NVIDIA DOCA Profiles

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

NVIDIA DOCA™ can be used by a variety of customers who have different workloads and requirements. The DOCA 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 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 allows host-installation of DOCA 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

DOCA functionality is limited by the specific device capabilities.

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 includes the content of doca-ofed and doca-networking.

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

The content of the doca-networking package the following:

• MLNX_OFED

• MLNX-DPDK

• OVS-DOCA

• DOCA Flow

• DOCA IPsec

BlueField DPUs, BlueField SuperNICs, and ConnectX devices can utilize all included libs and drivers in the doca-networking profile.

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 but not other DOCA components.

The content of the doca-ofed package the following:

• MLNX_OFED drivers

• MLNX_OFED tools

BlueField DPUs, BlueField SuperNICs, and ConnectX devices can utilize only the drivers in doca-ofed. No added DOCA libs are supported with any of the devices.

The doca-ofed host installation profile is supported with the devices listed above as well as the following:

• ConnectX-5

• ConnectX-4 LX

• ConnectX-4

Selecting the right DOCA-Host installation profile is important to fully utilize the capabilities of your DPU, SuperNIC, or SmartNIC.

The functionality of DOCA-Host is limited by the device capabilities (e.g., ConnectX devices cannot utilize DOCA libs such as DPA or GPUNetIO, 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)

Follow the instructions under BlueField Networking Platform Image Installation in the "NVIDIA DOCA Installation Guide for Linux".

The default operating system of the BlueField DPU (Arm) is Ubuntu 22.04.

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