NVIDIA DOCA Profiles

The following document provides an introduction to the various supported DOCA-Host profiles.

Introduction

NVIDIA DOCA™ can be installed on the host and used by a variety of customers who have different workloads and requirements. The DOCA-Host package includes drivers, libraries, and tools to support NVIDIA® BlueField® Networking Platform and NVIDIA® ConnectX® SmartNIC, Ethernet and InfiniBand, with both kernel and user-space components. Depending on their specific needs, customers may choose not to install the full DOCA-Host package on their host server but only the subset of components and tools relevant for their use case (whether to have a smaller installation size, lower integration/validation effort, etc).

To support the different use cases, DOCA includes DOCA-Host Installation Profiles, which are a subset of the full DOCA installation. DOCA-Host profiles are validated and tested installation packages. The following are the available DOCA profiles:

• doca-all

• doca-networking 

• doca-ofed

DOCA-Host supports the following NVIDIA devices:

• BlueField-3

• BlueField-2

• ConnectX-7

• ConnectX-6 DX

• ConnectX-6 LX

• ConnectX-6

• ConnectX-5

• ConnectX-4 LX

• ConnectX-4

For hardware details on these devices, refer to the following pages:

• BlueField devices

• ConnectX devices

DOCA functionality is limited by the specific device capabilities.

doca-all

The full DOCA-Host installation is intended for users who wish to utilize the full extent of DOCA libs and drivers.

This profile is the super-set of components, which also includes the content of doca-ofed and doca-networking. 

All DOCA libraries, drivers and tools are included in doca-all. 

doca-networking

The doca-networking profile is intended for users who wish to benefit only from the networking functionality of DOCA. 

The content of the doca-networking package is the following:

• MLNX_OFED drivers and tools

• DOCA Core

• MLNX-DPDK

• OVS-DOCA

• DOCA Flow

• DOCA IPsec

doca-ofed

This profile is intended for users who wish to have the same user experience and content as MLNX_OFED but with DOCA package. doca-ofed installs the MLNX_OFED drivers and tools and does not include any other DOCA components.

The content of the doca-ofed package is:

• MLNX_OFED drivers and tools

Which Profile to Install?

Selecting the right DOCA-Host installation profile is important to fully utilize the capabilities of your BlueField Platforms or ConnectX.

The functionality of DOCA-Host is limited by the device capabilities (e.g., ConnectX devices cannot utilize DOCA libs such as DPA, even if doca-all is installed on the host).

For BlueField devices:

• It is recommended to use doca-all

• If you require the smallest installation package for networking-only purposes, use doca-networking

• For MLNX_OFED-like installation, use doca-ofed (no additional DOCA functionality)

For ConnectX devices:

• It is recommended to use doca-networking

• For future-proof and mixed BlueField/ConnectX deployments, use doca-all

• For MLNX_OFED-like installation use doca-ofed (no additional DOCA functionality)

DOCA-Host Profile Installation

DOCA-Host can be installed on specific host OSs. Each of the Host Installation Profiles has specific OSs on which is can be installed as specified in section "NVIDIA DOCA Profiles | id (2.7.0)NVIDIADOCAProfiles SupportedHostOSperDOCA HostInstallationProfile".

Follow the instructions under section "Installing Software on Host" in the NVIDIA DOCA Installation Guide for Linux.

Supported Host OS per DOCA-Host Installation Profile

The default operating system included with the BlueField Bundle (for DPU and SuperNIC) is Ubuntu 22.04.

The supported operating systems on the host machine per DOCA-Host installation profile are the following:

Last updated: December 17, 2024