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Cornelis Technical Documentation

3.7. Running Kubernetes on a CN5000 Fabric

The CN5000 fabric supports Kubernetes deployments using the following:

  • IPoIB configured with CN5000 CNI for intra- and inter-pod IP-based network traffic.

  • Either OPX Libfabric Provider or Verbs, with the CN5000 RDMA Device Plugin for intra- and inter-pod RDMA traffic. 

  • A separate Ethernet network for Kubernetes Control Plane traffic only.

The cn-fabric-k8s project provides the Kubernetes infrastructure components needed for configuration, including CNI plugins, RDMA device plugins, and operational tooling.

Before deploying Kubernetes on a CN5000 fabric, the following prerequisites must be satisfied:

  • The hfi1 driver must be loaded, and IPoIB interfaces must be configured and up on each node.

  • The Fabric Manager (opafm) must be running with the fabric in the ACTIVE state,

  • A kubeadm-based Kubernetes cluster (v1.28 or later) must be used.

For full prerequisites, architecture details, component descriptions, build instructions, and deployment procedures, refer to the cn-fabric-k8s project repository on GitHub.