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Overview

NVIDIA Kubernetes Launch Kit

NVIDIA Kubernetes Launch Kit (l8k) generates, deploys, and validates NVIDIA cloud-native networking manifests for Kubernetes clusters. It discovers NIC and GPU topology, selects a deployment profile, renders Network Operator and NIC Configuration Operator resources, applies them in dependency order, and verifies the result with live manifest and data-plane checks.

Use this site when you are deploying SR-IOV, RDMA shared-device, host-device, InfiniBand, or Spectrum-X networking on NVIDIA accelerated clusters.

These four lifecycle commands operate on the host target by default. Existing commands remain valid; --target host is an explicit synonym. Launch Kit also reserves the dpf target name, but its phases remain unavailable until the DPF driver is implemented. See Target-aware CLI for the compatibility and extension contract.

Find Your Path

If you are a... Start here
Operator deploying networking on a cluster Quick Start
Operator inventorying a cluster Cluster Discovery
Platform engineer selecting a topology profile Deployment Profiles
Platform engineer managing mixed hardware Heterogeneous Clusters
Spectrum-X operator Spectrum-X
CI/CD or GitOps integrator Automation
Integrator adding an infrastructure target Target-aware CLI
AI agent integrator AI Skills
Operator confirming a deployment is ready for use Validation
Operator removing a deployment Cleanup
Operator investigating a failed stage Troubleshooting

Workflow

Each stage is independently invocable:

  • l8k discover bootstraps a private NIC discovery daemon and writes cluster-config.yaml.
  • l8k generate renders a profile-specific manifest bundle under deployment/network-operator/.
  • l8k deploy installs or upgrades the Network Operator Helm chart, applies CRs in dependency order, and waits for reconciliation.
  • l8k validate runs the deployment acceptance checks and produces the report used to green-light the deployment.
  • l8k clean removes Network Operator custom resources and then uninstalls its Helm release.