10.4. Heterogeneous cluster support

A heterogeneous cluster is a cluster where nodes have differing architectures. Heterogeneous clusters promote optimal compute resource usage by mixing different types of hardware in one cluster.

With heterogeneous clusters, you can match workloads to hardware intended for the workload task instead of general purpose compute platforms. For example, GPU and general purpose compute resources could be combined and workloads assigned to the appropriate hardware.

If you have a heterogeneous cluster but do not want to enable multiple architecture support, you can modify the workloads node placement in the HyperConverged custom resource (CR) to include only nodes with a specific architecture.

Boot source image support in heterogeneous clusters enables VM creators to deploy persistent VMs with specific architectures, and to define custom boot images that support heterogeneous clusters.

The same image can be used with nodes of different architectures if the boot image supports the required architectures. For example, a boot image that supports both ARM and AMD architectures can be used with both types of nodes.

Boot source image support for heterogeneous clusters is not enabled by default. You can enable heterogeneous cluster support by setting the feature gate in the HyperConverged CR.