Quick Start Guide for Kubernetes
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Before You Begin
Before deploying the NVIDIA Network Operator, ensure you have the following:
Prerequisites
Kubernetes Cluster: A running Kubernetes cluster (v1.19+) with nodes that have NVIDIA NICs.
CLI Tools: Install
kubectl
andhelm
on your client machine:$ curl -fsSL -o get_helm.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helm/helm/master/scripts/get-helm-3 \ && chmod 700 get_helm.sh \ && ./get_helm.sh
Container Runtime: Nodes must be configured with a container engine such as CRI-O or containerd.
Install Network Operator Helm Chart
Add the NVIDIA NGC Helm repository:
helm repo add nvidia https://helm.ngc.nvidia.com/nvidia
helm repo update
Install the Network Operator:
helm install network-operator nvidia/network-operator \
-n nvidia-network-operator \
--create-namespace \
--version v25.7.0-rc.1 \
--set sriovNetworkOperator.enabled=true \
--wait
Verify the installation:
kubectl -n nvidia-network-operator get pods
Overview of Quickstart Use Cases
This quick start guide covers five essential networking configurations for different computational requirements:
Use Case |
Purpose |
Performance Requirements |
Applications |
---|---|---|---|
High-performance networking with hardware acceleration |
|
HPC simulations, distributed ML training, financial trading Keywords: SR-IOV, RDMA, HPC, low-latency, VF isolation |
|
Direct hardware access for legacy applications |
|
Legacy HPC codes, specialized protocols, DPDK applications Keywords: host-device, PCI-passthrough, direct-access, exclusive-access |
|
InfiniBand networking with shared RDMA resources |
|
Distributed storage, data analytics, scientific computing Keywords: InfiniBand, IPoIB, shared-device, high-bandwidth |
|
Network isolation with shared RDMA capabilities |
|
Cloud-native HPC, microservices, multi-tenant ML Keywords: MacVLAN, multi-tenant, network-segmentation, resource-sharing |
|
Virtualized InfiniBand with hardware acceleration |
|
Large-scale HPC clusters, AI/ML training, research computing Keywords: SR-IOV, InfiniBand, hardware-acceleration, ultra-high-bandwidth |