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Using the IRDMA Cloud RDMA driver Stay organized with collections Save and categorize content based on your preferences.

Cloud RDMA enables low-latency reliable messaging capabilities by using the IRDMA RDMA driver. This driver supports Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) between Compute Engine instances. RDMA transfers data between remote machines and local memory through the network interface without using host CPU or intermediate host buffers.

Cloud RDMA capable instances require at least two virtual network interfaces (vNICs):

The IRDMA driver is supported with H4D instances.

When configuring a vNIC that uses the IRDMA driver, you must specify a VPC network that was created by using the Falcon RDMA network profile.

Before you begin

Operating system support

Google recommends using the HPC VM image, which comes with Cloud RDMA drivers pre-installed.

Of the public OS images provided for Google Cloud, the IRDMA RDMA driver is supported with the following:

Overview of using Cloud RDMA with Compute Engine instances

To create a compute instance that uses Cloud RDMA, you must have at least one regular VPC network and one Falcon VPC network. The Falcon VPC network uses the Falcon RDMA network profile to enable Cloud RDMA traffic between H4D instances. This network is separate from the regular VPC network that carries non-RDMA traffic to other Google Cloud services or the internet.

The tasks to complete to create a compute instance that uses Cloud RDMA are as follows:

  1. Choose a public OS image that supports Cloud RDMA, or create a custom OS image that is tagged to use IRDMA.

  2. Identify or create at least two VPC networks:

    • A regular VPC network for the traffic that goes through the gVNIC network interface
    • A Falcon VPC network for the Cloud RDMA traffic

  3. Create a compute instance using the public or custom OS image. During the instance creation, configure at least two network interfaces: one that uses the gVNIC network driver and one that uses the IRDMA RDMA driver.

  4. Verify that Cloud RDMA is enabled.

Create a custom OS image that supports Cloud RDMA

You can create the OS image using either the Google Cloud CLI or REST. For detailed information and best practices for creating custom OS images, see Create custom OS images.

gcloud

  1. Select an OS image or image family that supports the IRDMA driver and interface. For more information, see Operating system details and select the Interfaces tab.

  2. Using the OS image or image family selected in the previous step, create a custom OS image. To create the custom OS image, use the gcloud compute images create command. For example, the following command creates a custom OS image that supports the IRDMA driver and is based on a specific OS image.

    gcloud compute images create IMAGE_NAME \
    --source-image=SOURCE_IMAGE \
    --source-image-project=SOURCE_IMAGE_PROJECT

    Replace the following:

    • IMAGE_NAME: the name of the image that you want to create

    • SOURCE_IMAGE: a specific OS image that supports the IRDMA driver—for example: hpc-rocky-linux-8-v20250721

      If you want to use the latest OS image in an image family, replace the --source-image flag with the --source-image-family flag and set its value to an image family that supports the IRDMA driver. For example: --source-image-family=hpc-rocky-linux-8.

    • SOURCE_IMAGE_PROJECT: the name of the project that contains the source OS image or image family

    For more information about when to use image families, see Image family best practices.

REST

  1. Select an OS image or image family that supports the IRDMA network interface. For more information, see Operating system details.

  2. Using the OS image or image family selected in the previous step, create an OS image by using the images.insert method.

    POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/global/images
{
  "name":"IMAGE_NAME",
  "sourceImage":"SOURCE_IMAGE_URI"
}

    Replace the following:

    • PROJECT_ID: the ID of the project in which to create the new image
    • IMAGE_NAME: a name for the custom image

    • SOURCE_IMAGE_URI: the URI for the specific OS image or image family that you want to use

      For example:

      • Specific OS image: "sourceImage": "projects/rocky-linux-cloud/global/images/hpc-rocky-linux-8-v20250721"
      • Image family: "sourceImage": "projects/rocky-linux-cloud/global/images/family/hpc-rocky-linux-8"

      When you specify an image family, Compute Engine creates a VM from the most recent, non-deprecated OS image in that family. For more information about when to use image families, see Image family best practices.

Create a VM with IRDMA driver support

You can create a VM using one of the supported public OS images or using a custom OS image you created using the steps in Create a custom OS image that supports IRDMA.

To use Cloud RDMA with your instance, you must configure multiple network interfaces (NICs) for the instance. One NIC must use the GVNIC driver (specify nic-type=GVNIC) and another NIC must use the IRDMA driver (specify nic-type=IRDMA).

Create a VM using a public OS image

To create VMs using the HPC VM image, or a public OS image that supports Cloud RDMA, follow the instructions on the following pages:

Create a VM using a custom OS image

If you created a custom OS image that supports Cloud RDMA, you can use that custom OS image to create a VM by using the Google Cloud console, Google Cloud CLI, or REST.

For instructions on how to create an instance using a custom image, see Create an instance from a custom image.

Verify that Cloud RDMA is enabled

After the VM is deployed, run the following performance bandwidth test to ensure that you are running on a healthy Cloud RDMA-enabled VM instance.

ib_send_bw -aF & # start the server
ib_send_bw -aF $(hostname) # start the client (can be done on the same machine)

The reported single-connection bandwidth BW average [MB/s] should reach at least 11,000 MBps for rows higher than 4096 B. Smaller values are expected for lower message sizes.

What's next

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Last updated 2026-08-11 UTC.

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