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Self-Managed NVCF gRPC Load Test#

Prerequisites#

Self-hosted CLI#

You need a working nvcf-cli configured against your self-managed cluster. If you have not set this up yet, follow the Self-hosted CLI guide to install the binary and the Configuration section to point it at your gateway.

Verify the CLI can reach the cluster before continuing:

./nvcf-cli init
./nvcf-cli api-key generate

Deploy the load test function#

Use the load_tester_supreme container for load testing. It is purpose-built for high-throughput benchmarking and includes:

  • gRPC + HTTP + SSE endpoints in a single image

  • 500 gRPC worker threads by default (configurable via WORKER_COUNT), compared to 10 in the simpler grpc_echo_sample

  • Tunable repeats, delay, and size fields to shape request/response profiles

  • Built-in OpenTelemetry tracing

Note

The grpc_echo_sample from the same repository shares the Echo/EchoMessage proto and will work for a quick smoke test, but its 10-thread pool will saturate under moderate concurrency. Always use load_tester_supreme for real load tests.

The source, build instructions, and registry push examples are in the nv-cloud-function-helpers repository. Build and push the image to whichever container registry your cluster has credentials for:

git clone https://github.com/NVIDIA/nv-cloud-function-helpers.git
cd nv-cloud-function-helpers/examples/function_samples/load_tester_supreme

# Build
docker build --platform linux/amd64 -t load_tester_supreme .

# Tag and push (replace with your registry -- NGC, ECR, etc.)
docker tag load_tester_supreme nvcr.io/<your-org>/load_tester_supreme:latest
docker push nvcr.io/<your-org>/load_tester_supreme:latest

Tip

To check which registries your cluster recognises, run ./nvcf-cli registry list.

Then create the function and deploy it using the CLI:

# Create the function (gRPC -- set inference-url to a placeholder)
./nvcf-cli function create \
  --name "load-tester-supreme" \
  --image "nvcr.io/<your-org>/load_tester_supreme:latest" \
  --inference-url "/grpc" \
  --inference-port 8000 \
  --health-uri "/health" \
  --health-port 8000 \
  --health-timeout PT30S

# Deploy (adjust GPU type and instance type for your cluster)
./nvcf-cli function deploy create \
  --gpu H100 \
  --instance-type NCP.GPU.H100_1x \
  --min-instances 1 \
  --max-instances 1

# Generate an API key for invocations
./nvcf-cli api-key generate

Once deployed, note the following – you will need them for the run script:

  • Function ID – the UUID returned by function create

  • Function Version ID – the UUID of the specific deployed version

  • gRPC endpoint – your gateway address on port 10081 (see below)

  • API key – the key from api-key generate (begins with nvapi-)

Your gateway address is the external address of the Envoy Gateway deployed with the control plane. To retrieve it:

kubectl get gateway nvcf-gateway -n envoy-gateway \
  -o jsonpath='{.status.addresses[0].value}'

On AWS EKS this is an ELB hostname (e.g. a1b2c3d4.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com). For a local deployment (Kind, k3d, Docker Desktop) it is typically localhost or 127.0.0.1.

Tip

The CLI saves the function and version IDs automatically. Run ./nvcf-cli status to view them at any time.

Clone the load test scripts#

git clone https://github.com/NVIDIA/nv-cloud-function-helpers.git
cd nv-cloud-function-helpers/examples/load-tests

Install k6#

Install k6 if you don’t have it:

# macOS
brew install k6

# Linux (Debian/Ubuntu)
sudo gpg -k
sudo gpg --no-default-keyring --keyring /usr/share/keyrings/k6-archive-keyring.gpg \
  --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 \
  --recv-keys C5AD17C747E3415A3642D57D77C6C491D6AC1D69
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/k6-archive-keyring.gpg] https://dl.k6.io/deb stable main" \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/k6.list
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install k6

Create your run script#

The run*.sh scripts are gitignored, so each user creates their own locally. Create run_grpc_self_managed_test.sh in the load-tests directory:

#!/bin/bash

set -e

# From "nvcf-cli api-key show"
export TOKEN=<your-nvapi-token>

# Gateway address + gRPC port (see "kubectl get gateway" above)
# Examples:
#   AWS EKS:  a1b2c3d4.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com:10081
#   Local:    localhost:10081
export NVCF_GRPC_URL=<your-gateway-address>:10081
# From "nvcf-cli status" or the function create output
export GRPC_SUPREME_FUNCTION_ID=<your-function-id>
export GRPC_SUPREME_FUNCTION_VERSION_ID=<your-function-version-id>

export GRPC_PLAINTEXT=true

export SENT_MESSAGE_SIZE=2048
export RESPONSE_COUNT=1

k6 run functions/supreme_grpc_test.js \
  --vus 10 --duration 60s \
  --env TOKEN=${TOKEN} \
  --env NVCF_GRPC_URL=${NVCF_GRPC_URL} \
  --env GRPC_SUPREME_FUNCTION_ID=${GRPC_SUPREME_FUNCTION_ID} \
  --env GRPC_SUPREME_FUNCTION_VERSION_ID=${GRPC_SUPREME_FUNCTION_VERSION_ID} \
  --env GRPC_PLAINTEXT=${GRPC_PLAINTEXT} \
  --env SENT_MESSAGE_SIZE=${SENT_MESSAGE_SIZE} \
  --env RESPONSE_COUNT=${RESPONSE_COUNT}

Make it executable and run:

chmod +x run_grpc_self_managed_test.sh
./run_grpc_self_managed_test.sh

Tune the load#

Virtual users (VUs)#

Each VU simulates a single concurrent client holding an open gRPC connection and sending requests in a loop. The number of VUs directly controls the concurrency hitting your endpoint.

VUs

Simulates

1–5

Smoke test – verify the endpoint works under minimal load

10–50

Light load – a small team or service calling the function

100–500

Moderate load – multiple services or a rollout with real traffic

1000+

Stress test – find the breaking point or max throughput

Note

Default control plane sizing: The default resource sizing that ships with nvcf-base is designed to handle roughly 100 concurrent users. If you need to test beyond that, you will need to scale the control plane components first. Starting with --vus 100 or the scratch config is a good baseline for validating a default self-managed deployment.

Start low and increase gradually. If you see rising error rates or latency, you have found the saturation point.

Fixed VUs for a set duration (simplest approach):

# 10 concurrent users for 1 minute
k6 run functions/supreme_grpc_test.js --vus 10 --duration 60s ...

# 200 concurrent users for 10 minutes
k6 run functions/supreme_grpc_test.js --vus 200 --duration 10m ...

Ramping VUs with a config file (recommended for real load tests):

Config files let you gradually ramp users up, hold steady, and ramp down. This avoids slamming the endpoint all at once and gives more realistic results.

The k6_long_scaling_test_config.json ramps to 100 VUs over 5 minutes, holds for 15 minutes, then steps through higher concurrency levels:

k6 run functions/supreme_grpc_test.js \
  --config functions/test_configs/k6_long_scaling_test_config.json \
  --env TOKEN=${TOKEN} \
  --env NVCF_GRPC_URL=${NVCF_GRPC_URL} \
  --env GRPC_SUPREME_FUNCTION_ID=${GRPC_SUPREME_FUNCTION_ID} \
  --env GRPC_SUPREME_FUNCTION_VERSION_ID=${GRPC_SUPREME_FUNCTION_VERSION_ID} \
  --env GRPC_PLAINTEXT=${GRPC_PLAINTEXT} \
  --env SENT_MESSAGE_SIZE=${SENT_MESSAGE_SIZE} \
  --env RESPONSE_COUNT=${RESPONSE_COUNT}

The k6_hammer_test_config.json uses a ramping-arrival-rate executor that ramps up to 100,000 requests/second – use this only when you want to push the endpoint to its limit:

k6 run functions/supreme_grpc_test.js \
  --config functions/test_configs/k6_hammer_test_config.json \
  --env TOKEN=${TOKEN} \
  --env NVCF_GRPC_URL=${NVCF_GRPC_URL} \
  --env GRPC_SUPREME_FUNCTION_ID=${GRPC_SUPREME_FUNCTION_ID} \
  --env GRPC_SUPREME_FUNCTION_VERSION_ID=${GRPC_SUPREME_FUNCTION_VERSION_ID} \
  --env GRPC_PLAINTEXT=${GRPC_PLAINTEXT} \
  --env SENT_MESSAGE_SIZE=${SENT_MESSAGE_SIZE} \
  --env RESPONSE_COUNT=${RESPONSE_COUNT}

Other tuning parameters#

Parameter

Purpose

SENT_MESSAGE_SIZE

Payload size in bytes (e.g. 2048 for 2 KB)

RESPONSE_COUNT

Number of echoed responses per request

Environment variables reference#

Variable

Purpose

TOKEN

Your nvapi-* bearer token

NVCF_GRPC_URL

gRPC endpoint – your gateway address with port 10081 (e.g. a1b2c3d4.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com:10081 or localhost:10081)

GRPC_SUPREME_FUNCTION_ID

Function ID from NVCF

GRPC_SUPREME_FUNCTION_VERSION_ID

Function version ID (required for self-managed deployments)

GRPC_PLAINTEXT

Set to true for non-TLS connections

SENT_MESSAGE_SIZE

Size of the test payload in bytes

RESPONSE_COUNT

Number of responses the server should return

Verifying your endpoint manually#

Before running a load test, you can verify the endpoint works with grpcurl:

grpcurl -plaintext \
  -H "function-id: <your-function-id>" \
  -H "function-version-id: <your-function-version-id>" \
  -H "authorization: Bearer <your-api-key>" \
  -d '{"message": "hello from grpc"}' \
  <your-gateway-address>:10081 Echo/EchoMessage