Networking Minerva User Guide
Networking Minerva User Guide
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Configure an On-Premises LLM

Configure the NVIDIA Minerva GenAI backend during initial onboarding when the deployment must use a customer-hosted, on-premises large language model (LLM) instead of a preconfigured NVIDIA internal gateway.

The LLM provider is configured centrally in NVIDIA Minerva. Client applications do not supply an LLM key when they connect. For general instructions on using the natural-language assistant after configuration, see Ask Sherlock.

Before You Begin

  • Confirm that the on-premises inference service exposes an OpenAI-compatible API that supports tool calling.

  • Obtain the inference URL, exact model identifier, and API credential expected by the service.

  • Confirm that NVIDIA Minerva services can resolve and reach the inference URL.

  • If the service uses a private certificate authority, install the required CA trust for the NVIDIA Minerva services before testing.

  • Confirm the selected model is approved and sized for the expected request volume and context length.

Configure the Provider

  1. In the upper-right corner, click Settings menu and select Settings. Then select Sherlock. Only Platform Admins can see Sherlock.

  2. Turn on Enabled.

  3. Enter the inference service details:

    • Base URL: the URL of the OpenAI-compatible inference service, including the API path, for example https://llm.example.com/v1. The URL can't point to localhost, a loopback address such as 127.0.0.1, or a link-local address such as 169.254.x.x. If the service runs on the NVIDIA Minerva host, use the host's network name or address.

    • Model: the exact model identifier the service expects. Required.

    • API Key: the credential for the service. It's required the first time you turn on Sherlock. After that, leave the field blank to keep the saved key.

  4. Click Save changes. To discard changes you haven't saved, click Revert.

Sherlock is tested against Claude Sonnet 4.6.

The settings apply to the whole NVIDIA Minerva installation. The API key is stored encrypted and used only by NVIDIA Minerva.

When Sherlock is turned off, Ask Sherlock is removed from the navigation and from the Anomalies and Trends pages.

Validate Onboarding

  1. Open Ask Sherlock and start a new conversation.

  2. Submit a simple cluster question that requires live data, such as: Summarize active incidents.

  3. Confirm that the assistant returns a grounded response rather than a provider, authentication, or tool-calling error.

  4. Submit a second question that requires a tool call, such as: Show interface errors from the last hour.

  5. Review the NVIDIA Minerva service logs for TLS, authentication, model-not-found, timeout, or tool-calling errors.

  6. Record the validated inference URL and model identifier in the deployment handoff. Store the credential only in the approved secret-management location.

If basic chat succeeds but data questions fail, verify that the selected model supports OpenAI-style tool calling. If all requests fail, verify network routing, DNS, TLS trust, credentials, the model identifier, and the inference URL path.

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