluster and can schedule workloads across multiple member clusters.

Karmada allows you to define a propagation policy that defines which resources to schedule in the member clusters. In this case it's an nginx deployment but it could be any kubernetes resource.

apiVersion: policy.karmada.io/v1alpha1
kind: PropagationPolicy
metadata:
  name: nginx-propagation
spec:
  resourceSelectors:
    - apiVersion: apps/v1
      kind: Deployment
      name: nginx
  placement:
    replicaScheduling:
      replicaSchedulingType: Divided

The carbon-aware-karmada-operator extends Karmada by letting you define a carbon aware policy.

apiVersion: carbonaware.rossf7.github.io/v1alpha1
kind: CarbonAwareKarmadaPolicy
metadata:
  name: nginx-policy
spec:
  clusterLocations:
  - name: prd-de-01
    location: DE
  - name: prd-fr-01
    location: FR
  desiredClusters: 1
  karmadaTarget: propagationpolicies.policy.karmada.io
  karmadaTargetRef:
    name: nginx-propagation
    namespace: default

• .spec.clusterLocations is an array of member clusters and their locations using the location codes supported by the carbon intensity API being used.
• .spec.desiredClusters is how many member clusters to select. Clusters are ranked based on their current carbon intensity.
• .spec.karmadaTarget and .spec.karmadaTargetRef is the Karmada PropagationPolicy or ClusterPropagationPolicy to update.

The carbon-aware-karmada-operator sets the cluster affinity in the propagation policy. Karmada then schedules the resources in the selected member clusters.

apiVersion: policy.karmada.io/v1alpha1
kind: PropagationPolicy
metadata:
  name: nginx-propagation
spec:
  placement:
    clusterAffinity:
      clusterNames:
      - prd-fr-01

Quick Start

1. Follow the Karmada quick start to create 4 kind clusters. A control plane cluster and 3 member clusters.

2. Configure your kubectl to connect to the control plane cluster and the Karmada API server.

export KUBECONFIG=~/.kube/karmada.config
kubectl config use-context karmada-apiserver

3. The default carbon intensity provider is ElectricityMaps who have a free tier for non commercial use.

Register for an API key and set the environment variables. Use the /zones endpoint https://api.electricitymap.org/v3/zones to see the supported locations.

export ELECTRICITY_MAP_API_TOKEN=******
export ELECTRICITY_MAP_API_URL=https://api-access.electricitymaps.com/free-tier/

See Providers for more config options.

4. Clone this repo.

git clone https://github.com/rossf7/carbon-aware-karmada-operator.git
cd carbon-aware-karmada-operator

5. Install the CarbonAwareKarmadaPolicy CRD.

make install

6. Start the controller.

make run

7. Create the sample resources.

kubectl apply -f samples/nginx/

8. Get the custom resources to see which clusters were selected.

kubectl get carbonawarekarmadapolicies carbon-aware-nginx-policy -o yaml
kubectl get propagationpolicies nginx-propagation -o yaml

9. Finally check the nginx deployment is scheduled in one of selected member clusters.

export KUBECONFIG=~/.kube/members.config
kubectl config use-context member1
kubectl get deploy nginx

Providers

The following providers are supported.

Electricity Maps

When using the API portal (api-portal.electricitymaps.com) you'll need to set both the API token and API URL.

When using the free tier the URL is https://api-access.electricitymaps.com/free-tier/. For paid plans the URL will be displayed in the API portal.

export ELECTRICITY_MAP_API_TOKEN=******
export ELECTRICITY_MAP_API_URL=******

Use the /zones endpoint https://api.electricitymap.org/v3/zones to see the supported locations.

WattTime

Register for an API account and set the env var and provider name.

export WATT_TIME_API_USER=******
export WATT_TIME_API_PASSWORD=******
go run cmd/main.go -provider-name WattTime

Use the /ba-from-loc endpoint to see the supported locations.

Credit

• https://learn.greensoftware.foundation/carbon-awareness/
• https://github.com/Azure/carbon-aware-keda-operator
• https://github.com/karmada-io/karmada
• https://github.com/thegreenwebfoundation/grid-intensity-go

License

carbon-aware-karmada-operator is under the Apache 2.0 license. See the LICENSE file for details.