Deployment Profiles

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A profile is a named combination of fabric and deployment type. Each profile maps to a complete set of Kubernetes manifests produced by l8k generate. Pick a profile from the decision tree or table below, then follow the link.

For the conceptual difference between fabric and deployment type, see Overview.

Decision Tree

Fabric is determined by the underlying hardware topology (Spectrum-X clusters are detected as a distinct fabric, not as a flavour of Ethernet). Pick the deployment type for each fabric:

flowchart TD Start{Fabric} Start -->|Ethernet| EthDT{Deployment type} Start -->|InfiniBand| IBDT{Deployment type} Start -->|Spectrum-X<br/>HW topology| SPCXRA{RA version} EthDT -->|sriov| SRIOVE([SR-IOV Ethernet]) EthDT -->|host_device| HDE([Host Device]) EthDT -->|rdma_shared + MacVLAN| MV([MacVLAN RDMA Shared]) IBDT -->|sriov| SRIOVIB([SR-IOV InfiniBand]) IBDT -->|host_device| HDI([Host Device]) IBDT -->|rdma_shared + IPoIB| IPOIB([IPoIB RDMA Shared]) SPCXRA -->|RA2.1<br/>Network Operator 26.1| SX1([Spectrum-X RA2.1]) SPCXRA -->|RA2.2<br/>Network Operator 26.4| SX2([Spectrum-X RA2.2]) SX1 --> MPM[multiplane mode<br/>swplb / hwplb / uniplane / none<br/>+ number of planes] SX2 --> MPM classDef profile fill:#a2efb6,stroke:#28a745,color:#000 classDef params fill:#fff3cd,stroke:#ffc107,color:#000 class SRIOVE,HDE,MV,SRIOVIB,HDI,IPOIB,SX1,SX2 profile class MPM params

Decision Matrix

Profile

When to use

Fabric / Deployment type

Keywords

SR-IOV Ethernet

High-performance Ethernet networking with hardware acceleration. Per-pod dedicated VFs.

ethernet / sriov

SR-IOV, RDMA, low-latency, dedicated VFs

SR-IOV InfiniBand

Virtualized InfiniBand with hardware acceleration. Isolated IB partitions per pod.

infiniband / sriov

SR-IOV, InfiniBand, large-scale HPC

Host Device

Direct hardware passthrough. Minimal CPU overhead. Exclusive device access per pod.

ethernet or infiniband / host_device

host-device, PCI-passthrough, DPDK

IP over InfiniBand (RDMA Shared)

InfiniBand networking with shared RDMA resources. Parallel I/O workloads.

infiniband / rdma_shared

IPoIB, shared-device, high-bandwidth

MacVLAN (RDMA Shared)

Multi-tenant Ethernet with shared RDMA capabilities and network isolation.

ethernet / rdma_shared

MacVLAN, multi-tenant, network-segmentation

Spectrum-X

NVIDIA Spectrum-X multi-rail AI interconnect (RA2.1 or RA2.2). HWPLB / SWPLB / Uniplane / None modes.

ethernet / sriov / spectrum-x

Spectrum-X, multiplane, RA2.2, HWPLB

See Also