Description
Build a solid understanding of the current landscape of Artificial Intelligence and how modern cloud-native technologies—especially Kubernetes—support AI workloads.
Goals
Use Gemini Learning Mode to guide the exploration, surface relevant concepts, and structure the learning journey:
- Gain insight into the latest AI trends, tools, and architectural concepts.
- Understand how Kubernetes and related cloud-native technologies are used in the AI ecosystem (model training, deployment, orchestration, MLOps).
Resources
Red Hat AI Topic Articles
- https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/ai
Kubeflow Documentation
- https://www.kubeflow.org/docs/
Q4 2025 CNCF Technology Landscape Radar report:
- https://www.cncf.io/announcements/2025/11/11/cncf-and-slashdata-report-finds-leading-ai-tools-gaining-adoption-in-cloud-native-ecosystems/
- https://www.cncf.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/cncfreporttechradar_111025a.pdf
Agent-to-Agent (A2A) Protocol
- https://developers.googleblog.com/en/a2a-a-new-era-of-agent-interoperability/
Looking for hackers with the skills:
This project is part of:
Hack Week 25
Activity
Comments
-
2 months ago by jluo | Reply
A great summary from Gemini:
This is a rapidly expanding ecosystem. To keep it organized, I will break this list down by Lifecycle Stage (Training vs. Serving) and Infrastructure Layer (Compute vs. Data).
1. AI Platforms & Orchestration (The "Command Center")
These tools manage the end-to-end lifecycle, gluing everything else together.
- Kubeflow: The "Grandfather" of AI on K8s. It’s a massive suite including:
- Kubeflow Pipelines: For building repeatable workflows (Data -> Train -> Deploy).
- Kubeflow Notebooks: Spawns Jupyter servers as Pods for data scientists.
- Katib: Automated hyperparameter tuning (finding the best learning rate).
- Ray (KubeRay): The top challenger to Kubeflow. It allows you to write Python code that scales across a cluster instantly. It is excellent for both distributed training and serving.
- ZenML: An MLOps framework that sits above the infrastructure, letting you define pipelines in code that can run on Kubeflow, Ray, or simple Kubernetes batches.
2. Training & Scheduling (The "Heavy Lifters")
Standard Kubernetes scheduling (FIFO) is bad for AI training. These tools fix that.
- Volcano: A batch scheduler. It ensures "Gang Scheduling"—meaning if a job needs 50 GPUs but only 49 are available, it waits. (Standard K8s would start 49 and let them sit idle, wasting money).
- Kueue: A newer, lighter alternative to Volcano managed by the K8s specialized interest group. It manages "Job Queues" natively.
- Training Operator: A unified K8s operator that lets you run
PyTorchJob,TFJob(TensorFlow), andXGBoostJobas native K8s objects.
3. Inference & Serving (The "Waiter")
Once a model is trained, these tools serve it to users.
- KServe: The industry standard. It handles "Scale-to-Zero" (via KEDA), canary rollouts, and provides a unified API for TensorFlow, PyTorch, and ONNX models.
- vLLM: The current king of LLM serving. It is highly optimized for GPU memory (PagedAttention) and is often run inside KServe or as a standalone Deployment.
- BentoML / Yatai: A developer-friendly framework. You package your model as a "Bento" (standard format), and Yatai orchestrates the deployment on K8s.
- Seldon Core: An enterprise-grade alternative to KServe with advanced features for compliance, audit trails, and complex inference graphs.
4. Agentic & LLM Ops (The "New Wave")
Tools specifically for the 2025 era of Autonomous Agents.
- LangFlow / Flowise: Low-code "drag-and-drop" UI tools for building LLM chains. They can be deployed on K8s via Helm charts to run agent backends.
- kagent / Agent Sandbox: Emerging tools (often cloud-specific or experimental) that provide secure, isolated environments (using gVisor or microVMs) for agents to execute code safely.
- Ollama: While often used locally, it is increasingly deployed on K8s (via Helm) as a lightweight way to serve open-source models like Llama 3 or Mistral inside a cluster.
5. Data & Memory (The "Brain")
- Vector Databases (with K8s Operators):
- Milvus: A popular open-source vector DB built natively for K8s scalability.
- Weaviate: Another strong option with a solid K8s operator.
- Qdrant: Written in Rust, very fast, and easy to deploy on K8s.
- Feature Stores:
- Feast: The open-source standard for serving features (e.g., "User's last 5 clicks") to models in real-time.
6. Observability & Cost (The "Watchtower")
- Prometheus & Grafana: The standard for metrics (GPU temperature, Request Latency).
- DCGM Exporter: The specific NVIDIA tool that pulls GPU metrics (utilization, memory) so Prometheus can see them.
- KEDA: The autoscaler (discussed previously) that scales pods based on event queues.
- Karpenter: The Node autoscaler. If KEDA asks for more pods, Karpenter instantly buys more EC2/VM nodes from the cloud provider to fit them.
- OpenCost / Kubecost: Tools to track exactly how much money your AI team is spending on GPUs per namespace.
- Kubeflow: The "Grandfather" of AI on K8s. It’s a massive suite including:
-
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- The target repositories.
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MVP
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Goals
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Project Charter
Description
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In this file you can read about what we achieved during Hackweek.
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Description
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Goals
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- Data Normalization: Convert complex, technical identifiers (like component URNs, raw metric names, and proprietary health states) into standardized, natural language terms that an LLM can easily reason over.
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Hackweek STEP
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Scope
- Implement read-only MCP server that can:
- Connect to a live SUSE Observability instance and authenticate (with API token)
- Use tools to fetch data for a specific component URN (e.g., current health state, metrics, possibly topology neighbors, ...).
- Normalize response fields (e.g., URN to "Service Name," health state DEVIATING to "Unhealthy", raw metrics).
- Return the data as a structured JSON payload compliant with the MCP specification.
Deliverables
- MCP Server v0.1 A running Golang MCP server with at least one tool.
- A README.md and a test script (e.g., curl commands or a simple notebook) showing how an AI agent would call the endpoint and the resulting JSON payload.
Outcome A functional and testable API endpoint that proves the core concept: translating complex StackState data into a simple, LLM-ready format. This provides the foundation for developing AI-driven diagnostics and automated remediation.
Resources
- https://www.honeycomb.io/blog/its-the-end-of-observability-as-we-know-it-and-i-feel-fine
- https://www.datadoghq.com/blog/datadog-remote-mcp-server
- https://modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/2025-06-18/index
- https://modelcontextprotocol.io/docs/develop/build-server
Basic implementation
- https://github.com/drutigliano19/suse-observability-mcp-server
Results
Successfully developed and delivered a fully functional SUSE Observability MCP Server that bridges language models with SUSE Observability's operational data. This project demonstrates how AI agents can perform intelligent troubleshooting and root cause analysis using structured access to real-time infrastructure data.
Example execution
Explore LLM evaluation metrics by thbertoldi
Description
Learn the best practices for evaluating LLM performance with an open-source framework such as DeepEval.
Goals
Curate the knowledge learned during practice and present it to colleagues.
-> Maybe publish a blog post on SUSE's blog?
Resources
https://deepeval.com
https://docs.pactflow.io/docs/bi-directional-contract-testing
The Agentic Rancher Experiment: Do Androids Dream of Electric Cattle? by moio
Rancher is a beast of a codebase. Let's investigate if the new 2025 generation of GitHub Autonomous Coding Agents and Copilot Workspaces can actually tame it. 
The Plan
Create a sandbox GitHub Organization, clone in key Rancher repositories, and let the AI loose to see if it can handle real-world enterprise OSS maintenance - or if it just hallucinates new breeds of Kubernetes resources!
Specifically, throw "Agentic Coders" some typical tasks in a complex, long-lived open-source project, such as:
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❥ The Complex Stuff: fix actual (historical) bugs and feature requests to see if they can traverse the complexity without (too much) human hand-holding.
❥ Hunting Down Gaps: find areas lacking in docs, areas of improvement in code, dependency bumps, and so on.
If time allows, also experiment with Model Context Protocol (MCP) to give agents context on our specific build pipelines and CI/CD logs.
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We know AI can write "Hello World." and also moderately complex programs from a green field. But can it rebase a 3-month-old PR with conflicts in rancher/rancher? I want to find the breaking point of current AI agents to determine if and how they can help us to reduce our technical debt, work faster and better. At the same time, find out about pitfalls and shortcomings.
The CONCLUSION!!!
A
State of the Union
document was compiled to summarize lessons learned this week. For more gory details, just read on the diary below!
Self-Scaling LLM Infrastructure Powered by Rancher by ademicev0
Self-Scaling LLM Infrastructure Powered by Rancher

Description
The Problem
Running LLMs can get expensive and complex pretty quickly.
Today there are typically two choices:
- Use cloud APIs like OpenAI or Anthropic. Easy to start with, but costs add up at scale.
- Self-host everything - set up Kubernetes, figure out GPU scheduling, handle scaling, manage model serving... it's a lot of work.
What if there was a middle ground?
What if infrastructure scaled itself instead of making you scale it?
Can we use existing Rancher capabilities like CAPI, autoscaling, and GitOps to make this simpler instead of building everything from scratch?
Project Repository: github.com/alexander-demicev/llmserverless
What This Project Does
A key feature is hybrid deployment: requests can be routed based on complexity or privacy needs. Simple or low-sensitivity queries can use public APIs (like OpenAI), while complex or private requests are handled in-house on local infrastructure. This flexibility allows balancing cost, privacy, and performance - using cloud for routine tasks and on-premises resources for sensitive or demanding workloads.
A complete, self-scaling LLM infrastructure that:
- Scales to zero when idle (no idle costs)
- Scales up automatically when requests come in
- Adds more nodes when needed, removes them when demand drops
- Runs on any infrastructure - laptop, bare metal, or cloud
Think of it as "serverless for LLMs" - focus on building, the infrastructure handles itself.
How It Works
A combination of open source tools working together:
Flow:
- Users interact with OpenWebUI (chat interface)
- Requests go to LiteLLM Gateway
- LiteLLM routes requests to:
- Ollama (Knative) for local model inference (auto-scales pods)
- Or cloud APIs for fallback
Kubernetes-Based ML Lifecycle Automation by lmiranda
Description
This project aims to build a complete end-to-end Machine Learning pipeline running entirely on Kubernetes, using Go, and containerized ML components.
The pipeline will automate the lifecycle of a machine learning model, including:
- Data ingestion/collection
- Model training as a Kubernetes Job
- Model artifact storage in an S3-compatible registry (e.g. Minio)
- A Go-based deployment controller that automatically deploys new model versions to Kubernetes using Rancher
- A lightweight inference service that loads and serves the latest model
- Monitoring of model performance and service health through Prometheus/Grafana
The outcome is a working prototype of an MLOps workflow that demonstrates how AI workloads can be trained, versioned, deployed, and monitored using the Kubernetes ecosystem.
Goals
By the end of Hack Week, the project should:
Produce a fully functional ML pipeline running on Kubernetes with:
- Data collection job
- Training job container
- Storage and versioning of trained models
- Automated deployment of new model versions
- Model inference API service
- Basic monitoring dashboards
Showcase a Go-based deployment automation component, which scans the model registry and automatically generates & applies Kubernetes manifests for new model versions.
Enable continuous improvement by making the system modular and extensible (e.g., additional models, metrics, autoscaling, or drift detection can be added later).
Prepare a short demo explaining the end-to-end process and how new models flow through the system.
Resources
Updates
- Training pipeline and datasets
- Inference Service py
Preparing KubeVirtBMC for project transfer to the KubeVirt organization by zchang
Description
KubeVirtBMC is preparing to transfer the project to the KubeVirt organization. One requirement is to enhance the modeling design's security. The current v1alpha1 API (the VirtualMachineBMC CRD) was designed during the proof-of-concept stage. It's immature and inherently insecure due to its cross-namespace object references, exposing security concerns from an RBAC perspective.
The other long-awaited feature is the ability to mount virtual media so that virtual machines can boot from remote ISO images.
Goals
- Deliver the v1beta1 API and its corresponding controller implementation
- Enable the Redfish virtual media mount function for KubeVirt virtual machines
Resources
- The KubeVirtBMC repo: https://github.com/starbops/kubevirtbmc
- The new v1beta1 API: https://github.com/starbops/kubevirtbmc/issues/83
- Redfish virtual media mount: https://github.com/starbops/kubevirtbmc/issues/44
Cluster API Provider for Harvester by rcase
Project Description
The Cluster API "infrastructure provider" for Harvester, also named CAPHV, makes it possible to use Harvester with Cluster API. This enables people and organisations to create Kubernetes clusters running on VMs created by Harvester using a declarative spec.
The project has been bootstrapped in HackWeek 23, and its code is available here.
Work done in HackWeek 2023
- Have a early working version of the provider available on Rancher Sandbox : *DONE *
- Demonstrated the created cluster can be imported using Rancher Turtles: DONE
- Stretch goal - demonstrate using the new provider with CAPRKE2: DONE and the templates are available on the repo
DONE in HackWeek 24:
- Add more Unit Tests
- Improve Status Conditions for some phases
- Add cloud provider config generation
- Testing with Harvester v1.3.2
- Template improvements
- Issues creation
DONE in 2025 (out of Hackweek)
- Support of ClusterClass
- Add to
clusterctlcommunity providers, you can add it directly withclusterctl - Testing on newer versions of Harvester v1.4.X and v1.5.X
- Support for
clusterctl generate cluster ... - Improve Status Conditions to reflect current state of Infrastructure
- Improve CI (some bugs for release creation)
Goals for HackWeek 2025
- FIRST and FOREMOST, any topic is important to you
- Add e2e testing
- Certify the provider for Rancher Turtles
- Add Machine pool labeling
- Add PCI-e passthrough capabilities.
- Other improvement suggestions are welcome!
Thanks to @isim and Dominic Giebert for their contributions!
Resources
Looking for help from anyone interested in Cluster API (CAPI) or who wants to learn more about Harvester.
This will be an infrastructure provider for Cluster API. Some background reading for the CAPI aspect:
Kubernetes-Based ML Lifecycle Automation by lmiranda
Description
This project aims to build a complete end-to-end Machine Learning pipeline running entirely on Kubernetes, using Go, and containerized ML components.
The pipeline will automate the lifecycle of a machine learning model, including:
- Data ingestion/collection
- Model training as a Kubernetes Job
- Model artifact storage in an S3-compatible registry (e.g. Minio)
- A Go-based deployment controller that automatically deploys new model versions to Kubernetes using Rancher
- A lightweight inference service that loads and serves the latest model
- Monitoring of model performance and service health through Prometheus/Grafana
The outcome is a working prototype of an MLOps workflow that demonstrates how AI workloads can be trained, versioned, deployed, and monitored using the Kubernetes ecosystem.
Goals
By the end of Hack Week, the project should:
Produce a fully functional ML pipeline running on Kubernetes with:
- Data collection job
- Training job container
- Storage and versioning of trained models
- Automated deployment of new model versions
- Model inference API service
- Basic monitoring dashboards
Showcase a Go-based deployment automation component, which scans the model registry and automatically generates & applies Kubernetes manifests for new model versions.
Enable continuous improvement by making the system modular and extensible (e.g., additional models, metrics, autoscaling, or drift detection can be added later).
Prepare a short demo explaining the end-to-end process and how new models flow through the system.
Resources
Updates
- Training pipeline and datasets
- Inference Service py