Concepts¶
Launch Kit translates discovered server hardware and deployment intent into Network Operator resources. These terms describe the data model used across discovery, generation, deployment, and validation.
Hardware¶
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Physical function (PF) | A physical PCI function exposed by a NIC. Launch Kit records its PCI address, device ID, network interface, RDMA device, NUMA node, traffic role, and rail. |
| Virtual function (VF) | A virtual PCI function created from an SR-IOV PF and assigned to a workload. |
| East-west | The workload data-plane path between cluster nodes. East-west PFs determine rails and generated secondary networks. |
| North-south | The path from a node toward management, storage, or external networks. These PFs remain in discovery data but do not create workload rails. |
| Rail | One independent east-west network path. Multirail profiles render resources per rail. |
| Plane | A Spectrum-X subdivision across rails. Plane membership comes from Spectrum-X topology data rather than standard-profile rail discovery. |
| Fabric | The configured link layer, either Ethernet or InfiniBand. Fabric does not describe the Kubernetes device-exposure model. |
Groups And Buckets¶
A source group is one clusterConfig entry produced by discovery. It represents nodes with the same resolved machine type, GPU type, and NIC layout. Its selector uses the nvidia.kubernetes-launch-kit.machine label.
A render bucket is a generation-time grouping of compatible source groups. Groups with the same GPU type and east-west rail count can share bucket-scoped resources. The merged selector uses the nvidia.kubernetes-launch-kit.gpu label.
The distinction matters in heterogeneous clusters: interface naming can remain source-specific while networks, pools, and workloads are shared by a render bucket.
Deployment Types¶
| Deployment type | Workload access |
|---|---|
sriov |
Creates VFs and exposes dedicated devices through SR-IOV networks and device-plugin resources. |
host_device |
Moves an entire physical interface into a workload network namespace. |
rdma_shared |
Shares the host RDMA device while a Macvlan or IPoIB interface provides workload connectivity. |
Fabric and deployment type are independent inputs. For example, sriov can use Ethernet or InfiniBand, while rdma_shared maps to Macvlan on Ethernet and IPoIB on InfiniBand.
Profiles And Presets¶
A deployment profile selects the manifest family from fabric, deployment type, multirail, routing, and optional Spectrum-X settings.
A topology preset is a certified hardware description for a known (machineType, gpuType) pair. A matching preset can replace discovery heuristics for traffic, rail, NUMA, and GPU affinity only when the discovered PF topology matches completely. A deviation remains live-discovered state and blocks validation acceptance.
Workflow State¶
| Artifact | Owner | Role |
|---|---|---|
cluster-config.yaml |
Discovery and user | Hardware inventory plus resolved deployment intent. |
deployment/network-operator/values.yaml |
Generation | Helm values for the Network Operator release. |
| Generated YAML manifests | Generation | Declarative resources applied in dependency order. |
| Validation HTML report | Validation | Acceptance evidence for release, live resource state, topology, and data-plane checks. |
For the detailed behavior behind these concepts, continue with Cluster Discovery, Manifest Generation, and Heterogeneous Clusters.