SR-IOV Ethernet

On this page

Use Case

High-performance Ethernet networking with hardware acceleration. Each pod receives a dedicated SR-IOV virtual function (VF) on a Mellanox NIC, providing low latency and isolated bandwidth. Common for distributed ML training and HPC simulations on Ethernet fabrics.

Prerequisites

  • Cluster access and operator ownership configured (see Installation).

  • l8k binary on your PATH.

  • Mellanox NICs in Ethernet mode on each node.

Discover

l8k discover --kubeconfig ~/.kube/config \
    --save-cluster-config ./cluster-config.yaml

Generate

l8k generate --user-config ./cluster-config.yaml \
    --fabric ethernet --deployment-type sriov --multirail \
    --save-deployment-files ./deployments

Deploy

l8k deploy --deployment-files ./deployments

Verify

Validate the generated bundle, then inspect the relevant resources:

l8k validate --deployment-files ./deployments --wait 10m

kubectl -n nvidia-network-operator get pods
kubectl get sriovnetworknodepolicy
kubectl get sriovnetwork

See Also