Prerequisites

Cluster, software, and hardware requirements for the DRA Driver for NVIDIA GPUs.

Tip: Most of these prerequisites can be installed and managed for you by the NVIDIA GPU Operator.

Requirement Version / Notes
Kubernetes v1.34.2 or later, with at least one node that has one or more NVIDIA GPUs. The use of DRA became GA in Kubernetes v1.34+ and earlier versions required the DynamicResourceAllocation feature gate.
Helm v3.8 or later.
NVIDIA Driver v565 or later for GPU allocation. v570.158.01 or later if using ComputeDomains.
CDI Enabled in your container runtime. This is enabled by default in containerd 2.0+ and CRIO v1.27+. The DRA Driver uses CDI to expose GPUs to containers.
Node Feature Discovery (NFD) Labels GPU nodes in the cluster. The DRA Driver uses these labels to target the GPU kubelet plugin to the correct nodes.

ComputeDomains additional prerequisites

If you plan to use ComputeDomains, you also need:

  • NVIDIA Driver v570.158.01 or later. The IMEXDaemonsWithDNSNames feature gate is enabled by default and requires this driver version. The ComputeDomain plugin will fail to start on older drivers unless IMEXDaemonsWithDNSNames is explicitly disabled.
  • Multi-Node NVLink (MNNVL) hardware. Nodes must be connected via NVLink fabric, such as GB200 NVL72 and similar systems.
  • GPU Feature Discovery (GFD) deployed via the GPU Operator. GFD generates the nvidia.com/gpu.clique node labels required by ComputeDomains.
  • On all GPU nodes where the nvidia-imex-* packages are installed, the nvidia-imex.service systemd unit must be disabled:
systemctl disable --now nvidia-imex.service && systemctl mask nvidia-imex.service

Host-managed IMEX (HostManagedIMEX feature gate)

HostManagedIMEX is an alpha, install-wide mode for clusters where the cluster operator already owns the host nvidia-imex daemon. It inverts the rule above: the driver does not run per-ComputeDomain IMEX daemons, so the host nvidia-imex.service must be configured and running (not masked) on every participating GPU node before workloads use IMEX.

Additional prerequisites when featureGates.HostManagedIMEX=true:

  • Host nvidia-imex installed and nvidia-imex.service enabled and running, with a consistent /etc/nvidia-imex/nodes_config.cfg across the IMEX domain.
  • The nvidia-caps-imex-channels device major must be registered (in /proc/devices) and channel 0 usable before the kubelet plugin starts (the plugin discovers the major at startup and does not republish later).
  • IMEXDaemonsWithDNSNames and ComputeDomainCliques are forced off automatically when the gate is enabled; no manual override is needed.

Only allocationMode: Single (or unset) is supported, and at most one active isolated ComputeDomain per host IMEX domain. ComputeDomains should be created with numNodes: 0.

Install prerequisites with NVIDIA GPU Operator

The NVIDIA GPU Operator is a Kubernetes operator that automates the deployment and lifecycle management of all NVIDIA software components needed to provision and monitor GPUs in a cluster.

It can manage the following DRA Driver for NVIDIA GPUs prerequisites for you:

  • NVIDIA Driver (v565+ for GPU allocation, v570.158.01+ for ComputeDomains). The GPU Operator installs a default driver that meets the DRA Driver's prerequisites. To use a specific version, see Common chart customization options in the GPU Operator documentation.
  • CDI enabled through the NVIDIA Container Toolkit.
  • Node Feature Discovery (NFD).
  • GPU Feature Discovery (GFD), required for ComputeDomains.

If you choose to install the GPU Operator, follow the DRA Driver for NVIDIA GPUs install guide in the GPU Operator documentation. It covers installing the GPU Operator with the NVIDIA Kubernetes Device Plugin disabled and installing the DRA Driver for NVIDIA GPUs.