nvcf-self-managed-prerequisite

name	nvcf-self-managed-prerequisite
description	Install the prerequisites the NVCA operator / compute plane needs before nvcf-nvca-install can succeed: the operator tool nvcf-cli (required by the compute-plane stack's register-cluster step), KAI Scheduler (for the KAIScheduler feature gate), and the SMB CSI driver (for the sharedStorage Samba sidecar PVCs). The two cluster components are cloud-neutral helm installs at the NVCF-validated version pins; same install on AKS, EKS, GKE, k3d, or bare metal. Use when the user mentions NVCA prereqs, nvcf-cli, "nvcf-cli not found", ensure-nvcf-cli, register-cluster, KAI Scheduler, SMB CSI, csi-driver-smb, queue quotas, default-parent-queue, NVCA shared-storage PVCs stuck Pending, or asks how to prepare a cluster before installing the NVCA operator.
license	Apache-2.0
compatibility	Requires helm >= 3.12, < 4 (Helm 4 not supported), kubectl matching cluster version.
author	nvcf-core-eng <[e-mail]>
version	1.0.0
tags	["nvcf","self-managed","self-hosted","kai-scheduler","smb-csi","csi-driver-smb","prereq","nvca-prereq","shared-storage"]
tools	["Shell","Read","Edit","Grep","Glob"]
metadata	{"internal":false,"author":"nvcf-core-eng <[e-mail]>","version":"1.0","tags":["nvcf","self-managed","self-hosted","kai-scheduler","smb-csi","csi-driver-smb","prereq","nvca-prereq","shared-storage"],"languages":["bash","yaml"],"frameworks":["helm","kubectl"],"domain":"cloud-infrastructure"}

NVCA prerequisites — KAI Scheduler + SMB CSI

One operator tool plus two cluster-level components the NVCA operator / compute plane depends on. Satisfy all three before running nvcf-nvca-install.

Prereq	Why it is needed	Detail
nvcf-cli	The compute-plane stack's make register-cluster (and install/apply/sync, which abort without the registration values it writes) shells out to nvcf-cli. The shipped stack defaults to building it from a sibling ../cli checkout that the release does not include, so a green-field repo fails with ensure-nvcf-cli / "Registration values not found".	See Step 0b below
KAI Scheduler	selfManaged.featureGateValues includes KAIScheduler; NVCA polls Queue CRs and refuses to become healthy until their quotas are -1	references/kai-scheduler.md
SMB CSI driver (smb.csi.k8s.io)	NVCA's selfManaged.sharedStorage runs Samba sidecar pods that export file shares; the resulting PVCs need this CSI driver to bind	references/smb-csi.md

The KAI Scheduler and SMB CSI installs are cloud-neutral helm commands pinned to NVCF-validated versions. These are upstream third-party charts (not NVCF images), so they are not in manifest.yaml; the per-component reference docs carry the current pin and link the NVCF docs version table. nvcf-cli is an operator workstation tool, not an in-cluster install.

Prerequisites

• A running Kubernetes cluster (any cloud — AKS, EKS, GKE, k3d, MicroK8s) with kubectl configured and admin access.
• helm >= 3.12 and < 4. Helm 4 is NOT supported (matches nvcf-self-managed-stack/README.md). On Helm 4 the KAI install below hangs silently for many minutes — Helm 4 runs the chart's pre-install crd-manager hook through a before-hook-creation delete and then waits --timeout per already-absent hook resource, so the release sits in with no pods and never errors cleanly. Use Helm 3.x.