Bare Metal Guide

Prerequisites

• A host with at least 8 GPUs.
• Linux kernel ≥ 5.15.
• libnvidia-ml.so.1 (NVML).
• libdcgm.so (DCGM).
• IB userspace (libibverbs, librxe, libmlx5).
• Lustre / BeeGFS / NFS client (depending on your FS).

Step 1: Install the agent

sudo rpm -i denpex-enterprise-agent-*.rpm

This installs:

• /usr/lib/denpex/bin/denpex-enterprise-agent (binary).
• /usr/lib/denpex/bin/denpex-bpf-loader (signed BPF loader).
• /usr/lib/denpex/bpf/*.bpf.o (signed BPF objects).
• /etc/denpex/agent.yaml (config).
• systemd unit denpex-agent.service.

Step 2: Install the control plane

Bare-metal CP runs as a single binary + SQLite + S3-compatible object store (MinIO).

sudo rpm -i denpex-control-plane-*.rpm
sudo /usr/bin/denpex-control-plane init --object-store=/var/lib/denpex/s3
sudo systemctl enable --now denpex-control-plane

Step 3: Configure

/etc/denpex/cp.yaml:

server:
  bind: 0.0.0.0:4317
objectStore:
  root: /var/lib/denpex/s3
kms:
  mode: pkcs11
  module: /opt/denpex/pkcs11.so
audit:
  logDir: /var/log/denpex/audit
rbac:
  enabled: true

Step 4: Add the agent's auth token

denpex-control-plane agent issue-token --host <host>
sudo tee /etc/denpex/agent-token.json

Step 5: Enable the agent

sudo systemctl enable --now denpex-agent.service
sudo journalctl -fu denpex-agent

Sizing

NUMA-Awareness

The agent emits HostEvent::NumaTopology once at boot using hwloc (loaded via libloading).

Compatibility Tested

• RHEL 9.4, Rocky 9.4, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.
• Linux kernels 5.15, 6.1, 6.6.