Error: "infiniband partition ID provided for non-Infiniband slice type" During VM Creation – Crusoe Support

Overview

When attempting to create a virtual machine (VM) on Crusoe Cloud and specifying an Infiniband partition ID (--ib-partition-id) for a VM instance type that does not support Infiniband, you may encounter the error: "infiniband partition ID provided for non-Infiniband slice type." This article explains why this error occurs and provides guidance on selecting the correct instance types for Infiniband networking.

Prerequisites

Access to the Crusoe Cloud command-line interface (CLI).
Familiarity with Crusoe Cloud VM creation commands.

Steps

Step 1: Review Available VM Types

Use the command crusoe compute vms types to list the available VM instance types on Crusoe Cloud. This output provides information about the CPU cores, memory, disk, GPU type (if applicable), and the number of GPUs for each instance type.

❯ crusoe compute vms types
type                   #cpu cores   memory (GB)    disk (GB)    gpu type           #gpus
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
a100-80gb-sxm-ib.8x    96            960            1920        A100-SXM-80GB      8
a100-80gb.1x          12            120            960          A100-PCIe-80GB     1
a100-80gb.2x          24            240            1920         A100-PCIe-80GB     2
a100-80gb.4x          48            480            3840         A100-PCIe-80GB     4
a100-80gb.8x          96            960            7680         A100-PCIe-80GB     8
a100.1x               12            120            960          A100-PCIe-40GB     1
a100.2x               24            240            1920         A100-PCIe-40GB     2
a100.4x               48            480            3840         A100-PCIe-40GB     4
a100.8x               96            960            7680         A100-PCIe-40GB     8
a40.1x                6             60             -            A40-PCIe-48GB      1
a40.2x                12            120            -            A40-PCIe-48GB      2
a40.4x                24            240            -            A40-PCIe-48GB      4
a40.8x                48            480            -            A40-PCIe-48GB      8
b200-180gb-sxm-ib.8x  -             -              -            -                  -
c1a.128x              128           512            -            -                  -
c1a.16x               16            64             -            -                  -
c1a.176x              176           704            -            -                  -
c1a.2x                2             8              -            -                  -
c1a.32x               32            128            -            -                  -
c1a.4x                4             16             -            -                  -
c1a.64x               64            256            -            -                  -
c1a.8x                8             32             -            -                  -
h100-80gb-sxm-ib.8x   176           960            1920         H100-SXM-80GB      8
h200-141gb-sxm-ib.8x  176           1960           3840         H200-SXM-141GB     16
l40s-48gb.10x         80            1470           -            L40S-48GB          10
l40s-48gb.1x          8             147            -            L40S-48GB          1
l40s-48gb.2x          16            294            -            L40S-48GB          2
l40s-48gb.4x          32            588            -            L40S-48GB          4
l40s-48gb.8x          64            1176           -            L40S-48GB          8
mi300x-192gb-ib.8x    240           2000           3840         MI300X-192GB       8
s1a.120x              120           768            76800        -                  -
s1a.160x              160           1024           102400       -                  -
s1a.20x               20            128            12800        -                  -
s1a.40x               40            256            25600        -                  -
s1a.60x               60            384            38400        -                  -
s1a.80x               80            512            51200        -                  -

Step 2: Identify Infiniband Supported Instance Types

Based on the error message and current Crusoe Cloud capabilities, the following GPU instance types support Infiniband networking:

h100-80gb-sxm-ib.8x
h200-141gb-sxm-ib.8x
a100-80gb-sxm-ib.8x
mi300x-192gb-ib.8x

Step 3: Create a VM with Infiniband (If Required)

If you need Infiniband networking, ensure that you select one of the instance types listed in Step 2 using the --type flag in your crusoe compute vms create command and include the --ib-partition-id flag with your desired partition ID.

Example:

crusoe compute vms create --name my-ib-vm --location us-southcentral1-a --type h100-80gb-sxm-ib.8x --image ubuntu20.04-nvidia-sxm-docker:latest --ib-partition-id your-ib-partition-id --keyfile id_rsa.pub

Step 4: Create a VM without Infiniband (If Not Required)

If Infiniband networking is not necessary, you can choose any of the available instance types listed in Step 1 (including l40s-48gb.1x and others without "ib" in their name) and simply omit the --ib-partition-id flag from your crusoe compute vms create command.

Example:

crusoe compute vms create --name my-non-ib-vm --location us-southcentral1-a --type l40s-48gb.1x --image ubuntu20.04-nvidia-sxm-docker:latest --keyfile id_rsa.pub

Resolution

The "infiniband partition ID provided for non-Infiniband slice type" error occurs when you attempt to use the --ib-partition-id flag with a VM instance type that does not support Infiniband networking on Crusoe Cloud. To resolve this, either select an Infiniband-supported instance type (h100-80gb-sxm-ib.8x, h200-141gb-sxm-ib.8x, a100-80gb-sxm-ib.8x, or mi300x-192gb-ib.8x) when using the --ib-partition-id flag, or omit the --ib-partition-id flag entirely when using other instance types.