Deploy NVIDIA Dynamo on CKS

1. Install Dynamo CRDs.
2. Install the Dynamo platform with the Kubernetes AI (Kai) scheduler and Grove enabled.
3. Deploy an inference model using an example from the Dynamo repository and a Hugging Face token.
4. List and delete deployments when you’re done.

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Set environment

export NAMESPACE=dynamo-system
export RELEASE_VERSION=0.9.0

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Install CRDs

1. Fetch and install the Dynamo CRDs chart:
   helm fetch https://helm.ngc.nvidia.com/nvidia/ai-dynamo/charts/dynamo-crds-${RELEASE_VERSION}.tgz
   
   helm install dynamo-crds dynamo-crds-${RELEASE_VERSION}.tgz --namespace default
   
2. When the install completes without error, the CRDs are installed. Optionally verify with:
   kubectl get crd | grep dynamo
   

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Install the platform

1. Fetch the Dynamo platform chart:
   helm fetch https://helm.ngc.nvidia.com/nvidia/ai-dynamo/charts/dynamo-platform-${RELEASE_VERSION}.tgz
   
2. Install the Dynamo platform:
   helm install dynamo-platform dynamo-platform-${RELEASE_VERSION}.tgz --namespace ${NAMESPACE} --create-namespace \
   --set "grove.enabled=true" \
   --set "kai-scheduler.enabled=true" \
   --set "dynamo-operator.controllerManager.manager.image.tag=${RELEASE_VERSION}" \
   --set "dynamo-operator.controllerManager.kubeRbacProxy.image.repository=registry.k8s.io/kubebuilder/kube-rbac-proxy" \
   --set "dynamo-operator.controllerManager.kubeRbacProxy.image.tag=v0.15.0"
   
   The output is similar to the following:
    I0312 13:13:13.800378    5735 warnings.go:110] "Warning: tls: failed to find any PEM data in certificate input"
    NAME: dynamo-platform
    LAST DEPLOYED: Thu Mar 12 13:12:16 2026
    NAMESPACE: dynamo-system
    STATUS: deployed
    REVISION: 1
    TEST SUITE: None
    NOTES:
    SPDX-FileCopyrightText: Copyright (c) 2025-2026 NVIDIA CORPORATION & AFFILIATES. All rights reserved.
    SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0
   
    Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
    you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
    You may obtain a copy of the License at
   
    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
   
    Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
    distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
    WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
    See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
    limitations under the License.
   
3. When the install completes, Dynamo platform components run in ${NAMESPACE}. Verify with:
   kubectl get pods -n ${NAMESPACE}
   
   Ensure the expected Pods are running before you deploy a model.

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Deploy an inference model

1. Download the agg.yaml and modify the image value by changing my-tag to 0.9.1 on lines 16 and 30:
   image: nvcr.io/nvidia/ai-dynamo/vllm-runtime:0.9.1
   
2. Create a Kubernetes Secret with your Hugging Face token. Replace [HF-TOKEN] with your Hugging Face token:
   kubectl create secret generic hf-token-secret --from-literal=HF_TOKEN="[HF-TOKEN]" -n ${NAMESPACE}
   
3. Apply the agg.yaml to your cluster:
   kubectl apply -f agg.yaml -n ${NAMESPACE}
   
   More example models More example models and manifests are available in the Dynamo repository. If you use one of these example models, create a Kubernetes Secret for your Hugging Face token (same as the preceding step). If you’re deploying an example model instead of the agg.yaml, you might need to configure storage:
   • Configure storage for the example. In your chosen example, edit model-cache/cache.yaml and replace every instance of your-storage-class with shared-vast so the model cache uses CoreWeave storage.
   • Apply the model download manifest to download the model data:
     kubectl apply -f model-cache/model-download.yaml
     
   When the download job completes, the model is cached and ready for inference. Follow any additional instructions in the example for running or exposing the model.

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Run inference

kubectl port-forward service/vllm-agg-frontend 8000:8000 -n $NAMESPACE

curl -X POST http://localhost:8000/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "Qwen/Qwen3-0.6B",
    "messages": [
      {
        "role": "user",
        "content": "Hello, how are you?"
      }
    ],
    "stream": false,
    "max_tokens": 100
  }'

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Clean up

kubectl get dynamographdeployment -n $NAMESPACE

kubectl delete dynamographdeployment vllm-agg-router -n $NAMESPACE