vLLM server arguments

Red Hat AI Inference 3.5

Server arguments for running Red Hat AI Inference

Red Hat AI Documentation Team

Abstract

Learn how to configure and run Red Hat AI Inference.

Chapter 1. About the AI Inference API server

Red Hat AI Inference provides an OpenAI-compatible API server for inference serving. You can control the behavior of the server with arguments.

The AI Inference command-line interface includes commands for serving models, running chat completions, generating text completions, benchmarking performance, and collecting environment information for troubleshooting. Each command accepts specific arguments that configure resource allocation, model loading behavior, API compatibility options, and performance tuning parameters.

You can also configure AI Inference behavior through environment variables, which is useful for containerized deployments where command-line arguments are less practical. Built-in metrics endpoints provide observability into server performance, request latency, token throughput, and resource utilization.

Chapter 2. Key vLLM server arguments

There are 4 key arguments that you use to configure AI Inference to run on your hardware:

  1. --tensor-parallel-size: distributes your model across your host GPUs.
  2. --gpu-memory-utilization: adjusts accelerator memory utilization for model weights, activations, and KV cache. Measured as a fraction from 0.0 to 1.0 that defaults to 0.9. For example, you can set this value to 0.8 to limit GPU memory consumption by AI Inference to 80%. Use the largest value that is stable for your deployment to maximize throughput.
  3. --max-model-len: limits the maximum context length of the model, measured in tokens. Set this to prevent problems with memory if the model’s default context length is too long.
  4. --max-num-batched-tokens: limits the maximum batch size of tokens to process per step, measured in tokens. Increasing this improves throughput but can affect output token latency.

For example, to run the Red Hat AI Inference container and serve a model with vLLM, run the following, changing server arguments as required:

$ podman run --rm -it \
--device nvidia.com/gpu=all \
--security-opt=label=disable \
--shm-size=4GB -p 8000:8000 \
--userns=keep-id:uid=1001 \
--env "HUGGING_FACE_HUB_TOKEN=$HF_TOKEN" \
--env "HF_HUB_OFFLINE=0" \
-v ./rhaii-cache:/opt/app-root/src/.cache \
registry.redhat.io/rhaii-early-access/vllm-cuda-rhel9:3.5.0-ea.1 \
--model RedHatAI/Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct-FP8 \
--tensor-parallel-size 2 \
--gpu-memory-utilization 0.8 \
--max-model-len 16384 \
--max-num-batched-tokens 2048 \

Chapter 3. vLLM server usage

The vllm command provides subcommands for starting the inference server, generating chat and text completions, running benchmarks, and executing batch prompts.

$ vllm [-h] [-v] {chat,complete,serve,bench,collect-env,run-batch}
chat
Generate chat completions via the running API server.
complete
Generate text completions based on the given prompt via the running API server.
serve
Start the vLLM OpenAI Compatible API server.
bench
vLLM bench subcommand.
collect-env
Start collecting environment information.
run-batch
Run batch prompts and write results to file.

3.1. vllm serve arguments

vllm serve launches a local server that loads and serves the language model.

Note

These server argument docs are generated from vLLM version v0.18.0.

3.1.1. JSON CLI arguments

When passing JSON CLI arguments, the following sets of arguments are equivalent:

  • --json-arg '{"key1": "value1", "key2": {"key3": "value2"}}'
  • --json-arg.key1 value1 --json-arg.key2.key3 value2

Additionally, list elements can be passed individually using +:

  • --json-arg '{"key4": ["value3", "value4", "value5"]}'
  • --json-arg.key4+ value3 --json-arg.key4+='value4,value5'

3.1.2. Options

3.1.2.1. --headless

Run in headless mode. See multi-node data parallel documentation for more details.

Default: False

3.1.2.2. --api-server-count, -asc

How many API server processes to run. Defaults to data_parallel_size if not specified.

3.1.2.3. --config

Read CLI options from a config file. Must be a YAML with the following options: Content from docs.vllm.ai is not included.https://docs.vllm.ai/en/latest/configuration/serve_args.html

3.1.2.4. --disable-log-stats

Disable logging statistics.

Default: False

3.1.2.5. --aggregate-engine-logging

Log aggregate rather than per-engine statistics when using data parallelism.

Default: False

3.1.2.6. --fail-on-environ-validation, --no-fail-on-environ-validation

If set, the engine will raise an error if environment validation fails.

Default: False

3.1.2.7. --shutdown-timeout

Shutdown timeout in seconds. 0 = abort, >0 = wait.

Default: 0

3.1.2.8. --gdn-prefill-backend

Possible choices: flashinfer, triton Select GDN prefill backend.

3.1.2.9. --enable-log-requests, --no-enable-log-requests

Enable logging request information, dependent on log level:

  • INFO: Request ID, parameters and LoRA request.
  • DEBUG: Prompt inputs (e.g: text, token IDs).

You can set the minimum log level via VLLM_LOGGING_LEVEL.

Default: False

3.1.3. Frontend

Arguments for the OpenAI-compatible frontend server.

3.1.3.1. --lora-modules

3.1.3.2. --chat-template

3.1.3.3. --chat-template-content-format

Possible choices: auto, openai, string

Default: auto

3.1.3.4. --trust-request-chat-template, --no-trust-request-chat-template

Default: False

3.1.3.5. --default-chat-template-kwargs

Should either be a valid JSON string or JSON keys passed individually.

3.1.3.6. --response-role

Default: assistant

3.1.3.7. --return-tokens-as-token-ids, --no-return-tokens-as-token-ids

Default: False

3.1.3.8. --disable-frontend-multiprocessing, --no-disable-frontend-multiprocessing

Default: False

3.1.3.9. --enable-auto-tool-choice, --no-enable-auto-tool-choice

Default: False

3.1.3.10. --exclude-tools-when-tool-choice-none, --no-exclude-tools-when-tool-choice-none

Default: False

3.1.3.11. --tool-call-parser

3.1.3.12. --tool-parser-plugin

Default: ""

3.1.3.13. --tool-server

3.1.3.14. --log-config-file

3.1.3.15. --max-log-len

3.1.3.16. --enable-prompt-tokens-details, --no-enable-prompt-tokens-details

Default: False

3.1.3.17. --enable-server-load-tracking, --no-enable-server-load-tracking

Default: False

3.1.3.18. --enable-force-include-usage, --no-enable-force-include-usage

Default: False

3.1.3.19. --enable-tokenizer-info-endpoint, --no-enable-tokenizer-info-endpoint

Default: False

3.1.3.20. --enable-log-outputs, --no-enable-log-outputs

Default: False

3.1.3.21. --enable-log-deltas, --no-enable-log-deltas

Default: True

3.1.3.22. --log-error-stack, --no-log-error-stack

Default: False

3.1.3.23. --tokens-only, --no-tokens-only

Default: False

3.1.3.24. --host

Host name.

3.1.3.25. --port

Port number.

Default: 8000

3.1.3.26. --uds

Unix domain socket path. If set, host and port arguments are ignored.

3.1.3.27. --uvicorn-log-level

Possible choices: critical, debug, error, info, trace, warning Log level for uvicorn. Default: info

3.1.3.28. --disable-uvicorn-access-log, --no-disable-uvicorn-access-log

Disable uvicorn access log.

Default: False

3.1.3.29. --disable-access-log-for-endpoints

Comma-separated list of endpoint paths to exclude from uvicorn access logs. This is useful to reduce log noise from high-frequency endpoints like health checks. Example: "/health,/metrics,/ping". When set, access logs for requests to these paths will be suppressed while keeping logs for other endpoints.

3.1.3.30. --allow-credentials, --no-allow-credentials

Allow credentials.

Default: False

3.1.3.31. --allowed-origins

Allowed origins.

Default: ['*']

3.1.3.32. --allowed-methods

Allowed methods.

Default: ['*']

3.1.3.33. --allowed-headers

Allowed headers.

Default: ['*']

3.1.3.34. --api-key

If provided, the server will require one of these keys to be presented in the header.

3.1.3.35. --ssl-keyfile

The file path to the SSL key file.

3.1.3.36. --ssl-certfile

The file path to the SSL cert file.

3.1.3.37. --ssl-ca-certs

The CA certificates file.

3.1.3.38. --enable-ssl-refresh, --no-enable-ssl-refresh

Refresh SSL Context when SSL certificate files change

Default: False

3.1.3.39. --ssl-cert-reqs

Whether client certificate is required (see stdlib ssl module’s).

Default: 0

3.1.3.40. --ssl-ciphers

SSL cipher suites for HTTPS (TLS 1.2 and below only). Example: 'ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305'

3.1.3.41. --root-path

FastAPI root_path when app is behind a path based routing proxy.

3.1.3.42. --middleware

Additional ASGI middleware to apply to the app. We accept multiple --middleware arguments. The value should be an import path. If a function is provided, vLLM will add it to the server using @app.middleware('http'). If a class is provided, vLLM will add it to the server using app.add_middleware().

Default: []

3.1.3.43. --enable-request-id-headers, --no-enable-request-id-headers

If specified, API server will add X-Request-Id header to responses.

Default: False

3.1.3.44. --disable-fastapi-docs, --no-disable-fastapi-docs

Disable FastAPI’s OpenAPI schema, Swagger UI, and ReDoc endpoint.

Default: False

3.1.3.45. --h11-max-incomplete-event-size

Maximum size (bytes) of an incomplete HTTP event (header or body) for h11 parser. Helps mitigate header abuse. Default: 4194304 (4 MB).

Default: 4194304

3.1.3.46. --h11-max-header-count

Maximum number of HTTP headers allowed in a request for h11 parser. Helps mitigate header abuse. Default: 256.

Default: 256

3.1.3.47. --enable-offline-docs, --no-enable-offline-docs

Enable offline FastAPI documentation for air-gapped environments. Uses vendored static assets bundled with vLLM.

Default: False

3.1.4. ModelConfig

Configuration for the model.

3.1.4.1. --model

Name or path of the Hugging Face model to use. It is also used as the content for model_name tag in metrics output when served_model_name is not specified.

Default: Qwen/Qwen3-0.6B

3.1.4.2. --runner

Possible choices: auto, draft, generate, pooling The type of model runner to use. Each vLLM instance only supports one model runner, even if the same model can be used for multiple types. Default: auto

3.1.4.3. --convert

Possible choices: auto, classify, embed, none Convert the model using adapters defined in [vllm.model_executor.models.adapters][]. The most common use case is to adapt a text generation model to be used for pooling tasks. Default: auto

3.1.4.4. --tokenizer

Name or path of the Hugging Face tokenizer to use. If unspecified, model name or path will be used.

3.1.4.5. --tokenizer-mode

Possible choices: auto, deepseek_v32, hf, mistral, slow Tokenizer mode:

  • "auto" will use the tokenizer from mistral_common for Mistral models if available, otherwise it will use the "hf" tokenizer.
  • "hf" will use the fast tokenizer if available.
  • "slow" will always use the slow tokenizer.
  • "mistral" will always use the tokenizer from mistral_common.
  • "deepseek_v32" will always use the tokenizer from deepseek_v32.
  • "qwen_vl" will always use the tokenizer from qwen_vl.
  • Other custom values can be supported via plugins. Default: auto

3.1.4.6. --trust-remote-code, --no-trust-remote-code

Trust remote code (e.g., from HuggingFace) when downloading the model and tokenizer.

Default: False

3.1.4.7. --dtype

Possible choices: auto, bfloat16, float, float16, float32, half Data type for model weights and activations:

  • "auto" will use FP16 precision for FP32 and FP16 models, and BF16 precision for BF16 models.
  • "half" for FP16. Recommended for AWQ quantization.
  • "float16" is the same as "half".
  • "bfloat16" for a balance between precision and range.
  • "float" is shorthand for FP32 precision.
  • "float32" for FP32 precision. Default: auto

3.1.4.8. --seed

Random seed for reproducibility. We must set the global seed because otherwise, different tensor parallel workers would sample different tokens, leading to inconsistent results.

Default: 0

3.1.4.9. --hf-config-path

Name or path of the Hugging Face config to use. If unspecified, model name or path will be used.

3.1.4.10. --allowed-local-media-path

Allowing API requests to read local images or videos from directories specified by the server file system. This is a security risk. Should only be enabled in trusted environments.

Default: ""

3.1.4.11. --allowed-media-domains

If set, only media URLs that belong to this domain can be used for multi-modal inputs.

3.1.4.12. --revision

The specific model version to use. It can be a branch name, a tag name, or a commit id. If unspecified, will use the default version.

3.1.4.13. --code-revision

The specific revision to use for the model code on the Hugging Face Hub. It can be a branch name, a tag name, or a commit id. If unspecified, will use the default version.

3.1.4.14. --tokenizer-revision

The specific revision to use for the tokenizer on the Hugging Face Hub. It can be a branch name, a tag name, or a commit id. If unspecified, will use the default version.

3.1.4.15. --max-model-len

Model context length (prompt and output). If unspecified, will be automatically derived from the model config. When passing via --max-model-len, supports k/m/g/K/M/G in human-readable format. Examples:

  • 1k → 1000
  • 1K → 1024
  • 25.6k → 25,600
  • -1 or 'auto' → Automatically choose the maximum model length that fits in GPU memory. This will use the model’s maximum context length if it fits, otherwise it will find the largest length that can be accommodated. Parse human-readable integers like '1k', '2M', etc. Including decimal values with decimal multipliers. Also accepts -1 or 'auto' as a special value for auto-detection. Examples:
  • '1k' → 1,000
  • '1K' → 1,024
  • '25.6k' → 25,600
  • '-1' or 'auto' → -1 (special value for auto-detection)

3.1.4.16. --quantization, -q

Method used to quantize the weights. If None, we first check the quantization_config attribute in the model config file. If that is None, we assume the model weights are not quantized and use dtype to determine the data type of the weights.

3.1.4.17. --allow-deprecated-quantization, --no-allow-deprecated-quantization

Whether to allow deprecated quantization methods.

Default: False

3.1.4.18. --enforce-eager, --no-enforce-eager

Whether to always use eager-mode PyTorch. If True, we will disable CUDA graph and always execute the model in eager mode. If False, we will use CUDA graph and eager execution in hybrid for maximal performance and flexibility.

Default: False

3.1.4.19. --enable-return-routed-experts, --no-enable-return-routed-experts

Whether to return routed experts.

Default: False

3.1.4.20. --max-logprobs

Maximum number of log probabilities to return when logprobs is specified in SamplingParams. The default value comes the default for the OpenAI Chat Completions API. -1 means no cap, i.e. all (output_length * vocab_size) logprobs are allowed to be returned and it may cause OOM.

Default: 20

3.1.4.21. --logprobs-mode

Possible choices: processed_logits, processed_logprobs, raw_logits, raw_logprobs Indicates the content returned in the logprobs and prompt_logprobs. Supported mode: 1) raw_logprobs, 2) processed_logprobs, 3) raw_logits, 4) processed_logits. Raw means the values before applying any logit processors, like bad words. Processed means the values after applying all processors, including temperature and top_k/top_p. Default: raw_logprobs

3.1.4.22. --disable-sliding-window, --no-disable-sliding-window

Whether to disable sliding window. If True, we will disable the sliding window functionality of the model, capping to sliding window size. If the model does not support sliding window, this argument is ignored.

Default: False

3.1.4.23. --disable-cascade-attn, --no-disable-cascade-attn

Disable cascade attention for V1. While cascade attention does not change the mathematical correctness, disabling it could be useful for preventing potential numerical issues. This defaults to True, so users must opt in to cascade attention by setting this to False. Even when this is set to False, cascade attention will only be used when the heuristic tells that it’s beneficial.

Default: True

3.1.4.24. --skip-tokenizer-init, --no-skip-tokenizer-init

Skip initialization of tokenizer and detokenizer. Expects valid prompt_token_ids and None for prompt from the input. The generated output will contain token ids.

Default: False

3.1.4.25. --enable-prompt-embeds, --no-enable-prompt-embeds

If True, enables passing text embeddings as inputs via the prompt_embeds key. WARNING: The vLLM engine may crash if incorrect shape of embeddings is passed. Only enable this flag for trusted users!

Default: False

3.1.4.26. --served-model-name

The model name(s) used in the API. If multiple names are provided, the server will respond to any of the provided names. The model name in the model field of a response will be the first name in this list. If not specified, the model name will be the same as the --model argument. Noted that this name(s) will also be used in model_name tag content of prometheus metrics, if multiple names provided, metrics tag will take the first one.

3.1.4.27. --config-format

Possible choices: auto, hf, mistral The format of the model config to load:

  • "auto" will try to load the config in hf format if available after trying to load in mistral format.
  • "hf" will load the config in hf format.
  • "mistral" will load the config in mistral format. Default: auto

3.1.4.28. --hf-token

The token to use as HTTP bearer authorization for remote files . If True, will use the token generated when running hf auth login (stored in ~/.cache/huggingface/token).

3.1.4.29. --hf-overrides

If a dictionary, contains arguments to be forwarded to the Hugging Face config. If a callable, it is called to update the HuggingFace config.

Default: {}

3.1.4.30. --pooler-config

Pooler config which controls the behaviour of output pooling in pooling models. Should either be a valid JSON string or JSON keys passed individually.

3.1.4.31. --generation-config

The folder path to the generation config. Defaults to "auto", the generation config will be loaded from model path. If set to "vllm", no generation config is loaded, vLLM defaults will be used. If set to a folder path, the generation config will be loaded from the specified folder path. If max_new_tokens is specified in generation config, then it sets a server-wide limit on the number of output tokens for all requests.

Default: auto

3.1.4.32. --override-generation-config

Overrides or sets generation config. e.g. {"temperature": 0.5}. If used with --generation-config auto, the override parameters will be merged with the default config from the model. If used with --generation-config vllm, only the override parameters are used. Should either be a valid JSON string or JSON keys passed individually.

Default: {}

3.1.4.33. --enable-sleep-mode, --no-enable-sleep-mode

Enable sleep mode for the engine (only cuda and hip platforms are supported).

Default: False

3.1.4.34. --model-impl

Possible choices: auto, terratorch, transformers, vllm Which implementation of the model to use:

  • "auto" will try to use the vLLM implementation, if it exists, and fall back to the Transformers implementation if no vLLM implementation is available.
  • "vllm" will use the vLLM model implementation.
  • "transformers" will use the Transformers model implementation.
  • "terratorch" will use the TerraTorch model implementation. Default: auto

3.1.4.35. --override-attention-dtype

Override dtype for attention

3.1.4.36. --logits-processors

One or more logits processors' fully-qualified class names or class definitions

3.1.4.37. --io-processor-plugin

IOProcessor plugin name to load at model startup

3.1.5. LoadConfig

Configuration for loading the model weights.

3.1.5.1. --load-format

The format of the model weights to load:

  • "auto" will try to load the weights in the safetensors format and fall back to the pytorch bin format if safetensors format is not available.
  • "pt" will load the weights in the pytorch bin format.
  • "safetensors" will load the weights in the safetensors format.
  • "instanttensor" will load the Safetensors weights on CUDA devices using InstantTensor, which enables distributed loading with pipelined prefetching and fast direct I/O.
  • "npcache" will load the weights in pytorch format and store a numpy cache to speed up the loading.
  • "dummy" will initialize the weights with random values, which is mainly for profiling.
  • "tensorizer" will use CoreWeave’s tensorizer library for fast weight loading. See the Tensorize vLLM Model script in the Examples section for more information.
  • "runai_streamer" will load the Safetensors weights using Run:ai Model Streamer.
  • "runai_streamer_sharded" will load weights from pre-sharded checkpoint files using Run:ai Model Streamer.
  • "bitsandbytes" will load the weights using bitsandbytes quantization.
  • "sharded_state" will load weights from pre-sharded checkpoint files, supporting efficient loading of tensor-parallel models.
  • "gguf" will load weights from GGUF format files (details specified in Content from github.com is not included.https://github.com/ggml-org/ggml/blob/master/docs/gguf.md).
  • "mistral" will load weights from consolidated safetensors files used by Mistral models.
  • Other custom values can be supported via plugins.

Default: auto

3.1.5.2. --download-dir

Directory to download and load the weights, default to the default cache directory of Hugging Face.

3.1.5.3. --safetensors-load-strategy

Specifies the loading strategy for safetensors weights.

  • "lazy" (default): Weights are memory-mapped from the file. This enables

on-demand loading and is highly efficient for models on local storage.

  • "eager": The entire file is read into CPU memory upfront before loading.

This is recommended for models on network filesystems (e.g., Lustre, NFS) as it avoids inefficient random reads, significantly speeding up model initialization. However, it uses more CPU RAM.

  • "prefetch": Checkpoint files are read into the OS page cache before

workers load them, speeding up the model loading phase. Useful on network or high-latency storage.

  • "torchao": Weights are loaded in upfront and then reconstructed

into torchao tensor subclasses. This is used when the checkpoint was quantized using torchao and saved using safetensors. Needs torchao >= 0.14.0

Default: lazy

3.1.5.4. --model-loader-extra-config

Extra config for model loader. This will be passed to the model loader corresponding to the chosen load_format.

Default: {}

3.1.5.5. --ignore-patterns

The list of patterns to ignore when loading the model. Default to "original/*/" to avoid repeated loading of llama’s checkpoints.

Default: ['original/**/*']

3.1.5.6. --use-tqdm-on-load, --no-use-tqdm-on-load

Whether to enable tqdm for showing progress bar when loading model weights.

Default: True

3.1.5.7. --pt-load-map-location

pt_load_map_location: the map location for loading pytorch checkpoint, to support loading checkpoints can only be loaded on certain devices like "cuda", this is equivalent to {"": "cuda"}. Another supported format is mapping from different devices like from GPU 1 to GPU 0: {"cuda:1": "cuda:0"}. Note that when passed from command line, the strings in dictionary needs to be double quoted for json parsing. For more details, see original doc for map_location in Content from pytorch.org is not included.https://pytorch.org/docs/stable/generated/torch.load.html

Default: cpu

3.1.6. AttentionConfig

Configuration for attention mechanisms in vLLM.

3.1.6.1. --attention-backend

Attention backend to use. Use "auto" or None for automatic selection.

3.1.7. StructuredOutputsConfig

Dataclass which contains structured outputs config for the engine.

3.1.7.1. --reasoning-parser

Select the reasoning parser depending on the model that you’re using. This is used to parse the reasoning content into OpenAI API format.

Default: ""

3.1.7.2. --reasoning-parser-plugin

Path to a dynamically reasoning parser plugin that can be dynamically loaded and registered.

Default: ""

3.1.8. ParallelConfig

Configuration for the distributed execution.

3.1.8.1. --distributed-executor-backend

Possible choices: external_launcher, mp, ray, uni Backend to use for distributed model workers, either "ray" or "mp" (multiprocessing). If the product of pipeline_parallel_size and tensor_parallel_size is less than or equal to the number of GPUs available, "mp" will be used to keep processing on a single host. Otherwise, an error will be raised. To use "mp" you must also set nnodes, and to use "ray" you must manually set distributed_executor_backend to "ray".

+ Note that tpu only support Ray for distributed inference.

3.1.8.2. --pipeline-parallel-size, -pp

Number of pipeline parallel groups.

Default: 1

3.1.8.3. --master-addr

distributed master address for multi-node distributed inference when distributed_executor_backend is mp.

Default: 127.0.0.1

3.1.8.4. --master-port

distributed master port for multi-node distributed inference when distributed_executor_backend is mp.

Default: 29501

3.1.8.5. --nnodes, -n

num of nodes for multi-node distributed inference when distributed_executor_backend is mp.

Default: 1

3.1.8.6. --node-rank, -r

distributed node rank for multi-node distributed inference when distributed_executor_backend is mp.

Default: 0

3.1.8.7. --distributed-timeout-seconds

Timeout in seconds for distributed operations (e.g., init_process_group). If set, this value is passed to torch.distributed.init_process_group as the timeout parameter. If None, PyTorch’s default timeout is used (600s for NCCL). Increase this for multi-node setups where model downloads may be slow.

3.1.8.8. --tensor-parallel-size, -tp

Number of tensor parallel groups.

Default: 1

3.1.8.9. --decode-context-parallel-size, -dcp

Number of decode context parallel groups, because the world size does not change by dcp, it simply reuse the GPUs of TP group, and tp_size needs to be divisible by dcp_size.

Default: 1

3.1.8.10. --dcp-comm-backend

Possible choices: a2a, ag_rs Communication backend for Decode Context Parallel (DCP).

  • "ag_rs": AllGather + ReduceScatter (default, existing behavior)
  • "a2a": All-to-All exchange of partial outputs + LSE, then combine with Triton kernel. Reduces NCCL calls from 3 to 2 per layer for MLA models. Default: ag_rs

3.1.8.11. --dcp-kv-cache-interleave-size

Interleave size of kv_cache storage while using DCP. dcp_kv_cache_interleave_size has been replaced by cp_kv_cache_interleave_size, and will be deprecated when PCP is fully supported.

Default: 1

3.1.8.12. --cp-kv-cache-interleave-size

Interleave size of kv_cache storage while using DCP or PCP. For total_cp_rank = pcp_rank * dcp_world_size + dcp_rank, and total_cp_world_size = pcp_world_size * dcp_world_size. store interleave_size tokens on total_cp_rank i, then store next interleave_size tokens on total_cp_rank i+1. Interleave_size=1: token-level alignment, where token i is stored on total_cp_rank i %% total_cp_world_size. Interleave_size=block_size: block-level alignment, where tokens are first populated to the preceding ranks. Tokens are then stored in (rank i+1, block j) only after (rank i, block j) is fully occupied. Block_size should be greater than or equal to cp_kv_cache_interleave_size. Block_size should be divisible by cp_kv_cache_interleave_size.

Default: 1

3.1.8.13. --prefill-context-parallel-size, -pcp

Number of prefill context parallel groups.

Default: 1

3.1.8.14. --data-parallel-size, -dp

Number of data parallel groups. MoE layers will be sharded according to the product of the tensor parallel size and data parallel size.

Default: 1

3.1.8.15. --data-parallel-rank, -dpn

Data parallel rank of this instance. When set, enables external load balancer mode.

3.1.8.16. --data-parallel-start-rank, -dpr

Starting data parallel rank for secondary nodes.

3.1.8.17. --data-parallel-size-local, -dpl

Number of data parallel replicas to run on this node.

3.1.8.18. --data-parallel-address, -dpa

Address of data parallel cluster head-node.

3.1.8.19. --data-parallel-rpc-port, -dpp

Port for data parallel RPC communication.

3.1.8.20. --data-parallel-backend, -dpb

Backend for data parallel, either "mp" or "ray".

Default: mp

3.1.8.21. --data-parallel-hybrid-lb, --no-data-parallel-hybrid-lb, -dph

Whether to use "hybrid" DP LB mode. Applies only to online serving and when data_parallel_size > 0. Enables running an AsyncLLM and API server on a "per-node" basis where vLLM load balances between local data parallel ranks, but an external LB balances between vLLM nodes/replicas. Set explicitly in conjunction with --data-parallel-start-rank.

Default: False

3.1.8.22. --data-parallel-external-lb, --no-data-parallel-external-lb, -dpe

Whether to use "external" DP LB mode. Applies only to online serving and when data_parallel_size > 0. This is useful for a "one-pod-per-rank" wide-EP setup in Kubernetes. Set implicitly when --data-parallel-rank is provided explicitly to vllm serve.

Default: False

3.1.8.23. --enable-expert-parallel, --no-enable-expert-parallel, -ep

Use expert parallelism instead of tensor parallelism for MoE layers.

Default: False

3.1.8.24. --enable-ep-weight-filter, --no-enable-ep-weight-filter

Skip non-local expert weights during model loading when expert parallelism is active. Each rank only reads its own expert shard from disk, which can drastically reduce storage I/O for MoE models with per-expert weight tensors (e.g. DeepSeek, Mixtral, Kimi-K2.5). Has no effect on 3D fused-expert checkpoints (e.g. GPT-OSS) or non-MoE models.

Default: False

3.1.8.25. --all2all-backend

Possible choices: allgather_reducescatter, deepep_high_throughput, deepep_low_latency, flashinfer_all2allv, flashinfer_nvlink_one_sided, flashinfer_nvlink_two_sided, mori, naive, nixl_ep, pplx All2All backend for MoE expert parallel communication. Available options:

  • "naive": Naive all2all implementation using broadcasts
  • "allgather_reducescatter": All2all based on allgather and reducescatter
  • "deepep_high_throughput": Use deepep high-throughput kernels
  • "deepep_low_latency": Use deepep low-latency kernels
  • "mori": Use mori kernels
  • "nixl_ep": Use nixl-ep kernels
  • "flashinfer_nvlink_two_sided": Use flashinfer two-sided kernels for mnnvl
  • "flashinfer_nvlink_one_sided": Use flashinfer high-throughput a2a kernels Default: allgather_reducescatter

3.1.8.26. --enable-dbo, --no-enable-dbo

Enable dual batch overlap for the model executor.

Default: False

3.1.8.27. --ubatch-size

Number of ubatch size.

Default: 0

3.1.8.28. --enable-elastic-ep, --no-enable-elastic-ep

Enable elastic expert parallelism with stateless NCCL groups for DP/EP.

Default: False

3.1.8.29. --dbo-decode-token-threshold

The threshold for dual batch overlap for batches only containing decodes. If the number of tokens in the request is greater than this threshold, microbatching will be used. Otherwise, the request will be processed in a single batch.

Default: 32

3.1.8.30. --dbo-prefill-token-threshold

The threshold for dual batch overlap for batches that contain one or more prefills. If the number of tokens in the request is greater than this threshold, microbatching will be used. Otherwise, the request will be processed in a single batch.

Default: 512

3.1.8.31. --disable-nccl-for-dp-synchronization, --no-disable-nccl-for-dp-synchronization

Forces the dp synchronization logic in vllm/v1/worker/dp_utils.py to use Gloo instead of NCCL for its all reduce. Defaults to True when async scheduling is enabled, False otherwise.

3.1.8.32. --enable-eplb, --no-enable-eplb

Enable expert parallelism load balancing for MoE layers.

Default: False

3.1.8.33. --eplb-config

Expert parallelism configuration. Should either be a valid JSON string or JSON keys passed individually.

Default:

EPLBConfig(window_size=1000, step_interval=3000, num_redundant_experts=0, log_balancedness=False, log_balancedness_interval=1, use_async=False, policy='default')

3.1.8.34. --expert-placement-strategy

Possible choices: linear, round_robin The expert placement strategy for MoE layers:

  • "linear": Experts are placed in a contiguous manner. For example, with 4 experts and 2 ranks, rank 0 will have experts [0, 1] and rank 1 will have experts [2, 3].
  • "round_robin": Experts are placed in a round-robin manner. For example, with 4 experts and 2 ranks, rank 0 will have experts [0, 2] and rank 1 will have experts [1, 3]. This strategy can help improve load balancing for grouped expert models with no redundant experts. Default: linear

3.1.8.35. --max-parallel-loading-workers

Maximum number of parallel loading workers when loading model sequentially in multiple batches. To avoid RAM OOM when using tensor parallel and large models.

3.1.8.36. --ray-workers-use-nsight, --no-ray-workers-use-nsight

Whether to profile Ray workers with nsight, see Content from docs.ray.io is not included.https://docs.ray.io/en/latest/ray-observability/user-guides/profiling.html#profiling-nsight-profiler.

Default: False

3.1.8.37. --disable-custom-all-reduce, --no-disable-custom-all-reduce

Disable the custom all-reduce kernel and fall back to NCCL.

Default: False

3.1.8.38. --worker-cls

The full name of the worker class to use. If "auto", the worker class will be determined based on the platform.

Default: auto

3.1.8.39. --worker-extension-cls

The full name of the worker extension class to use. The worker extension class is dynamically inherited by the worker class. This is used to inject new attributes and methods to the worker class for use in collective_rpc calls.

Default: ""

3.1.9. CacheConfig

Configuration for the KV cache.

3.1.9.1. --block-size

Size of a contiguous cache block in number of tokens. Accepts None (meaning "use default"). After construction, always int.

3.1.9.2. --gpu-memory-utilization

The fraction of GPU memory to be used for the model executor, which can range from 0 to 1. For example, a value of 0.5 would imply 50%% GPU memory utilization. If unspecified, will use the default value of 0.9. This is a per-instance limit, and only applies to the current vLLM instance. It does not matter if you have another vLLM instance running on the same GPU. For example, if you have two vLLM instances running on the same GPU, you can set the GPU memory utilization to 0.5 for each instance.

Default: 0.9

3.1.9.3. --kv-cache-memory-bytes

Size of KV Cache per GPU in bytes. By default, this is set to None and vllm can automatically infer the kv cache size based on gpu_memory_utilization. However, users may want to manually specify the kv cache memory size. kv_cache_memory_bytes allows more fine-grain control of how much memory gets used when compared with using gpu_memory_utilization. Note that kv_cache_memory_bytes (when not-None) ignores gpu_memory_utilization Parse human-readable integers like '1k', '2M', etc. Including decimal values with decimal multipliers. Examples: - '1k' → 1,000 - '1K' → 1,024 - '25.6k' → 25,600

3.1.9.4. --kv-cache-dtype

Possible choices: auto, bfloat16, float16, fp8, fp8_ds_mla, fp8_e4m3, fp8_e5m2, fp8_inc Data type for kv cache storage. If "auto", will use model data type. CUDA 11.8+ supports fp8 (=fp8_e4m3) and fp8_e5m2. ROCm (AMD GPU) supports fp8 (=fp8_e4m3). Intel Gaudi (HPU) supports fp8 (using fp8_inc). Some models (namely DeepSeekV3.2) default to fp8, set to bfloat16 to use bfloat16 instead, this is an invalid option for models that do not default to fp8. Default: auto

3.1.9.5. --num-gpu-blocks-override

Number of GPU blocks to use. This overrides the profiled num_gpu_blocks if specified. Does nothing if None. Used for testing preemption.

3.1.9.6. --enable-prefix-caching, --no-enable-prefix-caching

Whether to enable prefix caching.

3.1.9.7. --prefix-caching-hash-algo

Possible choices: sha256, sha256_cbor, xxhash, xxhash_cbor Set the hash algorithm for prefix caching:

  • "sha256" uses Pickle for object serialization before hashing. This is the current default, as SHA256 is the most secure choice to avoid potential hash collisions.
  • "sha256_cbor" provides a reproducible, cross-language compatible hash. It serializes objects using canonical CBOR and hashes them with SHA-256.
  • "xxhash" uses Pickle serialization with xxHash (128-bit) for faster, non-cryptographic hashing. Requires the optional xxhash package. IMPORTANT: Use of a hashing algorithm that is not considered cryptographically secure theoretically increases the risk of hash collisions, which can cause undefined behavior or even leak private information in multi-tenant environments. Even if collisions are still very unlikely, it is important to consider your security risk tolerance against the performance benefits before turning this on.
  • "xxhash_cbor" combines canonical CBOR serialization with xxHash for reproducible hashing. Requires the optional xxhash package. Default: sha256

3.1.9.8. --calculate-kv-scales, --no-calculate-kv-scales

This enables dynamic calculation of k_scale and v_scale when kv_cache_dtype is fp8. If False, the scales will be loaded from the model checkpoint if available. Otherwise, the scales will default to 1.0.

Default: False

3.1.9.9. --kv-sharing-fast-prefill, --no-kv-sharing-fast-prefill

This feature is work in progress and no prefill optimization takes place with this flag enabled currently. In some KV sharing setups, e.g. YOCO (Content from arxiv.org is not included.https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.05254), some layers can skip tokens corresponding to prefill. This flag enables attention metadata for eligible layers to be overridden with metadata necessary for implementing this optimization in some models (e.g. Gemma3n)

Default: False

3.1.9.10. --mamba-cache-dtype

Possible choices: auto, float16, float32 The data type to use for the Mamba cache (both the conv as well as the ssm state). If set to 'auto', the data type will be inferred from the model config. Default: auto

3.1.9.11. --mamba-ssm-cache-dtype

Possible choices: auto, float16, float32 The data type to use for the Mamba cache (ssm state only, conv state will still be controlled by mamba_cache_dtype). If set to 'auto', the data type for the ssm state will be determined by mamba_cache_dtype. Default: auto

3.1.9.12. --mamba-block-size

Size of a contiguous cache block in number of tokens for mamba cache. Can be set only when prefix caching is enabled. Value must be a multiple of 8 to align with causal_conv1d kernel.

3.1.9.13. --mamba-cache-mode

Possible choices: align, all, none The cache strategy for Mamba layers.

  • "none": set when prefix caching is disabled.
  • "all": cache the mamba state of all tokens at position i * block_size. This is the default behavior (for models that support it) when prefix caching is enabled.
  • "align": only cache the mamba state of the last token of each scheduler step and when the token is at position i * block_size. Default: none

3.1.9.14. --kv-offloading-size

Size of the KV cache offloading buffer in GiB. When TP > 1, this is the total buffer size summed across all TP ranks. By default, this is set to None, which means no KV offloading is enabled. When set, vLLM will enable KV cache offloading to CPU using the kv_offloading_backend.

3.1.9.15. --kv-offloading-backend

Possible choices: lmcache, native The backend to use for KV cache offloading. Supported backends include 'native' (vLLM native CPU offloading), 'lmcache'. KV offloading is only activated when kv_offloading_size is set. Default: native

3.1.10. OffloadConfig

Configuration for model weight offloading to reduce GPU memory usage.

3.1.10.1. --offload-backend

Possible choices: auto, prefetch, uva The backend for weight offloading. Options:

  • "auto": Selects based on which sub-config has non-default values (prefetch if offload_group_size > 0, uva if cpu_offload_gb > 0).
  • "uva": UVA (Unified Virtual Addressing) zero-copy offloading.
  • "prefetch": Async prefetch with group-based layer offloading. Default: auto

3.1.10.2. --cpu-offload-gb

The space in GiB to offload to CPU, per GPU. Default is 0, which means no offloading. Intuitively, this argument can be seen as a virtual way to increase the GPU memory size. For example, if you have one 24 GB GPU and set this to 10, virtually you can think of it as a 34 GB GPU. Then you can load a 13B model with BF16 weight, which requires at least 26GB GPU memory. Note that this requires fast CPU-GPU interconnect, as part of the model is loaded from CPU memory to GPU memory on the fly in each model forward pass. This uses UVA (Unified Virtual Addressing) for zero-copy access.

Default: 0

3.1.10.3. --cpu-offload-params

The set of parameter name segments to target for CPU offloading. Unmatched parameters are not offloaded. If this set is empty, parameters are offloaded non-selectively until the memory limit defined by cpu_offload_gb is reached. Examples:

  • For parameter name "mlp.experts.w2_weight":
  • "experts" or "experts.w2_weight" will match.
  • "expert" or "w2" will NOT match (must be exact segments).

This allows distinguishing parameters like "w2_weight" and "w2_weight_scale".

Default: set()

3.1.10.4. --offload-group-size

Group every N layers together. Offload last offload_num_in_group layers of each group. Default is 0 (disabled). Example: group_size=8, num_in_group=2 offloads layers 6,7,14,15,22,23,…​ Unlike cpu_offload_gb, this uses explicit async prefetching to hide transfer latency.

Default: 0

3.1.10.5. --offload-num-in-group

Number of layers to offload per group. Must be <= offload_group_size. Default is 1.

Default: 1

3.1.10.6. --offload-prefetch-step

Number of layers to prefetch ahead. Higher values hide more latency but use more GPU memory. Default is 1.

Default: 1

3.1.10.7. --offload-params

The set of parameter name segments to target for prefetch offloading. Unmatched parameters are not offloaded. If this set is empty, ALL parameters of each offloaded layer are offloaded. Uses segment matching: "w13_weight" matches "mlp.experts.w13_weight" but not "mlp.experts.w13_weight_scale".

Default: set()

3.1.11. MultiModalConfig

Controls the behavior of multimodal models.

3.1.11.1. --language-model-only, --no-language-model-only

If True, disables all multimodal inputs by setting all modality limits to 0. Equivalent to setting --limit-mm-per-prompt to 0 for every modality.

Default: False

3.1.11.2. --limit-mm-per-prompt

The maximum number of input items and options allowed per prompt for each modality. Defaults to 999 for each modality. Legacy format (count only): {"image": 16, "video": 2} Configurable format (with options): {"video": {"count": 1, "num_frames": 32, "width": 512, "height": 512}, "image": {"count": 5, "width": 512, "height": 512}} Mixed format (combining both): {"image": 16, "video": {"count": 1, "num_frames": 32, "width": 512, "height": 512}} Should either be a valid JSON string or JSON keys passed individually.

Default: {}

3.1.11.3. --enable-mm-embeds, --no-enable-mm-embeds

If True, enables passing multimodal embeddings: for LLM class, this refers to tensor inputs under multi_modal_data; for the OpenAI-compatible server, this refers to chat messages with content "type": "*_embeds". When enabled with --limit-mm-per-prompt set to 0 for a modality, precomputed embeddings skip count validation for that modality, saving memory by not loading encoder modules while still enabling embeddings as an input. Limits greater than 0 still apply to embeddings. WARNING: The vLLM engine may crash if incorrect shape of embeddings is passed. Only enable this flag for trusted users!

Default: False

3.1.11.4. --media-io-kwargs

Additional args passed to process media inputs, keyed by modalities. For example, to set num_frames for video, set --media-io-kwargs '{"video": {"num_frames": 40} }' Should either be a valid JSON string or JSON keys passed individually.

Default: {}

3.1.11.5. --mm-processor-kwargs

Arguments to be forwarded to the model’s processor for multi-modal data, e.g., image processor. Overrides for the multi-modal processor obtained from transformers.AutoProcessor.from_pretrained. The available overrides depend on the model that is being run. For example, for Phi-3-Vision: {"num_crops": 4}. Should either be a valid JSON string or JSON keys passed individually.

3.1.11.6. --mm-processor-cache-gb

The size (in GiB) of the multi-modal processor cache, which is used to avoid re-processing past multi-modal inputs. This cache is duplicated for each API process and engine core process, resulting in a total memory usage of mm_processor_cache_gb * (api_server_count + data_parallel_size). Set to 0 to disable this cache completely (not recommended).

Default: 4

3.1.11.7. --mm-processor-cache-type

Possible choices: lru, shm Type of cache to use for the multi-modal preprocessor/mapper. If shm, use shared memory FIFO cache. If lru, use mirrored LRU cache. Default: lru

3.1.11.8. --mm-shm-cache-max-object-size-mb

Size limit (in MiB) for each object stored in the multi-modal processor shared memory cache. Only effective when mm_processor_cache_type is "shm".

Default: 128

3.1.11.9. --mm-encoder-only, --no-mm-encoder-only

When enabled, skips the language component of the model. This is usually only valid in disaggregated Encoder process.

Default: False

3.1.11.10. --mm-encoder-tp-mode

Possible choices: data, weights Indicates how to optimize multi-modal encoder inference using tensor parallelism (TP).

  • "weights": Within the same vLLM engine, split the weights of each layer across TP ranks. (default TP behavior)
  • "data": Within the same vLLM engine, split the batched input data across TP ranks to process the data in parallel, while hosting the full weights on each TP rank. This batch-level DP is not to be confused with API request-level DP (which is controlled by --data-parallel-size). This is only supported on a per-model basis and falls back to "weights" if the encoder does not support DP. Default: weights

3.1.11.11. --mm-encoder-attn-backend

Optional override for the multi-modal encoder attention backend when using vision transformers. Accepts any value from vllm.v1.attention.backends.registry.AttentionBackendEnum (e.g. FLASH_ATTN).

3.1.11.12. --interleave-mm-strings, --no-interleave-mm-strings

Enable fully interleaved support for multimodal prompts, while using --chat-template-content-format=string.

Default: False

3.1.11.13. --skip-mm-profiling, --no-skip-mm-profiling

When enabled, skips multimodal memory profiling and only profiles with language backbone model during engine initialization. This reduces engine startup time but shifts the responsibility to users for estimating the peak memory usage of the activation of multimodal encoder and embedding cache.

Default: False

3.1.11.14. --video-pruning-rate

Sets pruning rate for video pruning via Efficient Video Sampling. Value sits in range [0;1) and determines fraction of media tokens from each video to be pruned.

3.1.12. LoRAConfig

Configuration for LoRA.

3.1.12.1. --enable-lora, --no-enable-lora

If True, enable handling of LoRA adapters.

3.1.12.2. --max-loras

Max number of LoRAs in a single batch.

Default: 1

3.1.12.3. --max-lora-rank

Possible choices: 1, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 320, 512 Max LoRA rank. Default: 16

3.1.12.4. --lora-dtype

Data type for LoRA. If auto, will default to base model dtype.

Default: auto

3.1.12.5. --enable-tower-connector-lora, --no-enable-tower-connector-lora

If True, LoRA support for the tower (vision encoder) and connector of multimodal models will be enabled. This is an experimental feature and currently only supports some MM models such as the Qwen VL series. The default is False.

Default: False

3.1.12.6. --max-cpu-loras

Maximum number of LoRAs to store in CPU memory. Must be >= than max_loras.

3.1.12.7. --fully-sharded-loras, --no-fully-sharded-loras

By default, only half of the LoRA computation is sharded with tensor parallelism. Enabling this will use the fully sharded layers. At high sequence length, max rank or tensor parallel size, this is likely faster.

Default: False

3.1.12.8. --default-mm-loras

Dictionary mapping specific modalities to LoRA model paths; this field is only applicable to multimodal models and should be leveraged when a model always expects a LoRA to be active when a given modality is present. Note that currently, if a request provides multiple additional modalities, each of which have their own LoRA, we do NOT apply default_mm_loras because we currently only support one lora adapter per prompt. When run in offline mode, the lora IDs for n modalities will be automatically assigned to 1-n with the names of the modalities in alphabetic order. Should either be a valid JSON string or JSON keys passed individually.

3.1.12.9. --specialize-active-lora, --no-specialize-active-lora

Whether to construct lora kernel grid by the number of active LoRA adapters. When set to True, separate cuda graphs will be captured for different counts of active LoRAs (powers of 2 up to max_loras), which can improve performance for variable LoRA usage patterns at the cost of increased startup time and memory usage. Only takes effect when cudagraph_specialize_lora is True.

Default: False

3.1.13. ObservabilityConfig

Configuration for observability - metrics and tracing.

3.1.13.1. --show-hidden-metrics-for-version

Enable deprecated Prometheus metrics that have been hidden since the specified version. For example, if a previously deprecated metric has been hidden since the v0.7.0 release, you use --show-hidden-metrics-for-version=0.7 as a temporary escape hatch while you migrate to new metrics. The metric is likely to be removed completely in an upcoming release.

3.1.13.2. --otlp-traces-endpoint

Target URL to which OpenTelemetry traces will be sent.

3.1.13.3. --collect-detailed-traces

Possible choices: all, model, worker, None, model,worker, model,all, worker,model, worker,all, all,model, all,worker It makes sense to set this only if --otlp-traces-endpoint is set. If set, it will collect detailed traces for the specified modules. This involves use of possibly costly and or blocking operations and hence might have a performance impact.

+ Note that collecting detailed timing information for each request can be expensive.

3.1.13.4. --kv-cache-metrics, --no-kv-cache-metrics

Enable KV cache residency metrics (lifetime, idle time, reuse gaps). Uses sampling to minimize overhead. Requires log stats to be enabled (i.e., --disable-log-stats not set).

Default: False

3.1.13.5. --kv-cache-metrics-sample

Sampling rate for KV cache metrics (0.0, 1.0]. Default 0.01 = 1%% of blocks.

Default: 0.01

3.1.13.6. --cudagraph-metrics, --no-cudagraph-metrics

Enable CUDA graph metrics (number of padded/unpadded tokens, runtime cudagraph dispatch modes, and their observed frequencies at every logging interval).

Default: False

3.1.13.7. --enable-layerwise-nvtx-tracing, --no-enable-layerwise-nvtx-tracing

Enable layerwise NVTX tracing. This traces the execution of each layer or module in the model and attach information such as input/output shapes to nvtx range markers. Noted that this doesn’t work with CUDA graphs enabled.

Default: False

3.1.13.8. --enable-mfu-metrics, --no-enable-mfu-metrics

Enable Model FLOPs Utilization (MFU) metrics.

Default: False

3.1.13.9. --enable-logging-iteration-details, --no-enable-logging-iteration-details

Enable detailed logging of iteration details. If set, vllm EngineCore will log iteration details This includes number of context/generation requests and tokens and the elapsed cpu time for the iteration.

Default: False

3.1.14. SchedulerConfig

Scheduler configuration.

3.1.14.1. --max-num-batched-tokens

Maximum number of tokens that can be processed in a single iteration. The default value here is mainly for convenience when testing. In real usage, this should be set in EngineArgs.create_engine_config. Parse human-readable integers like '1k', '2M', etc. Including decimal values with decimal multipliers. Examples: - '1k' → 1,000 - '1K' → 1,024 - '25.6k' → 25,600

3.1.14.2. --max-num-seqs

Maximum number of sequences to be processed in a single iteration. The default value here is mainly for convenience when testing. In real usage, this should be set in EngineArgs.create_engine_config.

3.1.14.3. --max-num-partial-prefills

For chunked prefill, the maximum number of sequences that can be partially prefilled concurrently.

Default: 1

3.1.14.4. --max-long-partial-prefills

For chunked prefill, the maximum number of prompts longer than long_prefill_token_threshold that will be prefilled concurrently. Setting this less than max_num_partial_prefills will allow shorter prompts to jump the queue in front of longer prompts in some cases, improving latency.

Default: 1

3.1.14.5. --long-prefill-token-threshold

For chunked prefill, a request is considered long if the prompt is longer than this number of tokens.

Default: 0

3.1.14.6. --scheduling-policy

Possible choices: fcfs, priority The scheduling policy to use:

  • "fcfs" means first come first served, i.e. requests are handled in order of arrival.
  • "priority" means requests are handled based on given priority (lower value means earlier handling) and time of arrival deciding any ties). Default: fcfs

3.1.14.7. --enable-chunked-prefill, --no-enable-chunked-prefill

If True, prefill requests can be chunked based on the remaining max_num_batched_tokens. The default value here is mainly for convenience when testing. In real usage, this should be set in EngineArgs.create_engine_config.

3.1.14.8. --disable-chunked-mm-input, --no-disable-chunked-mm-input

If set to true and chunked prefill is enabled, we do not want to partially schedule a multimodal item. Only used in V1 This ensures that if a request has a mixed prompt (like text tokens TTTT followed by image tokens IIIIIIIIII) where only some image tokens can be scheduled (like TTTTIIIII, leaving IIIII), it will be scheduled as TTTT in one step and IIIIIIIIII in the next.

Default: False

3.1.14.9. --scheduler-cls

The scheduler class to use. "vllm.v1.core.sched.scheduler.Scheduler" is the default scheduler. Can be a class directly or the path to a class of form "mod.custom_class".

3.1.14.10. --disable-hybrid-kv-cache-manager, --no-disable-hybrid-kv-cache-manager

If set to True, KV cache manager will allocate the same size of KV cache for all attention layers even if there are multiple type of attention layers like full attention and sliding window attention. If set to None, the default value will be determined based on the environment and starting configuration.

3.1.14.11. --async-scheduling, --no-async-scheduling

If set to False, disable async scheduling. Async scheduling helps to avoid gaps in GPU utilization, leading to better latency and throughput.

3.1.14.12. --stream-interval

The interval (or buffer size) for streaming in terms of token length. A smaller value (1) makes streaming smoother by sending each token immediately, while a larger value (e.g., 10) reduces host overhead and may increase throughput by batching multiple tokens before sending.

Default: 1

3.1.15. CompilationConfig

Configuration for compilation. You must pass CompilationConfig to VLLMConfig constructor. VLLMConfig’s post_init does further initialization. If used outside of the VLLMConfig, some fields will be left in an improper state. It contains PassConfig, which controls the custom fusion/transformation passes. The rest has three parts:

  • Top-level Compilation control:
  • [mode][vllm.config.CompilationConfig.mode]
  • [debug_dump_path][vllm.config.CompilationConfig.debug_dump_path]
  • [cache_dir][vllm.config.CompilationConfig.cache_dir]
  • [backend][vllm.config.CompilationConfig.backend]
  • [custom_ops][vllm.config.CompilationConfig.custom_ops]
  • [splitting_ops][vllm.config.CompilationConfig.splitting_ops]
  • [compile_mm_encoder][vllm.config.CompilationConfig.compile_mm_encoder]
  • CudaGraph capture:
  • [cudagraph_mode][vllm.config.CompilationConfig.cudagraph_mode]
  • [cudagraph_capture_sizes] [vllm.config.CompilationConfig.cudagraph_capture_sizes]
  • [max_cudagraph_capture_size] [vllm.config.CompilationConfig.max_cudagraph_capture_size]
  • [cudagraph_num_of_warmups] [vllm.config.CompilationConfig.cudagraph_num_of_warmups]
  • [cudagraph_copy_inputs] [vllm.config.CompilationConfig.cudagraph_copy_inputs]
  • Inductor compilation:
  • [compile_sizes][vllm.config.CompilationConfig.compile_sizes]
  • [compile_ranges_endpoints] [vllm.config.CompilationConfig.compile_ranges_endpoints]
  • [inductor_compile_config] [vllm.config.CompilationConfig.inductor_compile_config]
  • [inductor_passes][vllm.config.CompilationConfig.inductor_passes]
  • custom inductor passes Why we have different sizes for cudagraph and inductor:
  • cudagraph: a cudagraph captured for a specific size can only be used for the same size. We need to capture all the sizes we want to use.
  • inductor: a graph compiled by inductor for a general shape can be used for different sizes. Inductor can also compile for specific sizes, where it can have more information to optimize the graph with fully static shapes. However, we find the general shape compilation is sufficient for most cases. It might be beneficial to compile for certain small batchsizes, where inductor is good at optimizing.

3.1.15.1. --cudagraph-capture-sizes

Sizes to capture cudagraph. - None (default): capture sizes are inferred from vllm config. - list[int]: capture sizes are specified as given.

3.1.15.2. --max-cudagraph-capture-size

The maximum cudagraph capture size. If cudagraph_capture_sizes is specified, this will be set to the largest size in that list (or checked for consistency if specified). If cudagraph_capture_sizes is not specified, the list of sizes is generated automatically following the pattern: [1, 2, 4] + list(range(8, 256, 8)) + list( range(256, max_cudagraph_capture_size + 1, 16)) If not specified, max_cudagraph_capture_size is set to min(max_num_seqs*2, 512) by default. This voids OOM in tight memory scenarios with small max_num_seqs, and prevents capture of many large graphs (>512) that would greatly increase startup time with limited performance benefit.

3.1.16. KernelConfig

Configuration for kernel selection and warmup behavior.

3.1.16.1. --enable-flashinfer-autotune, --no-enable-flashinfer-autotune

If True, run FlashInfer autotuning during kernel warmup.

3.1.16.2. --moe-backend

Possible choices: aiter, auto, cutlass, deep_gemm, flashinfer_cutedsl, flashinfer_cutlass, flashinfer_trtllm, marlin, triton Backend for MoE expert computation kernels. Available options:

  • "auto": Automatically select the best backend based on model and hardware
  • "triton": Use Triton-based fused MoE kernels
  • "deep_gemm": Use DeepGEMM kernels (FP8 block-quantized only)
  • "cutlass": Use vLLM CUTLASS kernels
  • "flashinfer_trtllm": Use FlashInfer with TRTLLM-GEN kernels
  • "flashinfer_cutlass": Use FlashInfer with CUTLASS kernels
  • "flashinfer_cutedsl": Use FlashInfer with CuteDSL kernels (FP4 only)
  • "marlin": Use Marlin kernels (weight-only quantization)
  • "aiter": Use AMD AITer kernels (ROCm only) Default: auto

3.1.17. VllmConfig

Dataclass which contains all vllm-related configuration. This simplifies passing around the distinct configurations in the codebase.

3.1.17.1. --speculative-config

Speculative decoding configuration. Should either be a valid JSON string or JSON keys passed individually.

3.1.17.2. --kv-transfer-config

The configurations for distributed KV cache transfer. Should either be a valid JSON string or JSON keys passed individually.

3.1.17.3. --kv-events-config

The configurations for event publishing. Should either be a valid JSON string or JSON keys passed individually.

3.1.17.4. --ec-transfer-config

The configurations for distributed EC cache transfer. Should either be a valid JSON string or JSON keys passed individually.

3.1.17.5. --compilation-config, -cc

torch.compile and cudagraph capture configuration for the model. As a shorthand, one can append compilation arguments via -cc.parameter=argument such as -cc.mode=3 (same as -cc='{"mode":3}'). You can specify the full compilation config like so: {"mode": 3, "cudagraph_capture_sizes": [1, 2, 4, 8]} Should either be a valid JSON string or JSON keys passed individually.

Default:

{'mode': None, 'debug_dump_path': None, 'cache_dir': '', 'compile_cache_save_format': 'binary', 'backend': 'inductor', 'custom_ops': [], 'splitting_ops': None, 'compile_mm_encoder': False, 'compile_sizes': None, 'compile_ranges_endpoints': None, 'inductor_compile_config': {'enable_auto_functionalized_v2': False, 'combo_kernels': True, 'benchmark_combo_kernel': True}, 'inductor_passes': {}, 'cudagraph_mode': None, 'cudagraph_num_of_warmups': 0, 'cudagraph_capture_sizes': None, 'cudagraph_copy_inputs': False, 'cudagraph_specialize_lora': True, 'use_inductor_graph_partition': None, 'pass_config': {}, 'max_cudagraph_capture_size': None, 'dynamic_shapes_config': {'type': <DynamicShapesType.BACKED: 'backed'>, 'evaluate_guards': False, 'assume_32_bit_indexing': False}, 'local_cache_dir': None, 'fast_moe_cold_start': None, 'static_all_moe_layers': []}

3.1.17.6. --attention-config, -ac

Attention configuration. Should either be a valid JSON string or JSON keys passed individually.

Default:

AttentionConfig(backend=None, flash_attn_version=None, use_prefill_decode_attention=False, flash_attn_max_num_splits_for_cuda_graph=32, use_cudnn_prefill=False, use_trtllm_ragged_deepseek_prefill=False, use_trtllm_attention=None, disable_flashinfer_prefill=True, disable_flashinfer_q_quantization=False, use_prefill_query_quantization=False)

3.1.17.7. --kernel-config

Kernel configuration. Should either be a valid JSON string or JSON keys passed individually.

Default: KernelConfig(enable_flashinfer_autotune=None, moe_backend='auto')

3.1.17.8. --additional-config

Additional config for specified platform. Different platforms may support different configs. Make sure the configs are valid for the platform you are using. Contents must be hashable.

Default: {}

3.1.17.9. --structured-outputs-config

Structured outputs configuration. Should either be a valid JSON string or JSON keys passed individually.

Default:

StructuredOutputsConfig(backend='auto', disable_any_whitespace=False, disable_additional_properties=False, reasoning_parser='', reasoning_parser_plugin='', enable_in_reasoning=False)

3.1.17.10. --profiler-config

Profiling configuration. Should either be a valid JSON string or JSON keys passed individually.

Default:

ProfilerConfig(profiler=None, torch_profiler_dir='', torch_profiler_with_stack=False, torch_profiler_with_flops=False, torch_profiler_use_gzip=True, torch_profiler_dump_cuda_time_total=True, torch_profiler_record_shapes=False, torch_profiler_with_memory=False, ignore_frontend=False, delay_iterations=0, max_iterations=0, warmup_iterations=0, active_iterations=5, wait_iterations=0)

3.1.17.11. --optimization-level

The optimization level. These levels trade startup time cost for performance, with -O0 having the best startup time and -O3 having the best performance. -O2 is used by default. See OptimizationLevel for full description.

Default: 2

3.1.17.12. --performance-mode

Possible choices: balanced, interactivity, throughput Performance mode for runtime behavior, 'balanced' is the default. 'interactivity' favors low end-to-end per-request latency at small batch sizes (fine-grained CUDA graphs, latency-oriented kernels). 'throughput' favors aggregate tokens/sec at high concurrency (larger CUDA graphs, more aggressive batching, throughput-oriented kernels). Default: balanced

3.1.17.13. --weight-transfer-config

The configurations for weight transfer during RL training. Should either be a valid JSON string or JSON keys passed individually.

3.2. vllm chat arguments

Generate chat completions with the running API server.

$ vllm chat [options]
--api-key API_KEY

OpenAI API key. If provided, this API key overrides the API key set in the environment variables.

Default: None

--model-name MODEL_NAME

The model name used in prompt completion, defaults to the first model in list models API call.

Default: None

--system-prompt SYSTEM_PROMPT

The system prompt to be added to the chat template, used for models that support system prompts.

Default: None

--url URL

URL of the running OpenAI-compatible RESTful API server

Default: http://localhost:8000/v1

-q MESSAGE, --quick MESSAGE

Send a single prompt as MESSAGE and print the response, then exit.

Default: None

3.3. vllm complete arguments

Generate text completions based on the given prompt with the running API server.

$ vllm complete [options]
--api-key API_KEY

API key for OpenAI services. If provided, this API key overrides the API key set in the environment variables.

Default: None

--model-name MODEL_NAME

The model name used in prompt completion, defaults to the first model in list models API call.

Default: None

--url URL

URL of the running OpenAI-compatible RESTful API server

Default: http://localhost:8000/v1

-q PROMPT, --quick PROMPT

Send a single prompt and print the completion output, then exit.

Default: None

3.4. vllm bench arguments

Benchmark online serving throughput.

$ vllm bench [options]
bench

Positional arguments:

  • latency - Benchmarks the latency of a single batch of requests.
  • serve - Benchmarks the online serving throughput.
  • throughput - Benchmarks offline inference throughput.

3.5. vllm collect-env arguments

Collect environment information.

$ vllm collect-env

3.6. vllm run-batch arguments

Run batch inference jobs for the specified model.

$ vllm run-batch
--disable-log-requests

Disable logging requests.

Default: False

--disable-log-stats

Disable logging statistics.

Default: False

--enable-metrics

Enables Prometheus metrics.

Default: False

--enable-prompt-tokens-details

Enables prompt_tokens_details in usage when set to True.

Default: False

--max-log-len MAX_LOG_LEN

Maximum number of prompt characters or prompt ID numbers printed in the log.

Default: Unlimited

--output-tmp-dir OUTPUT_TMP_DIR

The directory to store the output file before uploading it to the output URL.

Default: None

--port PORT

Port number for the Prometheus metrics server. Only needed if enable-metrics is set.

Default: 8000

--response-role RESPONSE_ROLE

The role name to return if request.add_generation_prompt=True.

Default: assistant

--url URL

Prometheus metrics server URL. Only required if enable-metrics is set).

Default: 0.0.0.0

--use-v2-block-manager

DEPRECATED. Block manager v1 has been removed. SelfAttnBlockSpaceManager (block manager v2) is now the default. Setting --use-v2-block-manager flag to True or False has no effect on vLLM behavior.

Default: True

-i INPUT_FILE, --input-file INPUT_FILE

The path or URL to a single input file. Supports local file paths and HTTP or HTTPS. If a URL is specified, the file should be available using HTTP GET.

Default: None

-o OUTPUT_FILE, --output-file OUTPUT_FILE

The path or URL to a single output file. Supports local file paths and HTTP or HTTPS. If a URL is specified, the file should be available using HTTP PUT.

Default: None

Chapter 4. Environment variables

You can use environment variables to configure the system-level installation, build, logging behavior of AI Inference.

Important

VLLM_PORT and VLLM_HOST_IP set the host ports and IP address for internal usage of AI Inference. It is not the port and IP address for the API server. Do not use --host $VLLM_HOST_IP and --port $VLLM_PORT to start the API server.

Important

All environment variables used by AI Inference are prefixed with VLLM_. If you are using Kubernetes, do not name the service vllm, otherwise environment variables set by Kubernetes might come into conflict with AI Inference environment variables. This is because Kubernetes sets environment variables for each service with the capitalized service name as the prefix. For more information, see Content from kubernetes.io is not included.Kubernetes environment variables.

Table 4.1. AI Inference environment variables

Environment variableDescription

VLLM_TARGET_DEVICE

Target device of vLLM, supporting cuda (by default), rocm, neuron, cpu, openvino.

MAX_JOBS

Maximum number of compilation jobs to run in parallel. By default, this is the number of CPUs.

NVCC_THREADS

Number of threads to use for nvcc. By default, this is 1. If set, MAX_JOBS will be reduced to avoid oversubscribing the CPU.

VLLM_USE_PRECOMPILED

If set, AI Inference uses precompiled binaries (\*.so).

VLLM_TEST_USE_PRECOMPILED_NIGHTLY_WHEEL

Whether to force using nightly wheel in Python build for testing.

CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE

CMake build type. Available options: "Debug", "Release", "RelWithDebInfo".

VERBOSE

If set, AI Inference prints verbose logs during installation.

VLLM_CONFIG_ROOT

Root directory for AI Inference configuration files.

VLLM_CACHE_ROOT

Root directory for AI Inference cache files.

VLLM_HOST_IP

Used in a distributed environment to determine the IP address of the current node.

VLLM_PORT

Used in a distributed environment to manually set the communication port.

VLLM_RPC_BASE_PATH

Path used for IPC when the frontend API server is running in multi-processing mode.

VLLM_USE_MODELSCOPE

If true, will load models from ModelScope instead of Hugging Face Hub.

VLLM_RINGBUFFER_WARNING_INTERVAL

Interval in seconds to log a warning message when the ring buffer is full.

CUDA_HOME

Path to cudatoolkit home directory, under which should be bin, include, and lib directories.

VLLM_NCCL_SO_PATH

Path to the NCCL library file. Needed for versions of NCCL >= 2.19 due to a bug in PyTorch.

LD_LIBRARY_PATH

Used when VLLM_NCCL_SO_PATH is not set, AI Inference tries to find the NCCL library in this path.

VLLM_USE_TRITON_FLASH_ATTN

Flag to control if you wantAI Inference to use Triton Flash Attention.

VLLM_FLASH_ATTN_VERSION

Force AI Inference to use a specific flash-attention version (2 or 3), only valid with the flash-attention backend.

VLLM_TEST_DYNAMO_FULLGRAPH_CAPTURE

Internal flag to enable Dynamo fullgraph capture.

LOCAL_RANK

Local rank of the process in the distributed setting, used to determine the GPU device ID.

CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES

Used to control the visible devices in a distributed setting.

VLLM_ENGINE_ITERATION_TIMEOUT_S

Timeout for each iteration in the engine.

VLLM_API_KEY

API key for AI Inference API server.

S3_ACCESS_KEY_ID

S3 access key ID for tensorizer to load model from S3.

S3_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY

S3 secret access key for tensorizer to load model from S3.

S3_ENDPOINT_URL

S3 endpoint URL for tensorizer to load model from S3.

VLLM_USAGE_STATS_SERVER

URL for AI Inference usage stats server.

VLLM_NO_USAGE_STATS

If true, disables collection of usage stats.

VLLM_DO_NOT_TRACK

If true, disables tracking of AI Inference usage stats.

VLLM_USAGE_SOURCE

Source for usage stats collection.

VLLM_CONFIGURE_LOGGING

If set to 1, AI Inference configures logging using the default configuration or the specified config path.

VLLM_LOGGING_CONFIG_PATH

Path to the logging configuration file.

VLLM_LOGGING_LEVEL

Default logging level for vLLM.

VLLM_LOGGING_PREFIX

If set, AI Inference prepends this prefix to all log messages.

VLLM_LOGITS_PROCESSOR_THREADS

Number of threads used for custom logits processors.

VLLM_TRACE_FUNCTION

If set to 1, AI Inference traces function calls for debugging.

VLLM_ATTENTION_BACKEND

Backend for attention computation, for example , "TORCH_SDPA", "FLASH_ATTN", "XFORMERS").

VLLM_USE_FLASHINFER_SAMPLER

If set, AI Inference uses the FlashInfer sampler.

VLLM_FLASHINFER_FORCE_TENSOR_CORES

Forces FlashInfer to use tensor cores; otherwise uses heuristics.

VLLM_PP_LAYER_PARTITION

Pipeline stage partition strategy.

VLLM_CPU_KVCACHE_SPACE

CPU key-value cache space (default is 4GB).

VLLM_CPU_OMP_THREADS_BIND

CPU core IDs bound by OpenMP threads.

VLLM_CPU_MOE_PREPACK

Whether to use prepack for MoE layer on unsupported CPUs.

VLLM_OPENVINO_DEVICE

OpenVINO device selection (default is CPU).

VLLM_OPENVINO_KVCACHE_SPACE

OpenVINO key-value cache space (default is 4GB).

VLLM_OPENVINO_CPU_KV_CACHE_PRECISION

Precision for OpenVINO KV cache.

VLLM_OPENVINO_ENABLE_QUANTIZED_WEIGHTS

Enables weights compression during model export by using HF Optimum.

VLLM_USE_RAY_SPMD_WORKER

Enables Ray SPMD worker for execution on all workers.

VLLM_USE_RAY_COMPILED_DAG

Uses the Compiled Graph API provided by Ray to optimize control plane overhead.

VLLM_USE_RAY_COMPILED_DAG_NCCL_CHANNEL

Enables NCCL communication in the Compiled Graph provided by Ray.

VLLM_USE_RAY_COMPILED_DAG_OVERLAP_COMM

Enables GPU communication overlap in the Compiled Graph provided by Ray.

VLLM_WORKER_MULTIPROC_METHOD

Specifies the method for multiprocess workers, for example, "fork").

VLLM_ASSETS_CACHE

Path to the cache for storing downloaded assets.

VLLM_IMAGE_FETCH_TIMEOUT

Timeout for fetching images when serving multimodal models (default is 5 seconds).

VLLM_VIDEO_FETCH_TIMEOUT

Timeout for fetching videos when serving multimodal models (default is 30 seconds).

VLLM_AUDIO_FETCH_TIMEOUT

Timeout for fetching audio when serving multimodal models (default is 10 seconds).

VLLM_MM_INPUT_CACHE_GIB

Cache size in GiB for multimodal input cache (default is 8GiB).

VLLM_XLA_CACHE_PATH

Path to the XLA persistent cache directory (only for XLA devices).

VLLM_XLA_CHECK_RECOMPILATION

If set, asserts on XLA recompilation after each execution step.

VLLM_FUSED_MOE_CHUNK_SIZE

Chunk size for fused MoE layer (default is 32768).

VLLM_NO_DEPRECATION_WARNING

If true, skips deprecation warnings.

VLLM_KEEP_ALIVE_ON_ENGINE_DEATH

If true, keeps the OpenAI API server alive even after engine errors.

VLLM_ALLOW_LONG_MAX_MODEL_LEN

Allows specifying a max sequence length greater than the default length of the model.

VLLM_TEST_FORCE_FP8_MARLIN

Forces FP8 Marlin for FP8 quantization regardless of hardware support.

VLLM_TEST_FORCE_LOAD_FORMAT

Forces a specific load format.

VLLM_RPC_TIMEOUT

Timeout for fetching response from backend server.

VLLM_PLUGINS

List of plugins to load.

VLLM_TORCH_PROFILER_DIR

Directory for saving Torch profiler traces.

VLLM_USE_TRITON_AWQ

If set, uses Triton implementations of AWQ.

VLLM_ALLOW_RUNTIME_LORA_UPDATING

If set, allows updating Lora adapters at runtime.

VLLM_SKIP_P2P_CHECK

Skips peer-to-peer capability check.

VLLM_DISABLED_KERNELS

List of quantization kernels to disable for performance comparisons.

VLLM_USE_V1

If set, uses V1 code path.

VLLM_ROCM_FP8_PADDING

Pads FP8 weights to 256 bytes for ROCm.

Q_SCALE_CONSTANT

Divisor for dynamic query scale factor calculation for FP8 KV Cache.

K_SCALE_CONSTANT

Divisor for dynamic key scale factor calculation for FP8 KV Cache.

V_SCALE_CONSTANT

Divisor for dynamic value scale factor calculation for FP8 KV Cache.

VLLM_ENABLE_V1_MULTIPROCESSING

If set, enables multiprocessing in LLM for the V1 code path.

VLLM_LOG_BATCHSIZE_INTERVAL

Time interval for logging batch size.

VLLM_SERVER_DEV_MODE

If set, AI Inference runs in development mode, enabling additional endpoints for debugging, for example /reset_prefix_cache).

VLLM_V1_OUTPUT_PROC_CHUNK_SIZE

Controls the maximum number of requests to handle in a single asyncio task for processing per-token outputs in the V1 AsyncLLM interface. It affects high-concurrency streaming requests.

VLLM_MLA_DISABLE

If set, AI Inference disables the MLA attention optimizations.

VLLM_ENABLE_MOE_ALIGN_BLOCK_SIZE_TRITON

If set, AI Inference uses the Triton implementation of moe_align_block_size, for example, moe_align_block_size_triton in fused_moe.py.

VLLM_RAY_PER_WORKER_GPUS

Number of GPUs per worker in Ray. Can be a fraction to allow Ray to schedule multiple actors on a single GPU.

VLLM_RAY_BUNDLE_INDICES

Specifies the indices used for the Ray bundle, for each worker. Format: comma-separated list of integers (e.g., "0,1,2,3").

VLLM_CUDART_SO_PATH

Specifies the path for the find_loaded_library() method when it may not work properly. Set by using the VLLM_CUDART_SO_PATH environment variable.

VLLM_USE_HPU_CONTIGUOUS_CACHE_FETCH

Enables contiguous cache fetching to avoid costly gather operations on Gaudi3. Only applicable to HPU contiguous cache.

VLLM_DP_RANK

Rank of the process in the data parallel setting.

VLLM_DP_SIZE

World size of the data parallel setting.

VLLM_DP_MASTER_IP

IP address of the master node in the data parallel setting.

VLLM_DP_MASTER_PORT

Port of the master node in the data parallel setting.

VLLM_CI_USE_S3

Whether to use the S3 path for model loading in CI by using RunAI Streamer.

VLLM_MARLIN_USE_ATOMIC_ADD

Whether to use atomicAdd reduce in gptq/awq marlin kernel.

VLLM_V0_USE_OUTLINES_CACHE

Whether to turn on the outlines cache for V0. This cache is unbounded and on disk, so it is unsafe for environments with malicious users.

VLLM_TPU_DISABLE_TOPK_TOPP_OPTIMIZATION

If set, disables TPU-specific optimization for top-k & top-p sampling.

Chapter 5. Viewing AI Inference metrics

vLLM exposes various metrics via the /metrics endpoint on the AI Inference OpenAI-compatible API server.

You can start the server by using Python, or using Docker.

Procedure

  1. Launch the AI Inference server and load your model as shown in the following example. The command also exposes the OpenAI-compatible API.

    $ vllm serve unsloth/Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct
  2. Query the /metrics endpoint of the OpenAI-compatible API to get the latest metrics from the server:

    $ curl http://0.0.0.0:8000/metrics

    Example output

    # HELP vllm:iteration_tokens_total Histogram of number of tokens per engine_step.
    # TYPE vllm:iteration_tokens_total histogram
    vllm:iteration_tokens_total_sum{model_name="unsloth/Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct"} 0.0
    vllm:iteration_tokens_total_bucket{le="1.0",model_name="unsloth/Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct"} 3.0
    vllm:iteration_tokens_total_bucket{le="8.0",model_name="unsloth/Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct"} 3.0
    vllm:iteration_tokens_total_bucket{le="16.0",model_name="unsloth/Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct"} 3.0
    vllm:iteration_tokens_total_bucket{le="32.0",model_name="unsloth/Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct"} 3.0
    vllm:iteration_tokens_total_bucket{le="64.0",model_name="unsloth/Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct"} 3.0
    vllm:iteration_tokens_total_bucket{le="128.0",model_name="unsloth/Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct"} 3.0
    vllm:iteration_tokens_total_bucket{le="256.0",model_name="unsloth/Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct"} 3.0
    vllm:iteration_tokens_total_bucket{le="512.0",model_name="unsloth/Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct"} 3.0
    #...

Chapter 6. AI Inference metrics

AI Inference exposes vLLM metrics that you can use to monitor the health of the system.

Table 6.1. vLLM metrics

Metric NameDescription

vllm:num_requests_running

Number of requests currently running on GPU.

vllm:num_requests_waiting

Number of requests waiting to be processed.

vllm:lora_requests_info

Running stats on LoRA requests.

vllm:num_requests_swapped

Number of requests swapped to CPU. Deprecated: KV cache offloading is not used in V1.

vllm:gpu_cache_usage_perc

GPU KV-cache usage. A value of 1 means 100% usage.

vllm:cpu_cache_usage_perc

CPU KV-cache usage. A value of 1 means 100% usage. Deprecated: KV cache offloading is not used in V1.

vllm:cpu_prefix_cache_hit_rate

CPU prefix cache block hit rate. Deprecated: KV cache offloading is not used in V1.

vllm:gpu_prefix_cache_hit_rate

GPU prefix cache block hit rate. Deprecated: Use vllm:gpu_prefix_cache_queries and vllm:gpu_prefix_cache_hits in V1.

vllm:num_preemptions_total

Cumulative number of preemptions from the engine.

vllm:prompt_tokens_total

Total number of prefill tokens processed.

vllm:generation_tokens_total

Total number of generation tokens processed.

vllm:iteration_tokens_total

Histogram of the number of tokens per engine step.

vllm:time_to_first_token_seconds

Histogram of time to the first token in seconds.

vllm:time_per_output_token_seconds

Histogram of time per output token in seconds.

vllm:e2e_request_latency_seconds

Histogram of end-to-end request latency in seconds.

vllm:request_queue_time_seconds

Histogram of time spent in the WAITING phase for a request.

vllm:request_inference_time_seconds

Histogram of time spent in the RUNNING phase for a request.

vllm:request_prefill_time_seconds

Histogram of time spent in the PREFILL phase for a request.

vllm:request_decode_time_seconds

Histogram of time spent in the DECODE phase for a request.

vllm:time_in_queue_requests

Histogram of time the request spent in the queue in seconds. Deprecated: Use vllm:request_queue_time_seconds instead.

vllm:model_forward_time_milliseconds

Histogram of time spent in the model forward pass in milliseconds. Deprecated: Use prefill/decode/inference time metrics instead.

vllm:model_execute_time_milliseconds

Histogram of time spent in the model execute function in milliseconds. Deprecated: Use prefill/decode/inference time metrics instead.

vllm:request_prompt_tokens

Histogram of the number of prefill tokens processed.

vllm:request_generation_tokens

Histogram of the number of generation tokens processed.

vllm:request_max_num_generation_tokens

Histogram of the maximum number of requested generation tokens.

vllm:request_params_n

Histogram of the n request parameter.

vllm:request_params_max_tokens

Histogram of the max_tokens request parameter.

vllm:request_success_total

Count of successfully processed requests.

vllm:spec_decode_draft_acceptance_rate

Speculative token acceptance rate.

vllm:spec_decode_efficiency

Speculative decoding system efficiency.

vllm:spec_decode_num_accepted_tokens_total

Total number of accepted tokens.

vllm:spec_decode_num_draft_tokens_total

Total number of draft tokens.

vllm:spec_decode_num_emitted_tokens_total

Total number of emitted tokens.

Chapter 7. Deprecated metrics

The following metrics are deprecated and will be removed in a future version of AI Inference:

  • vllm:num_requests_swapped
  • vllm:cpu_cache_usage_perc
  • vllm:cpu_prefix_cache_hit_rate (KV cache offloading is not used in V1).
  • vllm:gpu_prefix_cache_hit_rate. This metric is replaced by queries+hits counters in V1.
  • vllm:time_in_queue_requests. This metric is duplicated by vllm:request_queue_time_seconds.
  • vllm:model_forward_time_milliseconds
  • vllm:model_execute_time_milliseconds. Prefill, decode or inference time metrics should be used instead.
Important

When metrics are deprecated in version X.Y, they are hidden in version X.Y+1 but can be re-enabled by using the --show-hidden-metrics-for-version=X.Y escape hatch. Deprecated metrics are completely removed in the following version X.Y+2.

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