nova/api-guide/source/accelerator-support.rst

Using accelerators with Cyborg

Starting from microversion 2.82, nova supports creating servers with accelerators provisioned with the Cyborg service, which provides lifecycle management for accelerators.

To launch servers with accelerators, the administrator (or an user with appropriate privileges) must do the following:

• Create a device profile in Cyborg, which specifies what accelerator resources need to be provisioned. (See Cyborg device profiles API.

• Set the device profile name as an extra spec in a chosen flavor, with this syntax:

  accel:device_profile=$device_profile_name

The chosen flavor may be a newly created one or an existing one.

• Use that flavor to create a server:

  openstack server create --flavor $myflavor --image $myimage $servername

As of 21.0.0 (Ussuri), nova supports only specific operations for instances with accelerators. The lists of supported and unsupported operations are as below:

• Supported operations.
  • Creation and deletion.
  • Reboots (soft and hard).
  • Pause and unpause.
  • Stop and start.
  • Take a snapshot.
  • Backup.
  • Rescue and unrescue.
• Unsupported operations
  • Rebuild.
  • Resize.
  • Evacuate.
  • Suspend and resume.
  • Shelve and unshelve.
  • Cold migration.
  • Live migration.

Some operations, such as lock and unlock, work as they are effectively no-ops for accelerators.