Installation

KAITO (Kubernetes AI Toolchain Operator) can be installed on any Kubernetes cluster using Helm. This guide covers the basic installation of the KAITO workspace controller.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have the following tools installed:

• An existing Kubernetes cluster (can be hosted on any cloud provider) with NVIDIA GPU nodes
  • For cloud provider-specific guides, see:
    • Azure Setup using AKS
    • AWS Setup using EKS
• Helm to install the operator
• kubectl to interact with your Kubernetes cluster

Install KAITO Workspace Controller

Install the KAITO workspace controller using Helm:

export CLUSTER_NAME=kaito

helm repo add kaito https://kaito-project.github.io/kaito/charts/kaito
helm repo update
helm upgrade --install kaito-workspace kaito/workspace \
  --namespace kaito-workspace \
  --create-namespace \
  --set clusterName="$CLUSTER_NAME" \
  --wait

Verify KAITO Installation

Check that the KAITO workspace controller is running:

kubectl get pods -n kaito-workspace
kubectl describe deploy kaito-workspace -n kaito-workspace

You should see the workspace controller pod in a Running state.

Setup GPU Nodes

You need to create GPU nodes in order to run a Workspace with KAITO. There are two options:

• Bring your own GPU (BYO) nodes: Create your own GPU nodes to run KAITO deployments on.
• Auto-provisioning: Set up automatic GPU node provisioning for your cloud provider.

Option 1: Bring your own GPU nodes

tip

This is recommended if you just want to try KAITO with the least amount of setup required or if you only plan to use 1-2 GPU nodes. If your cloud provider is not listed in the Auto-provisioning section, you must create your own GPU nodes. If it is, you can still manually create the nodes if you don't want to set up auto-provisioning.

Create your GPU nodes and label them for quick access. In these docs, we will use the label accelerator=nvidia but any label can work.

List your GPU nodes and verify that they are all present and ready.

kubectl get nodes -l accelerator=nvidia

The output should look similar to this. Note the names of the nodes as they will be specified when deploying a Workspace.

NAME                                  STATUS   ROLES    AGE     VERSION
gpunp-26695285-vmss000000             Ready    <none>   2d21h   v1.31.9
gpunp-26695285-vmss000001             Ready    <none>   2d21h   v1.31.9

Option 2: Auto-provision GPU nodes

tip

This is recommended for production environments and any non-trivial use cases, or if you plan to use a number of nodes.

The following cloud providers support auto-provisioning GPU nodes in addition to BYO nodes.

• Azure (AKS) - Set up GPU auto-provisioning with Azure GPU Provisioner
• AWS (EKS) - Set up GPU auto-provisioning with Karpenter

Next Steps

Once KAITO is installed, you can:

• Follow the Quick Start guide to deploy your first model
• Try auto-provisioning with cloud provider if you have not done so
• Explore the available model presets