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Running a workload on the DPU

Running workloads on a DPU enables offloading specialized infrastructure tasks such as networking, security, and storage to a dedicated processing unit. This improves performance, enforces a stronger security boundary between infrastructure and application workloads, and frees up host CPU resources.

Running a workload on the DPU

Follow these steps to deploy a workload on the DPU.

Prerequisites

  • The OpenShift CLI (oc) is installed.

  • An account with cluster-admin privileges is available.

  • The DPU Operator is installed.

Procedure

  1. Create a sample workload on the host side by using the following YAML, save the file as workload-host.yaml:

    apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: my-pod
  namespace: default
  annotations:
    k8s.v1.cni.cncf.io/networks: default-sriov-net
spec:
  nodeSelector:
    kubernetes.io/hostname: worker-237 (1)
  containers:
  - name: appcntr1
    image: registry.access.redhat.com/ubi9/ubi:latest
    command: ['/bin/sh', '-c', 'sleep infinity']
    imagePullPolicy: Always
    securityContext:
      priviledged: true
      runAsNonRoot: false
      runAsUser: 0
      seccompProfile:
        type: RuntimeDefault
    resources:
      requests:
        openshift.io/dpu: '1'
      limits:
        openshift.io/dpu: '1'
    1 The name of the node where the workload is deployed.

  2. Create the workload by running the following command:

    $ oc apply -f workload-host.yaml

Creating a service function chain on the DPU

Network service chaining, also known as service function chaining (SFC) is a capability that uses software-defined networking (SDN) capabilities to create a chain of connected network services, such as L4-7 services like firewalls, network address translation (NAT), and intrusion protection.

Follow this procedure on the DPU to create the network function my-network-function in the service function chain.

Prerequisites

  • Install the OpenShift CLI (oc).

  • An account with cluster-admin privileges.

  • Install the DPU Operator.

Procedure

  1. Save the following YAML file example as sfc.yaml:

    apiVersion: config.openshift.io/v1
kind: ServiceFunctionChain
metadata:
  name: sfc
  namespace: openshift-dpu-operator
spec:
  networkFunctions:
  - name: my-network-function (1)
    image: quay.io/example-org/my-network-function:latest (2)
    1 The name of the network function. This name is used to identify the network function in the service function chain.
    2 The URL to the container image that contains the network function. The image must be accessible from the DPU.

  2. Create the chain by running the following command on the DPU nodes:

    $ oc apply -f sfc.yaml