Multi-Network Step-by-Step: Enabling SR-IOV Support From Kubernetes Network (DRA) Drivers#

Masaharu Kanda, NTT, Inc. & Lionel Jouin, Red Hat

• Why: This is the session where physical NICs stop being a bolt-on. Multus has been the de facto answer for multi-network pods for years, and it sits beside Kubernetes rather than inside it. SIG-Network is replacing that with a first-class path, and if it lands, the way you attach a VF to a pod changes.
• What: Official multi-network support in Kubernetes built on Dynamic Resource Allocation and a new PodNetwork resource, with the CNI DRA Driver as the reference implementation bridging DRA and CNI.
• How: NIC allocation and management move into the DRA machinery instead of annotation-driven side channels. The claimed payoff is transparent NIC usage visibility and fine-grained control — the specific example given is bandwidth allocation per Virtual Function of a physical NIC.
• Where applicable: Aimed squarely at high-bandwidth AI/ML, telco and HPC workloads — anywhere you are already running SR-IOV. Broadly applicable in principle, but this is upstream work in motion: treat it as the direction of travel and check what has actually merged before planning against it.