Node Feature Discovery Operator | Specialized hardware and driver enablement

About the Node Feature Discovery Operator
Installing the Node Feature Discovery Operator
- Installing the NFD Operator using the CLI
- Installing the NFD Operator using the web console
Using the Node Feature Discovery Operator
- Create a NodeFeatureDiscovery instance using the CLI
- Create a NodeFeatureDiscovery CR using the web console
Configuring the Node Feature Discovery Operator
- core
- sources
Using the NFD Topology Updater
- NodeResourceTopology CR
- NFD Topology Updater command line flags

Learn about the Node Feature Discovery (NFD) Operator and how you can use it to expose node-level information by orchestrating Node Feature Discovery, a Kubernetes add-on for detecting hardware features and system configuration.

About the Node Feature Discovery Operator

The Node Feature Discovery Operator (NFD) manages the detection of hardware features and configuration in an OKD cluster by labeling the nodes with hardware-specific information. NFD labels the host with node-specific attributes, such as PCI cards, kernel, operating system version, and so on.

The NFD Operator can be found on the Operator Hub by searching for “Node Feature Discovery”.

Installing the Node Feature Discovery Operator

The Node Feature Discovery (NFD) Operator orchestrates all resources needed to run the NFD daemon set. As a cluster administrator, you can install the NFD Operator by using the OKD CLI or the web console.

Installing the NFD Operator using the CLI

As a cluster administrator, you can install the NFD Operator using the CLI.

Prerequisites

An OKD cluster
Install the OpenShift CLI (oc).
Log in as a user with cluster-admin privileges.

Procedure

Create a namespace for the NFD Operator.
1. Create the following Namespace custom resource (CR) that defines the openshift-nfd namespace, and then save the YAML in the nfd-namespace.yaml file:
  apiVersion: v1 kind: Namespace metadata: name: openshift-nfd
2. Create the namespace by running the following command:
  $ oc create -f nfd-namespace.yaml

Install the NFD Operator in the namespace you created in the previous step by creating the following objects:

Create the following OperatorGroup CR and save the YAML in the nfd-operatorgroup.yaml file:

apiVersion: operators.coreos.com/v1
kind: OperatorGroup
metadata:
  generateName: openshift-nfd-
  name: openshift-nfd
  namespace: openshift-nfd
spec:
  targetNamespaces:
  - openshift-nfd

Create the OperatorGroup CR by running the following command:
```
$ oc create -f nfd-operatorgroup.yaml
```

Create the following Subscription CR and save the YAML in the nfd-sub.yaml file:

Example Subscription

apiVersion: operators.coreos.com/v1alpha1
kind: Subscription
metadata:
  name: nfd
  namespace: openshift-nfd
spec:
  channel: "stable"
  installPlanApproval: Automatic
  name: nfd
  source: redhat-operators
  sourceNamespace: openshift-marketplace

Create the subscription object by running the following command:
```
$ oc create -f nfd-sub.yaml
```
Change to the openshift-nfd project:
```
$ oc project openshift-nfd
```

Verification

To verify that the Operator deployment is successful, run:

$ oc get pods

Example output

NAME                                      READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
nfd-controller-manager-7f86ccfb58-vgr4x   2/2     Running   0          10m

A successful deployment shows a Running status.

Installing the NFD Operator using the web console

As a cluster administrator, you can install the NFD Operator using the web console.

Procedure

In the OKD web console, click Operators → OperatorHub.
Choose Node Feature Discovery from the list of available Operators, and then click Install.
On the Install Operator page, select A specific namespace on the cluster, and then click Install. You do not need to create a namespace because it is created for you.

Verification

To verify that the NFD Operator installed successfully:

Navigate to the Operators → Installed Operators page.
Ensure that Node Feature Discovery is listed in the openshift-nfd project with a Status of InstallSucceeded.

During installation an Operator might display a Failed status. If the installation later succeeds with an InstallSucceeded message, you can ignore the Failed message.

Troubleshooting

If the Operator does not appear as installed, troubleshoot further:

Navigate to the Operators → Installed Operators page and inspect the Operator Subscriptions and Install Plans tabs for any failure or errors under Status.
Navigate to the Workloads → Pods page and check the logs for pods in the openshift-nfd project.

Using the Node Feature Discovery Operator

The Node Feature Discovery (NFD) Operator orchestrates all resources needed to run the Node-Feature-Discovery daemon set by watching for a NodeFeatureDiscovery CR. Based on the NodeFeatureDiscovery CR, the Operator will create the operand (NFD) components in the desired namespace. You can edit the CR to choose another namespace, image, imagePullPolicy, and nfd-worker-conf, among other options.

As a cluster administrator, you can create a NodeFeatureDiscovery instance using the OKD CLI or the web console.

Create a NodeFeatureDiscovery instance using the CLI

As a cluster administrator, you can create a NodeFeatureDiscovery CR instance using the CLI.

Prerequisites

An OKD cluster
Install the OpenShift CLI (oc).
Log in as a user with cluster-admin privileges.
Install the NFD Operator.

Procedure

Create the following NodeFeatureDiscovery Custom Resource (CR), and then save the YAML in the NodeFeatureDiscovery.yaml file:

apiVersion: nfd.openshift.io/v1
kind: NodeFeatureDiscovery
metadata:
  name: nfd-instance
  namespace: openshift-nfd
spec:
  instance: "" # instance is empty by default
  topologyupdater: false # False by default
  operand:
    image: registry.redhat.io/openshift4/ose-node-feature-discovery:v4.11
    imagePullPolicy: Always
  workerConfig:
    configData: |
      core:
      #  labelWhiteList:
      #  noPublish: false
        sleepInterval: 60s
      #  sources: [all]
      #  klog:
      #    addDirHeader: false
      #    alsologtostderr: false
      #    logBacktraceAt:
      #    logtostderr: true
      #    skipHeaders: false
      #    stderrthreshold: 2
      #    v: 0
      #    vmodule:
      ##   NOTE: the following options are not dynamically run-time configurable
      ##         and require a nfd-worker restart to take effect after being changed
      #    logDir:
      #    logFile:
      #    logFileMaxSize: 1800
      #    skipLogHeaders: false
      sources:
        cpu:
          cpuid:
      #     NOTE: whitelist has priority over blacklist
            attributeBlacklist:
              - "BMI1"
              - "BMI2"
              - "CLMUL"
              - "CMOV"
              - "CX16"
              - "ERMS"
              - "F16C"
              - "HTT"
              - "LZCNT"
              - "MMX"
              - "MMXEXT"
              - "NX"
              - "POPCNT"
              - "RDRAND"
              - "RDSEED"
              - "RDTSCP"
              - "SGX"
              - "SSE"
              - "SSE2"
              - "SSE3"
              - "SSE4.1"
              - "SSE4.2"
              - "SSSE3"
            attributeWhitelist:
        kernel:
          kconfigFile: "/path/to/kconfig"
          configOpts:
            - "NO_HZ"
            - "X86"
            - "DMI"
        pci:
          deviceClassWhitelist:
            - "0200"
            - "03"
            - "12"
          deviceLabelFields:
            - "class"
  customConfig:
    configData: |
          - name: "more.kernel.features"
            matchOn:
            - loadedKMod: ["example_kmod3"]

For more details on how to customize NFD workers, refer to the Configuration file reference of nfd-worker.

Create the NodeFeatureDiscovery CR instance by running the following command:
```
$ oc create -f NodeFeatureDiscovery.yaml
```

Verification

To verify that the instance is created, run:

$ oc get pods

Example output

NAME                                      READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
nfd-controller-manager-7f86ccfb58-vgr4x   2/2     Running   0          11m
nfd-master-hcn64                          1/1     Running   0          60s
nfd-master-lnnxx                          1/1     Running   0          60s
nfd-master-mp6hr                          1/1     Running   0          60s
nfd-worker-vgcz9                          1/1     Running   0          60s
nfd-worker-xqbws                          1/1     Running   0          60s

A successful deployment shows a Running status.

Create a NodeFeatureDiscovery CR using the web console

Procedure

Navigate to the Operators → Installed Operators page.
Find Node Feature Discovery and see a box under Provided APIs.
Click Create instance.
Edit the values of the NodeFeatureDiscovery CR.
Click Create.

Configuring the Node Feature Discovery Operator

core

The core section contains common configuration settings that are not specific to any particular feature source.

core.sleepInterval

core.sleepInterval specifies the interval between consecutive passes of feature detection or re-detection, and thus also the interval between node re-labeling. A non-positive value implies infinite sleep interval; no re-detection or re-labeling is done.

This value is overridden by the deprecated --sleep-interval command line flag, if specified.

Example usage

core:
  sleepInterval: 60s (1)

The default value is 60s.

core.sources

core.sources specifies the list of enabled feature sources. A special value all enables all feature sources.

This value is overridden by the deprecated --sources command line flag, if specified.

Default: [all]

Example usage

core:
  sources:
    - system
    - custom

core.labelWhiteList

core.labelWhiteList specifies a regular expression for filtering feature labels based on the label name. Non-matching labels are not published.

The regular expression is only matched against the basename part of the label, the part of the name after '/'. The label prefix, or namespace, is omitted.

This value is overridden by the deprecated --label-whitelist command line flag, if specified.

Default: null

Example usage

core:
  labelWhiteList: '^cpu-cpuid'

core.noPublish

Setting core.noPublish to true disables all communication with the nfd-master. It is effectively a dry run flag; nfd-worker runs feature detection normally, but no labeling requests are sent to nfd-master.

This value is overridden by the --no-publish command line flag, if specified.

Example:

Example usage

core:
  noPublish: true (1)

The default value is false.

core.klog

The following options specify the logger configuration, most of which can be dynamically adjusted at run-time.

The logger options can also be specified using command line flags, which take precedence over any corresponding config file options.

core.klog.addDirHeader

If set to true, core.klog.addDirHeader adds the file directory to the header of the log messages.

Default: false

Run-time configurable: yes

core.klog.alsologtostderr

Log to standard error as well as files.

Default: false

Run-time configurable: yes

core.klog.logBacktraceAt

When logging hits line file:N, emit a stack trace.

Default: empty

Run-time configurable: yes

core.klog.logDir

If non-empty, write log files in this directory.

Default: empty

Run-time configurable: no

core.klog.logFile

If not empty, use this log file.

Default: empty

Run-time configurable: no

core.klog.logFileMaxSize

core.klog.logFileMaxSize defines the maximum size a log file can grow to. Unit is megabytes. If the value is 0, the maximum file size is unlimited.

Default: 1800

Run-time configurable: no

core.klog.logtostderr

Log to standard error instead of files

Default: true

Run-time configurable: yes

core.klog.skipHeaders

If core.klog.skipHeaders is set to true, avoid header prefixes in the log messages.

Default: false

Run-time configurable: yes

core.klog.skipLogHeaders

If core.klog.skipLogHeaders is set to true, avoid headers when opening log files.

Default: false

Run-time configurable: no

core.klog.stderrthreshold

Logs at or above this threshold go to stderr.

Default: 2

Run-time configurable: yes

core.klog.v

core.klog.v is the number for the log level verbosity.

Default: 0

Run-time configurable: yes

core.klog.vmodule

core.klog.vmodule is a comma-separated list of pattern=N settings for file-filtered logging.

Default: empty

Run-time configurable: yes

sources

The sources section contains feature source specific configuration parameters.

sources.cpu.cpuid.attributeBlacklist

Prevent publishing cpuid features listed in this option.

This value is overridden by sources.cpu.cpuid.attributeWhitelist, if specified.

Default: [BMI1, BMI2, CLMUL, CMOV, CX16, ERMS, F16C, HTT, LZCNT, MMX, MMXEXT, NX, POPCNT, RDRAND, RDSEED, RDTSCP, SGX, SGXLC, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, SSSE3]

Example usage

sources:
  cpu:
    cpuid:
      attributeBlacklist: [MMX, MMXEXT]

sources.cpu.cpuid.attributeWhitelist

Only publish the cpuid features listed in this option.

sources.cpu.cpuid.attributeWhitelist takes precedence over sources.cpu.cpuid.attributeBlacklist.

Default: empty

Example usage

sources:
  cpu:
    cpuid:
      attributeWhitelist: [AVX512BW, AVX512CD, AVX512DQ, AVX512F, AVX512VL]

sources.kernel.kconfigFile

sources.kernel.kconfigFile is the path of the kernel config file. If empty, NFD runs a search in the well-known standard locations.

Default: empty

Example usage

sources:
  kernel:
    kconfigFile: "/path/to/kconfig"

sources.kernel.configOpts

sources.kernel.configOpts represents kernel configuration options to publish as feature labels.

Default: [NO_HZ, NO_HZ_IDLE, NO_HZ_FULL, PREEMPT]

Example usage

sources:
  kernel:
    configOpts: [NO_HZ, X86, DMI]

sources.pci.deviceClassWhitelist

sources.pci.deviceClassWhitelist is a list of PCI device class IDs for which to publish a label. It can be specified as a main class only (for example, 03) or full class-subclass combination (for example 0300). The former implies that all subclasses are accepted. The format of the labels can be further configured with deviceLabelFields.

Default: ["03", "0b40", "12"]

Example usage

sources:
  pci:
    deviceClassWhitelist: ["0200", "03"]

sources.pci.deviceLabelFields

sources.pci.deviceLabelFields is the set of PCI ID fields to use when constructing the name of the feature label. Valid fields are class, vendor, device, subsystem_vendor and subsystem_device.

Default: [class, vendor]

Example usage

sources:
  pci:
    deviceLabelFields: [class, vendor, device]

With the example config above, NFD would publish labels such as feature.node.kubernetes.io/pci-<class-id>_<vendor-id>_<device-id>.present=true

sources.usb.deviceClassWhitelist

sources.usb.deviceClassWhitelist is a list of USB device class IDs for which to publish a feature label. The format of the labels can be further configured with deviceLabelFields.

Default: ["0e", "ef", "fe", "ff"]

Example usage

sources:
  usb:
    deviceClassWhitelist: ["ef", "ff"]

sources.usb.deviceLabelFields

sources.usb.deviceLabelFields is the set of USB ID fields from which to compose the name of the feature label. Valid fields are class, vendor, and device.

Default: [class, vendor, device]

Example usage

sources:
  pci:
    deviceLabelFields: [class, vendor]

With the example config above, NFD would publish labels like: feature.node.kubernetes.io/usb-<class-id>_<vendor-id>.present=true.

sources.custom

sources.custom is the list of rules to process in the custom feature source to create user-specific labels.

Default: empty

Example usage

source:
  custom:
  - name: "my.custom.feature"
    matchOn:
    - loadedKMod: ["e1000e"]
    - pciId:
        class: ["0200"]
        vendor: ["8086"]

Using the NFD Topology Updater

The Node Feature Discovery (NFD) Topology Updater is a daemon responsible for examining allocated resources on a worker node. It accounts for resources that are available to be allocated to new pod on a per-zone basis, where a zone can be a Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) node. The NFD Topology Updater communicates the information to nfd-master, which creates a NodeResourceTopology custom resource (CR) corresponding to all of the worker nodes in the cluster. One instance of the NFD Topology Updater runs on each node of the cluster.

To enable the Topology Updater workers in NFD, set the topologyupdater variable to true in the NodeFeatureDiscovery CR, as described in the section Using the Node Feature Discovery Operator.

NodeResourceTopology CR

When run with NFD Topology Updater, NFD creates custom resource instances corresponding to the node resource hardware topology, such as:

apiVersion: topology.node.k8s.io/v1alpha1
kind: NodeResourceTopology
metadata:
  name: node1
topologyPolicies: ["SingleNUMANodeContainerLevel"]
zones:
  - name: node-0
    type: Node
    resources:
      - name: cpu
        capacity: 20
        allocatable: 16
        available: 10
      - name: vendor/nic1
        capacity: 3
        allocatable: 3
        available: 3
  - name: node-1
    type: Node
    resources:
      - name: cpu
        capacity: 30
        allocatable: 30
        available: 15
      - name: vendor/nic2
        capacity: 6
        allocatable: 6
        available: 6
  - name: node-2
    type: Node
    resources:
      - name: cpu
        capacity: 30
        allocatable: 30
        available: 15
      - name: vendor/nic1
        capacity: 3
        allocatable: 3
        available: 3

NFD Topology Updater command line flags

To view available command line flags, run the nfd-topology-updater -help command. For example, in a podman container, run the following command:

$ podman run gcr.io/k8s-staging-nfd/node-feature-discovery:master nfd-topology-updater -help

-ca-file

The -ca-file flag is one of the three flags, together with the -cert-file and `-key-file`flags, that controls the mutual TLS authentication on the NFD Topology Updater. This flag specifies the TLS root certificate that is used for verifying the authenticity of nfd-master.

Default: empty

The -ca-file flag must be specified together with the -cert-file and -key-file flags.

Example

$ nfd-topology-updater -ca-file=/opt/nfd/ca.crt -cert-file=/opt/nfd/updater.crt -key-file=/opt/nfd/updater.key

-cert-file

The -cert-file flag is one of the three flags, together with the -ca-file and -key-file flags, that controls mutual TLS authentication on the NFD Topology Updater. This flag specifies the TLS certificate presented for authenticating outgoing requests.

Default: empty

The -cert-file flag must be specified together with the -ca-file and -key-file flags.

Example

$ nfd-topology-updater -cert-file=/opt/nfd/updater.crt -key-file=/opt/nfd/updater.key -ca-file=/opt/nfd/ca.crt

-h, -help

Print usage and exit.

-key-file

The -key-file flag is one of the three flags, together with the -ca-file and -cert-file flags, that controls the mutual TLS authentication on the NFD Topology Updater. This flag specifies the private key corresponding the given certificate file, or -cert-file, that is used for authenticating outgoing requests.

Default: empty

The -key-file flag must be specified together with the -ca-file and -cert-file flags.

Example

$ nfd-topology-updater -key-file=/opt/nfd/updater.key -cert-file=/opt/nfd/updater.crt -ca-file=/opt/nfd/ca.crt

-kubelet-config-file

The -kubelet-config-file specifies the path to the Kubelet’s configuration file.

Default: /host-var/lib/kubelet/config.yaml

Example

$ nfd-topology-updater -kubelet-config-file=/var/lib/kubelet/config.yaml

-no-publish

The -no-publish flag disables all communication with the nfd-master, making it a dry run flag for nfd-topology-updater. NFD Topology Updater runs resource hardware topology detection normally, but no CR requests are sent to nfd-master.

Default: false

Example

$ nfd-topology-updater -no-publish

-oneshot

The -oneshot flag causes the NFD Topology Updater to exit after one pass of resource hardware topology detection.

Default: false

Example

$ nfd-topology-updater -oneshot -no-publish

-podresources-socket

The -podresources-socket flag specifies the path to the Unix socket where kubelet exports a gRPC service to enable discovery of in-use CPUs and devices, and to provide metadata for them.

Default: /host-var/liblib/kubelet/pod-resources/kubelet.sock

Example

$ nfd-topology-updater -podresources-socket=/var/lib/kubelet/pod-resources/kubelet.sock

-server

The -server flag specifies the address of the nfd-master endpoint to connect to.

Default: localhost:8080

Example

$ nfd-topology-updater -server=nfd-master.nfd.svc.cluster.local:443

-server-name-override

The -server-name-override flag specifies the common name (CN) which to expect from the nfd-master TLS certificate. This flag is mostly intended for development and debugging purposes.

Default: empty

Example

$ nfd-topology-updater -server-name-override=localhost

-sleep-interval

The -sleep-interval flag specifies the interval between resource hardware topology re-examination and custom resource updates. A non-positive value implies infinite sleep interval and no re-detection is done.

Default: 60s

Example

$ nfd-topology-updater -sleep-interval=1h

-version

Print version and exit.

-watch-namespace

The -watch-namespace flag specifies the namespace to ensure that resource hardware topology examination only happens for the pods running in the specified namespace. Pods that are not running in the specified namespace are not considered during resource accounting. This is particularly useful for testing and debugging purposes. A * value means that all of the pods across all namespaces are considered during the accounting process.

Default: *

Example

$ nfd-topology-updater -watch-namespace=rte