New Feature: Seekable OCI Parallel Pull mode for Amazon EKS

We have implemented support for an experimental feature called Seekable OCI (SOCI) parallel pull mode in our node pools. This enhancement allows for faster and more efficient container image pulls by enabling parallel downloads of image layers, significantly reducing startup times for containers. This feature can be enabled by setting the soci_snapshotter_enabled variable on specific node pools within your EKS cluster configuration. For example:

      static:
        node_class:
          soci_snapshotter_enabled: true
          tags:
            team: platform
        replicas: 1
        requirements:
          - key: "node.kubernetes.io/instance-type"
            operator: In
            values: ["m5.2xlarge"]
          - key: "karpenter.sh/capacity-type"
            operator: In
            values: ["spot", "on-demand"]

Do note that SOCI is an experimental feature and may not be suitable for all production workloads. Also note that SOCI will be automatically ignored on instance sizes below a certain vCPU and memory threshold. Currently AWS recommends at least 2xlarge instance types to use SOCI.

More information about SOCI can be found in the official AWS documentation. and in the AMI documentation.