Unlocking High-Performance AI/ML in Kubernetes with DRANet and RDMA

DraNet Enters Beta! High-Performance Networking in Kubernetes

by Antonio Ojea & Federico Bongiovanni, Kubernetes/GKE

We are excited to announce that DraNet has officially entered a beta state! This marks a major leap forward in our mission to streamline and enhance high-performance networking for AI and HPC workloads within Kubernetes. As we progress towards a stable General Availability (GA) release, we are eager to gather your feedback on the current state of the project.

Why DraNet?

DraNet was born from the lessons we learned at Google, observing the challenges end-users faced when running AI and HPC workloads on Kubernetes. The existing networking solutions, often repurposed from traditional networking or bespoke and complex, fell short of providing a good user experience and efficient operational models.
For instance, managing RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) interfaces often involved a complex combination of CNI chaining and device plugins. This not only created an unnecessary operational overhead for administrators but also led to coordination issues between different components that needed to work in harmony impacting resilience and scalability.
Another significant pain point we identified was the need for fine-grained interface tuning. AI workloads, for example, are extremely sensitive to latency. The presence of some eBPF programs on network interfaces, or the need to configure specific NIC parameters, could severely impact performance latency and/or throughput. Users were often forced to create custom init containers just to apply these settings, adding another layer of complexity.

Introducing DraNet: A Native and Declarative Solution

DraNet is a native integration with Kubernetes that uses the core Dynamic Resource Allocation (DRA) API to address these challenges by treating high-performance network interfaces as first-class citizens in Kubernetes. Here's how:

• Simplified RDMA Management: DraNet manages RDMA interfaces natively, handling the different requirements to offer a unified and seamless user experience. No more need for coordinating different components.
• Declarative Interface Tuning: With DraNet, you can declaratively set interface properties. Need to disable eBPF programs to reduce packet processing overhead or set specific NIC parameters? You can now do this directly in your Kubernetes manifests, eliminating the need for custom scripts or init containers.
• Standalone and Secure: DraNet is designed as a standalone binary, allowing it to run in a distroless container. This significantly reduces the attack surface and the frequency of security-related updates for the container image. By interacting directly with the kernel via stable APIs like netlink, it avoids dependencies on third-party projects, improving both resilience and performance.
• Lightweight and Fast: The DraNet container image, with a compressed size of less than 50MB, has a direct impact on node startup times, allowing for faster deployment and scaling of your workloads.

Beta Release and the Road to GA

DraNet is now in a beta state, signifying that it is ready for broader community testing and feedback. This move to beta is aligned with the maturation of the Kubernetes Dynamic Resource Allocation (DRA) KEP (KEP-4381), a foundational technology for DraNet. We are continuing our active development as we work towards a future General Availability release.

We Welcome Your Feedback and Contributions!

DraNet is an open-source project, and we believe that community involvement is key to its success. As we work towards our GA release, we welcome your feedback, whether it's on the design, user experience, or performance.
You can contribute in many ways:

• Code contributions: We have a fast-paced development cycle and welcome new contributors. Check out our contributing guidelines to get started.
• Documentation: Help us improve our documentation to make it easier for new users to get started with DraNet.
• Share your opinion: Your feedback is invaluable. Let us know how you are using DraNet and what we can do to make it better.

To learn more about DraNet and get started, please visit https://dranet.dev/. We look forward to building the future of high-performance networking in Kubernetes with you!

This Week in Open Source #3

This Week in Open Source for July 11, 2025

A look around the world of open source
by Daryl Ducharme, Erin McKean & amanda casari, Google Open Source Programs Office

We took a break as there was a holiday in the US that shortened our work week, but we are back to share what our open source world has to offer.

Upcoming Events

• July 14-19: The 26th annual Debian Conference (DebConf) for Debian contributors and users interested in improving Debian is in Brest, France.
• July 24-29: GUADEC 2025, the Gnome community's largest conference is in Brescia, Italy.
• July 31-August 3: FOSSY (Free and Open Source Software Yearly) will be held in Portland, Oregon and is focused on the creation and impact of free and open source software, uplifting contributors of all experience.

Open Source Reads and Links

• [Article] libxml2 Maintainer Ends Embargoed Vulnerability Reports, Citing Unsustainable Burden - Solo maintainer of small project won't embargo security vulnerabilities any more; will just treat them like regular bugs. This might bring up security concerns for those that use it but it highlights the need for more contributions required for important work.
• [Podcast] Managing community contributors with Alya Abbott - In this episode of The Business of Open Source podcast the COO of Zulip discusses the management of community contributions, including their downsides.
• [Blog] Towards Digital Sovereignty: Decisions About Control We Make Every Day - Digital sovereignty. What is it? Where did it come from? And how might we best think about it based on our personal or company needs?
• [Report] The Python Software Foundation 2024 Annual Impact Report - PSF has released their annual organization report for community accountability, transparency, and discussion.
• [Mailing List message] What's Next? - This mailing list message shows new life in the development of the copyleft-next license.
• [Blog] Command line magic: Extracting links with awk, grep, and tr - Sometimes it's nice to be reminded of the tools we have at our disposal and how we can use them to make everyday tasks easier. This article from an ATO contributor shows some tips and tricks for a little command line magic that we may have forgotten about (or never thought of).

What exciting open source events and news are you hearing about? Let us know on our @GoogleOSS X account.