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Deployment on Kubernetes

The same images as the container deployment, with vendor wiring behind one value.

Repository

Section titled “Repository”
Terminal window
helm repo add lifeboat https://raw.githubusercontent.com/IterateAI/lifeboat-releases/main/helm
helm repo update

The values that matter

Section titled “The values that matter”
Value Required Effect
gpu.vendor yes nvidia, amd or lite. Switches image, GPU resource, runtime wiring and vendor-specific pod settings together.
admin.password yes (or admin.existingSecret) The chart refuses to render without one, rather than deploying a default credential.
shmSize for tensor parallelism > 1 Fixed at pod creation.
Terminal window
helm install lifeboat lifeboat/lifeboat \
  --set gpu.vendor=nvidia \
  --set admin.password=<password>

gpu.vendor is a single switch on purpose: a partial change — the right image with the wrong GPU resource, say — fails in ways that look unrelated to the GPU.

What the chart does not install

Section titled “What the chart does not install”
  • GPU device plugins or operators. Install the NVIDIA or AMD plugin yourself.
  • Confidential-computing runtimes. The chart uses an existing runtime class if you name one; it does not install the stack.
  • Ingress. Bring your own.

Persistence

Section titled “Persistence”

Volumes for the data directory and the models directory. The data volume carries the cluster identity a licence binds to — losing it means the licence must be re-issued.

Security context

Section titled “Security context”

The pod runs as a non-root user with capabilities dropped. Worth knowing why the user id is set explicitly: the application directory is owned by that user, and a pod running as root without the capability to override file permissions cannot traverse it — which fails at PID 1 with a permission error naming a file that is itself world-executable. Running as the owner avoids the whole class.

Verify

Section titled “Verify”
Terminal window
kubectl get pods -l app.kubernetes.io/name=lifeboat
kubectl logs -l app.kubernetes.io/name=lifeboat --tail=50
kubectl port-forward svc/lifeboat 8001:8001 && curl -s localhost:8001/api/version

Sources and references

Section titled “Sources and references”