Chainguard Image for dcgm-exporter

Chainguard Images are regularly-updated, minimal container images with low-to-zero CVEs.

Download this Image

This image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/dcgm-exporter:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard registry.

Usage

DCGM-Exporter is a tool based on the Go APIs to NVIDIA DCGM that allows users to gather GPU metrics and understand workload behavior or monitor GPUs in clusters. DCGM Exporter is written in Go and exposes GPU metrics at an HTTP endpoint (/metrics) for monitoring solutions such as Prometheus.

To test the functionality of NVIDIA DCGM Exporter Image, it requires an environment with connected GPUs. If you have connected GPUs, here's one way to use this image:

Using Docker

Run Image

Install Docker Engine and configure it with your credentials to pull image

Run the image:

docker run -d --rm \
   --gpus all \
   --net host \
   --cap-add SYS_ADMIN \
   cgr.dev/chainguard/dcgm-exporter:latest \
   -f /etc/dcgm-exporter/dcp-metrics-included.csv

Retreive the metrics

$ curl localhost:9400/metrics

Output should be something like this

# HELP DCGM_FI_DEV_SM_CLOCK SM clock frequency (in MHz).
# TYPE DCGM_FI_DEV_SM_CLOCK gauge
# HELP DCGM_FI_DEV_MEM_CLOCK Memory clock frequency (in MHz).
# TYPE DCGM_FI_DEV_MEM_CLOCK gauge
# HELP DCGM_FI_DEV_MEMORY_TEMP Memory temperature (in C).
# TYPE DCGM_FI_DEV_MEMORY_TEMP gauge
...
DCGM_FI_DEV_SM_CLOCK{gpu="0", UUID="GPU-604ac76c-d9cf-fef3-62e9-d92044ab6e52"} 139
DCGM_FI_DEV_MEM_CLOCK{gpu="0", UUID="GPU-604ac76c-d9cf-fef3-62e9-d92044ab6e52"} 405
DCGM_FI_DEV_MEMORY_TEMP{gpu="0", UUID="GPU-604ac76c-d9cf-fef3-62e9-d92044ab6e52"} 9223372036854775794
...

Helm Installation

Step 1: Add and Update Helm Repository Add the NVIDIA DCGM Exporter repository and update it to ensure you have access to the latest charts.

$ helm repo add gpu-helm-charts \
   https://nvidia.github.io/dcgm-exporter/helm-charts

$ helm repo update

Step 2: Install NVIDIA DCGM Exporter

Install NVIDIA DCGM Exporter using Helm with the specified version, namespace, and optional configuration settings.

$ helm install \
  --generate-name \
  gpu-helm-charts/dcgm-exporter \
  --set image.repository=cgr.dev/chainguard/dcgm-exporter \
  --set image.tag=latest

Step 3: Verify Installation

$ kubectl get pods -A

NAMESPACE     NAME                                                              READY   STATUS      RESTARTS   AGE
default       dcgm-exporter-2-1603213075-w27mx                                  1/1     Running     0          2m18s
kube-system   calico-kube-controllers-8f59968d4-g28x8                           1/1     Running     1          43m
kube-system   calico-node-zfnfk                                                 1/1     Running     1          43m
kube-system   coredns-f9fd979d6-p7djj                                           1/1     Running     1          43m
kube-system   coredns-f9fd979d6-qhhgq                                           1/1     Running     1          43m
kube-system   etcd-ip-172-31-92-253                                             1/1     Running     1          43m
kube-system   kube-apiserver-ip-172-31-92-253                                   1/1     Running     2          43m
kube-system   kube-controller-manager-ip-172-31-92-253                          1/1     Running     1          43m
kube-system   kube-proxy-mh528                                                  1/1     Running     1          43m
kube-system   kube-scheduler-ip-172-31-92-253                                   1/1     Running     1          43m
kube-system   nvidia-device-plugin-1603211071-7hlk6                             1/1     Running     0          35m
prometheus    alertmanager-kube-prometheus-stack-1603-alertmanager-0            2/2     Running     0          33m
prometheus    kube-prometheus-stack-1603-operator-6b95bcdc79-wmbkn              2/2     Running     0          33m
prometheus    kube-prometheus-stack-1603211794-grafana-67ff56c449-tlmxc         2/2     Running     0          33m
prometheus    kube-prometheus-stack-1603211794-kube-state-metrics-877df67c49f   1/1     Running     0          33m
prometheus    kube-prometheus-stack-1603211794-prometheus-node-exporter-b5fl9   1/1     Running     0          33m
prometheus    prometheus-kube-prometheus-stack-1603-prometheus-0                3/3     Running     1          33m

For more information and setting it up with prometheus stack, refer to the official documentation:

• Helm Installation Guide

Contact Support

If you have a Zendesk account (typically set up for you by your Customer Success Manager) you can reach out to Chainguard's Customer Success team through our Zendesk portal.

What are Chainguard Images?

Chainguard Images are a collection of container images designed for security and minimalism.

Many Chainguard Images are distroless; they contain only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These images do not even contain a shell or package manager. Chainguard Images are built with Wolfi, our Linux undistro designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Images include:

• Minimal design, with no unnecessary software bloat
• Automated nightly builds to ensure Images are completely up-to-date and contain all available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs (software bills of materials) attesting the provenance of all artifacts within the Image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

-dev Variants

As mentioned previously, Chainguard’s distroless Images have no shell or package manager by default. This is great for security, but sometimes you need these things, especially in builder images. For those cases, most (but not all) Chainguard Images come paired with a -dev variant which does include a shell and package manager.

Although the -dev image variants have similar security features as their distroless versions, such as complete SBOMs and signatures, they feature additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. The general recommendation is to use the -dev variants only to build the application and then copy all application artifacts into a distroless image, which will result in a final container image that has a minimal attack surface and won’t allow package installations or logins.

That being said, it’s worth noting that -dev variants of Chainguard Images are completely fine to run in production environments. After all, the -dev variants are still more secure than many popular container images based on fully-featured operating systems such as Debian and Ubuntu since they carry less software, follow a more frequent patch cadence, and offer attestations for what they include.

Learn More

To better understand how to work with Chainguard Images, we encourage you to visit Chainguard Academy, our documentation and education platform.