Skip to content

feat: node groups doc #160

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Open
GKestenberg wants to merge 2 commits into
base: main
Choose a base branch
from
+154 −104
Open

feat: node groups doc #160

Show file tree
Hide file tree
Changes from all commits
Commits
Show all changes
2 commits
Select commit Hold shift + click to select a range
e02e138
init
Jan 23, 2026
a833a20
fix
Jan 23, 2026
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
43 changes: 0 additions & 43 deletions cloud-accounts/cost-optimization.mdx
View file
Open in desktop

This file was deleted.

98 changes: 98 additions & 0 deletions cloud-accounts/node-groups.mdx
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -0,0 +1,98 @@
---
title: "Node Groups"
description: "Configure node groups and optimize compute costs for your Porter cluster"
---

Porter provides flexible options for managing compute resources in your cluster.
You can add custom node groups for specialized workloads or enable cost
optimization to reduce infrastructure spend.

## Creating a Custom Node Group

<Steps>
<Step title="Navigate to Infrastructure">
From your Porter dashboard, click on the **Infrastructure** tab in the left sidebar.
</Step>

<Step title="Select your cluster">
Click on **Cluster** to view your cluster configuration and node groups.
</Step>

<Step title="Add a node group">
Click **Add an additional node group** to open the node group configuration panel.
</Step>

<Step title="Configure the node group">
<Tabs>
<Tab title="Cost Optimization">
## Cost Optimization for Node Groups

Set your maximum CPU cores limit to prevent unexpected scaling. This helps prevent unexpected cost increases by setting a cap.

![Cost Optimization Configuration](/images/provisioning-infrastructure/cost-opt-2.png)


### Limitations

The following node group configurations should continue using fixed instance types until we support cost optimization for them:

- GPU instances (e.g., instances with NVIDIA GPUs)
- Spot instances
- Instances in public subnets
- Instances with specialized hardware requirements
</Tab>
<Tab title="Fixed Node Groups">
## Fixed Node Groups

Fixed node groups uses a specific fixed instance type approach. Applications built on this will only be scheduled on the exact instance type. This gives you more control, but has the limitation of over-provisioning certain resources if configured incorrectly.

![Cost Optimization Configuration](/images/provisioning-infrastructure/cost-opt-1.png)

Configure your node group with the following settings:

| Setting | Description |
|---------|-------------|
| **Instance type** | The machine type for nodes in this group |
| **Minimum nodes** | The minimum number of nodes to maintain (set to 0 for scale-to-zero) |
| **Maximum nodes** | The upper limit for autoscaling |

<Info>
Choose instance types based on your workload requirements. For GPU workloads, create a second node group and select instances with GPU support (e.g., `g4dn.xlarge` on AWS, `Standard_NC4as_T4_v3` on Azure, `g2-standard-4` on GCP).
</Info>
</Tab>
</Tabs>


<Info>
**Health Checks Required**: For production applications, ensure proper health checks are configured before scheduling them on cost-optimized node groups. This ensures your applications can be safely rescheduled on new nodes without causing any disruption as nodes are reshuffled.
</Info>
</Step>

<Step title="Save and apply">
Click **Save** to create the node group. Porter will provision the new nodes in your cluster. This may take a few minutes.
</Step>
</Steps>

## Assigning Workloads

Once your custom node group is created, you can assign applications to run on it:

1. Navigate to your application in the Porter dashboard
2. Go to the **Services** tab
3. Click the service you want to assign
4. Under **General**, find the **Node group** selector
5. Select your custom node group from the dropdown
6. Save and redeploy your application

## Deleting a Node Group

To remove a custom node group:

1. First, migrate any workloads running on the node group to another node group
2. Navigate to **Infrastructure** → **Cluster**
3. Find the node group you want to delete
4. Click the delete icon and confirm

<Warning>
Ensure no workloads are scheduled on the node group before deleting. Workloads will be disrupted if their node group is removed.
</Warning>
117 changes: 56 additions & 61 deletions mint.json
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -48,85 +48,66 @@
"cloud-accounts/provisioning-on-gcp",
"cloud-accounts/changing-instance-types",
"cloud-accounts/cluster-upgrades",
"cloud-accounts/cost-optimization"
"cloud-accounts/node-groups"
]
},
{
"group": "Applications",
"group": "Deploy",
"pages": [
"deploy/overview",
"deploy/types-of-services",
"deploy/v1-and-v2",
{
"group": "Deploy",
"group": "v2",
"pages": [
"deploy/overview",
"deploy/types-of-services",
"deploy/v1-and-v2",
{
"group": "v2",
"pages": [
"deploy/v2/deploy-from-github-repo",
"deploy/v2/deploy-from-docker-registry",
"deploy/v2/configuring-application-services"
]
},
{
"group": "v1",
"pages": [
"deploy/v1/deploy-from-github-repo",
"deploy/v1/deploy-from-docker-registry"
]
},
"deploy/builds",
"deploy/multiple-deploys-from-same-build",
"deploy/pre-deploy-jobs",
"deploy/rollbacks",
"deploy/using-other-ci-tools",
{
"group": "Configuration as Code",
"pages": [
"deploy/configuration-as-code/overview",
"deploy/configuration-as-code/reference",
"deploy/configuration-as-code/addons-porter-yaml",
{
"group": "Service Configuration",
"pages": [
"deploy/configuration-as-code/services/web-service",
"deploy/configuration-as-code/services/worker-service",
"deploy/configuration-as-code/services/job-service",
"deploy/configuration-as-code/services/predeploy"
]
}
]
}
"deploy/v2/deploy-from-github-repo",
"deploy/v2/deploy-from-docker-registry",
"deploy/v2/configuring-application-services"
]
},
{
"group": "Configure",
"group": "v1",
"pages": [
"configure/basic-configuration",
"configure/environment-groups",
"configure/autoscaling",
"configure/custom-domains",
"configure/health-checks",
"configure/zero-downtime-deployments",
"configure/advanced-networking"
"deploy/v1/deploy-from-github-repo",
"deploy/v1/deploy-from-docker-registry"
]
},
"deploy/builds",
"deploy/multiple-deploys-from-same-build",
"deploy/pre-deploy-jobs",
"deploy/rollbacks",
"deploy/using-other-ci-tools",
{
"group": "Observability",
"group": "Configuration as Code",
"pages": [
"observability/monitoring",
"observability/logging",
"observability/alerts",
"observability/app-metadata",
"observability/custom-metrics-and-autoscaling"
"deploy/configuration-as-code/overview",
"deploy/configuration-as-code/reference",
"deploy/configuration-as-code/addons-porter-yaml",
{
"group": "Service Configuration",
"pages": [
"deploy/configuration-as-code/services/web-service",
"deploy/configuration-as-code/services/worker-service",
"deploy/configuration-as-code/services/job-service",
"deploy/configuration-as-code/services/predeploy"
]
}
]
},
{
"group": "Debug",
"pages": ["debug/common-errors"]
}
]
},
{
"group": "Configure",
"pages": [
"configure/basic-configuration",
"configure/environment-groups",
"configure/autoscaling",
"configure/custom-domains",
"configure/health-checks",
"configure/zero-downtime-deployments",
"configure/advanced-networking"
]
},
{
"group": "Command Line Interface (CLI)",
"pages": [
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -171,6 +152,20 @@
}
]
},
{
"group": "Observability",
"pages": [
"observability/monitoring",
"observability/logging",
"observability/alerts",
"observability/app-metadata",
"observability/custom-metrics-and-autoscaling"
]
},
{
"group": "Debug",
"pages": ["debug/common-errors"]
},
{
"group": "Preview Environments",
"pages": [
Expand Down