Installation Reference

Installation Reference#

This page covers advanced installation options for AIM Engine. For a basic install, see the Getting Started guide.

Helm Chart Configuration#

All configuration is done through Helm values. See Helm Chart Values for the complete reference.

Operator Resources#

Adjust operator resource limits for larger clusters:

helm install aim-engine oci://docker.io/amdenterpriseai/aim-engine-chart \
  --version <version> \
  --namespace aim-system \
  --create-namespace \
  --set manager.resources.limits.memory=8Gi \
  --set manager.resources.requests.memory=512Mi

Leader Election#

Leader election is enabled by default (--leader-elect in manager.args). This ensures only one operator instance is active when running multiple replicas for high availability.

Metrics#

The metrics endpoint is enabled by default on port 8443 with TLS. To disable TLS for the metrics endpoint:

helm install aim-engine oci://docker.io/amdenterpriseai/aim-engine-chart \
  --version <version> \
  --namespace aim-system \
  --set 'manager.args={--leader-elect,--metrics-secure=false}'

Accelerator Detection#

The Helm chart deploys an AcceleratorDetector as DaemonSets on cluster nodes. It detects GPUs and CPUs and publishes the results as node labels via NFD, which AIM Engine uses for workload scheduling. Node Feature Discovery must be installed on the cluster (included with the AMD GPU Operator).

CRD Management#

CRDs are distributed as a separate Helm chart and should be installed before the operator. See Installation.

Scale-from-zero gateway metrics#

AIM Engine adds a gateway activation trigger to services with spec.minReplicas: 0. The chart defaults scaleFromZero.gatewayProvider to none, which renders no collector and rejects scale-from-zero services until a provider is selected. Set it to envoyGateway or kgateway; the chart derives the controller metric contract and renders the matching collector. For another implementation, select custom, use external collector management, and configure scaleFromZero.activationMetricQueryTemplate through a RuntimeConfig or the individual AIMService.

With Envoy Gateway, the shared EnvoyExtensionPolicy and the EnvoyProxy source-side delta sink remain platform-owned because they configure a specific Gateway. Set scaleFromZero.gatewayMetricsCollector.management=external only when the matching collector is also managed as platform infrastructure. See Optional Envoy Gateway scale-from-zero for installation, customization, and security guidance.

The chart also exposes these scale-from-zero controller-config values:

Value

Default

Purpose

scaleFromZero.scalerAddress

keda-otel-scaler.keda.svc:4318

gRPC endpoint the controller writes into every external KEDA trigger it authors.

scaleFromZero.cooldownSecondsPerGiMemory

5

Seconds-per-GiB multiplier used to derive each service’s cooldownPeriod from the predictor’s memory request (cooldownPeriod = clamp(300 + memGiB × this, 300, 1200)). Default budgets for ~1.6 GB/s warm-cache throughput; tune lower for faster storage (local NVMe, hugepages) or higher for slower storage (NFS, network PVC). The 300 s floor ensures every predictor gets enough cooldown to absorb a real warmup; the 1200 s ceiling caps the worst-case overcooling on multi-GPU services. See the comment in values.yaml for worked examples per model size.

Next Steps#

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