Backends

Backends are a small plugin surface that centralizes:

• container image selection (by GPU vendor/arch)
• ports
• args/env/probes
• default idle timeouts and startup timeouts

The goal is to keep controller logic backend-agnostic.

Where it lives

• Interface: services/flexinfer/backend/interface.go
• Registry: services/flexinfer/backend/registry.go
• Implementations: services/flexinfer/backend/*.go

Adding a new backend

1. Create a new file in services/flexinfer/backend/ implementing backend.Backend.
2. Register it in an init() function:

func init() {
  backend.MustRegister(&MyBackend{})
}

3. Ensure:
   • Name() returns a stable canonical name
   • Aliases() covers common spelling variants
   • Image() returns sensible defaults for NVIDIA/AMD (and CPU if supported)
4. Add/update tests in services/flexinfer/backend/registry_test.go as needed.

Image overrides

The Helm chart exposes values for backend images and operator-level defaults. See services/flexinfer/charts/flexinfer/values.yaml.