DOCA Catalog
Bridge uses several NVIDIA DOCA (Data Center Infrastructure-on-a-Chip Architecture) services to manage and configure BlueField-3 DPUs. Each DOCA service runs on the DPU and is deployed and managed by Bridge as part of the DPU provisioning workflow.
DOCA Services Managed by Bridge
DOCA Management Service Daemon (DMSD)
DMSD is the primary control interface for BlueField-3 in SuperNIC (NIC mode) configurations. DMSD runs on the host and allows Bridge to configure Spectrum-X capabilities — RoCE, congestion control, adaptive routing, and IP routing — on the BF3 without requiring direct OOB access to the DPU.
Used by: SuperNIC configuration flow
DOCA Host-Based Networking (HBN)
DOCA HBN runs on the DPU and implements host-side network isolation for virtualization and Kubernetes workloads. Bridge's Cumulus controller interfaces with DOCA HBN over the OOB network to apply per-tenant configuration:
| Configuration Applied | Purpose |
|---|---|
| VRFs per tenant | Enforce L3 tenant isolation at the DPU |
| VTEP configuration | Enable VxLAN tunnel endpoint on the DPU |
| VF-to-representor mapping | SR-IOV passthrough for VMs and containers |
With DOCA HBN, the switch fabric can maintain a single underlay VRF while tenant isolation is enforced at the DPU — overcoming per-switch VLAN and VRF scale limits.
Used by: BF3 Zero Trust DPF provisioning flow
DOCA Telemetry Service (DTS)
DTS collects real-time performance and diagnostic metrics from the BlueField-3 SuperNIC. DTS feeds into Bridge's observability pipeline alongside switch telemetry from NVIDIA Cumulus Linux.
Metrics collected by DTS:
| Metric Type | Examples |
|---|---|
| High-Frequency Telemetry (HFT) | Per-flow packet counters, latency histograms |
| Programmable Congestion Control (PCC) | Congestion event rates, ECN counters |
| AMBER counters | Advanced error and performance counters |
| Ethtool counters | Interface-level bandwidth, errors, drops |
| Sysfs metrics | Platform and driver-level statistics |
Used by: Spectrum-X observability in NVIDIA Spectrum-X
DOCA DPF (DPU Fabric) Operators
NVIDIA DPU Fabric (DPF) is the Kubernetes-based framework Bridge uses to manage the DPU lifecycle. DPF operators run on both the host control plane and the DPU control plane, enabling Bridge to:
- Provision DPUs
- Deploy DOCA services
- Configure service chaining between DOCA services
- Apply HBN configuration updates
Used by: BF3 DPF for Kubernetes deployments
Roadmap
The following DOCA services are planned for future Bridge integration:
| Service | Purpose |
|---|---|
| DOCA SNAP Virtio-FS | Enables VMs and containers to mount isolated file systems via the Virtio-FS driver on shared network storage, providing an additional storage security layer |
| DOCA Storage Applications | Storage offload for NVMe-over-Fabric and other storage protocols |