#Introduction

Alauda Build of Node Feature Discovery (NFD) is based on the Kubernetes SIG Node Feature Discovery project. It detects hardware features and system configuration on Kubernetes nodes and publishes the discovered information as node labels and NodeFeature resources.

NFD provides a shared node-discovery layer for AI workloads and other components that select nodes by operating system, architecture, kernel, CPU, PCI, or other hardware characteristics.

#Scope

NFD discovers and labels node capabilities. It does not:

• install or manage hardware drivers;
• expose GPU or NPU resources to Kubernetes;
• replace a vendor Device Plugin, DRA driver, or accelerator operator.

Install the plugin once in each target cluster that requires these node labels. Other Cluster Plugins and workloads can consume NFD labels, while drivers and resource-management components remain independently installed and managed.

#Optional GFD extension

The deployment form includes a gfd Extension switch, which is disabled by default. Enable it only when workloads or other components need additional NVIDIA GPU and CUDA-related labels.

The GFD extension adds discovery labels. It does not install the NVIDIA driver or replace the NVIDIA GPU Device Plugin.

For platform installation and upgrade instructions, see Install Node Feature Discovery.

#Related information

• Supported configurations
• Schedule inference services based on the CUDA version
• Upstream Node Feature Discovery documentation