ironcore-dev / ironcore-dev/roadmap

DPU Onboarding and Lifecycle Management via MetalAPI

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@hardikdr is already working on this.

Since Jan 20, 2026.

area/metal-automation
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Description

Summary

This enhancement focuses on onboarding and automating the lifecycle of NVIDIA BlueField-3 DPUs using MetalAPI as the primary control plane. The goal is to treat DPUs as first-class managed entities within Ironcore, rather than as opaque peripherals attached to a host.

This includes managing the DPU’s out-of-band BMC, performing firmware upgrades and configuration, provisioning and booting Linux images, and ultimately onboarding the DPU itself in the MetalAPI, instead of the host CPU. This work lays the foundation for bare-metal-as-a-service and DPU-centric architectures in Ironcore.

Scope

✅ In Scope
  • Perform manual exploration and validation of BlueField-3 DPU BMC and firmware behavior.
  • Extend MetalAPI state-machine to model and manage the DPU lifecycle.
  • Automate access to and configuration of the DPU BMC interface.
  • Support firmware upgrade and configuration for BlueField-3 DPUs.
  • Provision and boot a Linux OS on the DPU via Ironcore provisioning flows.
  • Onboard the DPU within the MetalAPI, instead of the host system.
  • Prepare and publish a Gardenlinux-based OCI image suitable for BlueField-3.
❌ Out of Scope
  • Support for non-NVIDIA DPUs (e.g. Intel IPUs).
  • Integration with DOCA or SmartNIC-specific acceleration frameworks.
  • Running application workloads on the host CPU in this flow.

Responsible Areas

  • Metal Automation
  • Virtualization
  • Networking
  • Operating System

Contributors

  • @hardikdr
  • @damyan
  • @afritzler
  • @5kt
  • @MalteJ

Acceptance Criteria

  • Metal Automation
    • MetalAPI models DPUs as managed lifecycle entities.
    • DPU BMC can be accessed and configured via automation.
    • State-machine supports DPU-specific provisioning and transitions.
  • Firmware Management
    • BlueField-3 firmware can be upgraded automatically.
    • Required firmware configurations are applied reliably (e.g. disabling host control).
  • Operating System
    • Gardenlinux image prepared for BlueField-3 DPUs.
    • OCI image published and consumable by Ironcore tooling.

Action Items

  • Assign labels (e.g. area/metal-automation, area/networking, area/operatingsystem, kind/epic)
  • Set milestone
  • Create sub-issues
  • Assign an owner using the GitHub Assignee field
  • Add this issue to the ironcore-dev/roadmap project

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  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

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