Implementation Overview | NVIDIA Infra Controller

For service responsibilities and dependencies, see NICo Flow. Operator contracts live in Flow Operations.

Layers

Layer	Entry points	Responsibility
Service	Service wiring, RPC handlers	Construct managers and dispatchers, expose gRPC, and manage startup and shutdown.
Conversion	Protobuf converters	Translate and validate wire representations at the service boundary.
Inventory	Inventory manager	Manage rack and component inventory.
Task execution	Task packages	Resolve operation targets, persist rack tasks, and dispatch execution.
Rules	Rule resolver, action validation	Resolve database associations/defaults and built-in rules; validate custom definitions.
Temporal	Workflow package, activity package	Orchestrate durable work and call component managers.
Component managers	Component manager architecture	Resolve implementations and provider dependencies.
Operation runs	Manager, planner, dispatcher	Materialize targets once, persist lifecycle changes, and dispatch phases.
Task schedules	Task schedule internals	Persist scopes, claim due schedules, submit tasks, and advance timing.
System jobs	Scheduler architecture	Schedule internal jobs such as inventory synchronization.

Planning and persistence

Operation-run creation calls the planner and saves the run plus all materialized targets in one store transaction. The planner resolves candidate scope, applies exclusions and selection, orders targets, assigns phases, and freezes component execution sets. Later phases read the saved targets rather than re-planning from inventory.

The operation-run manager owns manual lifecycle changes. The dispatcher owns reconciliation, safety-gate evaluation, target claims, and submission. Refer to manual controls and dispatcher implementation when changing pause, resume, phase advance, cancellation, or recovery behavior.

Task schedules use a separate dispatcher. The internal job scheduler is a third mechanism; its overlap policies and lifecycle do not define the user-facing schedule API.

Database definitions are in migrations and models. See rule versioning for rule-format development notes and rule execution for activity and workflow boundaries.

Interfaces and configuration

The Flow protobuf is the API source. Generated Markdown and generated HTML remain owned by the Flow Makefile’s gen-doc target.

Use Flow Component Managers for configuration precedence and defaults. Local service startup and build instructions remain in the Flow README.