RAG-Perf — config-driven perf benchmark CLI

Purpose

Drive a deployed NVIDIA RAG Blueprint server with a YAML config, run a server-side profiling pass (per-stage timing, citation quality, bottleneck inference) and an optional aiperf load test (TTFT / E2E / token & request throughput / error rate), and write a unified report. The CLI is intentionally minimal: rag-perf -c <config> plus --help / --version. Behaviour is fully config-driven; field variations belong in YAML.

Scope

• Accuracy / RAGAS scoring of answer quality → use the rag-eval skill.
• Deploying, repairing, or configuring services (compose, helm, NIM env vars) → use the rag-blueprint skill.
• Production monitoring / alerting — rag-perf is a one-shot benchmark tool.
• Runtime requirement: a deployed RAG server reachable on the network.

Prerequisites

• Repo cloned; run commands from the repo root (config paths in the presets are repo-root-relative).
• Python 3.11+ and uv on PATH.
• Install rag-perf into its own uv-managed venv: uv sync --project scripts/rag-perf.
• For unit tests: install dev extras as well — uv sync --project scripts/rag-perf --extra dev (otherwise pytest-asyncio is missing and async tests error out at collection time).
• A reachable RAG server (default http://localhost:8081). For the aiperf phase, the bundled nvidia_rag endpoint plugin must be installed — pip install -e ./scripts/rag-perf registers it via the aiperf.plugins entry point.
• For synthetic queries: an OpenAI-compatible chat-completions endpoint reachable at synthetic.llm_url (default http://localhost:8999/v1/chat/completions).
• rag-perf itself runs without NVIDIA_API_KEY (unlike rag-eval). The synthetic LLM endpoint may require its own auth — that's the deployment's concern.

Instructions

1. Pick a preset. The three under scripts/rag-perf/configs/ are:

• quick_profile.yaml — profile-only, ~30 s. Skips load test. For fast iteration on retrieval / reranker tuning.
• single_run.yaml — one concurrency level, profiling + aiperf, ~2 min. Regression checks.
• sweep.yaml — multi-axis sweep. load.concurrency, rag.vdb_top_k, rag.reranker_top_k are all int | list[int]; any of them as a list becomes a sweep axis (Cartesian product).

1. Edit the preset. Required: replace rag.collection_names: ["<collection_name>"] with a real collection on the deployed ingestor server. Verify the collection exists via GET /v1/collections on the ingestor. The placeholder <collection_name> validates fine but every request will fail at retrieval. Use a copied YAML preset for variants; the CLI surface is intentionally config-only.

1. Run. From repo root:

bash uv run --project scripts/rag-perf rag-perf -c scripts/rag-perf/configs/single_run.yaml Same form for the other presets. The CLI accepts only -c / --config (required), --help, --version.

1. Read stdout. Every invocation prints, in order: a startup banner, a one-line summary, the fully resolved config as YAML (so the run is reproducible from terminal output), per-grid-point progress with the shlex-joined aiperf command in copy-pastable form, a rich per-point summary table (stage breakdown with bars, citation quality, bottleneck, load-test block), and finally a side-by-side comparison table auto-labelled by whichever axis varied. See references/output-and-analysis.md.

1. Inspect artifacts. Layout depends on run shape — flat for single-point + iterations=1, nested under iter_<i>/<point>/... otherwise. See references/output-and-analysis.md for the full directory tree, file purposes, and how to parse results.json / results.csv / report.md.

1. Summarise for the user. When reporting back, follow the playbook in references/output-and-analysis.md#summarising-results-to-the-user: pick the canonical result file for the run shape, build a headline table (concurrency × top-k axes × TTFT × throughput × bottleneck × citation quality), compute scaling efficiency on sweeps, always flag zero citations / non-zero error rate / suspect llm_ttft_ms / small-sample p99, and propose a concrete next-experiment YAML.

1. Tune. Schema is fully documented in docs/performance-benchmarking.md and the deeper-dive references below. Common knobs: turn aiperf.enabled: false for profile-only mode, increase load.iterations for variance estimation, set load.sleep_between_points_s: 60 for overnight Cartesian sweeps.

Examples

Profile-only (quickest signal on retrieval / reranker tuning):

bash
uv run --project scripts/rag-perf rag-perf -c scripts/rag-perf/configs/quick_profile.yaml

Output: rag-perf-results/quick_profile/run_<ts>/{profile_report.md, profile_results.json, profiling/}. The aiperf_rag_on/ directory is omitted. Filenames are profile_* because aiperf.enabled: false.

Single benchmark point with full report:

bash
uv run --project scripts/rag-perf rag-perf -c scripts/rag-perf/configs/single_run.yaml

Output: flat run_<ts>/{report.md, results.json, results.csv, profiling/, aiperf_rag_on/}.

Concurrency sweep:

bash
uv run --project scripts/rag-perf rag-perf -c scripts/rag-perf/configs/sweep.yaml

Output: nested run_<ts>/iter_1/<CR:_VDB-K:_RERANKER-K:_…>/{profiling,aiperf_rag_on}/ per point, plus aggregate report.md / results.json / results.csv at the run root.

Run unit tests:

bash
uv sync --project scripts/rag-perf --extra dev   # one-time, installs pytest-asyncio
uv run --project scripts/rag-perf python -m pytest tests/unit/test_rag_perf/

Limitations

• The CLI is config-only: author or copy YAML to vary a parameter.
• load.concurrency / rag.vdb_top_k / rag.reranker_top_k accept int | list[int]; the validator requires unique list values because each value names a unique point dir.
• input.file and input.synthetic follow an XOR rule — both set fails validation. When neither is set, synthetic auto-fills with defaults so a bare config still validates.
• File-based input format is inferred from extension only (.jsonl or .csv); other extensions are rejected.
• Synthetic generation streams each query to disk as it completes (failure-resilient) but fails fast on the first LLM error — partial JSONL is preserved. Re-run after fixing the endpoint.
• Reasoning models (Nemotron Omni, Qwen-Reasoning) require synthetic.disable_thinking: true (the default). Without it the model exhausts the token budget on chain-of-thought and content returns empty — the generator now raises with a clear message instead of substituting reasoning_content for the answer.
• aiperf-specific knobs outside the YAML surface (request rate distribution, GPU telemetry config, etc.) require editing AiperfRunner._base_aiperf_cmd in scripts/rag-perf/rag_perf/runner.py.
• Procedural detail lives under references/ to keep this file concise.

Troubleshooting

| Error / signal | Likely cause | What to do | |---|---|---| | Configuration errors in <yaml>: • input — ... XOR rule | Both input.file and input.synthetic set | Pick one. The XOR validator runs at YAML load time. | | input.file must end in .jsonl or .csv | Extension other than .jsonl / .csv | Rename or convert. | | load.concurrency has duplicate values | e.g. [2, 2, 4] | Each concurrency maps to a unique point dir; dedupe. | | warmup_requests must be >= 1 | YAML had warmup_requests: 0 | aiperf rejects warmup=0; minimum is 1. | | LLM returned empty content (reasoning_content was populated — model exhausted its budget on chain-of-thought; raise min_query_tokens or set synthetic.disable_thinking=true). | Reasoning model used CoT and ran out of tokens | Set synthetic.disable_thinking: true (the default) or raise min_query_tokens. | | ✗ All N profiling requests failed across M point(s). + exit 1 | Bad URL, server down, wrong collection | Verify target.url, rag.collection_names (the <collection_name> placeholder will hit this). | | Per-iteration ⚠ N profiling requests failed warning, run continues | Some requests timed out / errored mid-run | Check rag-server logs, raise target.timeout_s, drop concurrency. | | RuntimeError: Random synthetic query generation failed at query N: ... | LLM endpoint rejected a request mid-generation | Partial JSONL is at synthetic.jsonl_output_path; fix endpoint and re-run with reduced num_queries, or point input.file at the partial file. | | Citation count (mean): 0 and Citation relevance score: N/A for a non-empty deployment | Collection mismatch between rag.collection_names and what's actually ingested | Run curl -s http://<ingestor>:8082/v1/collections to list real collections. | | Tests error with ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'pytest_asyncio' | Dev extras missing | uv sync --project scripts/rag-perf --extra dev. | | CI: ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'ruamel' from tests/unit/test_rag_perf/ | rag-perf package missing from CI venv | Add uv pip install -e ./scripts/rag-perf after the top-level install in the unit-tests job. |

Gotchas

• Run from repo root. Preset configs reference scripts/rag-perf/examples/queries.jsonl and scripts/rag-perf/prompts/default_prompts.yaml with repo-root-relative paths. Running from inside scripts/rag-perf/ will fail those file lookups.
• CLI is config-only. Edit the YAML or copy a preset for URL, concurrency, collection, and similar fields.
• Always edit rag.collection_names before the first run. The presets ship with ["<collection_name>"] as a deliberate placeholder. Validation passes, retrieval fails silently for every request — manifests as Citation count (mean): 0 everywhere.
• load.concurrency_list, rag.vdb_top_k_list, rag.reranker_top_k_list are read-only properties that normalise scalar-or-list to a list. Use them when reasoning about the grid; the underlying YAML field is whatever the user wrote.
• aiperf.enabled: false changes filenames. The top-level outputs become profile_report.md / profile_results.json / profile_results.csv. The aggregate sweep table also suppresses load-test rows and the "Optimal throughput" footer.
• Resolved-config dump is verbose (50+ lines) — expected. It's what makes terminal output a self-contained reproducer; don't filter it out in scripts.
• The aiperf shell command is logged before each subprocess. Look for \n $ python -m aiperf profile -m ... --endpoint-type nvidia_rag ... in stdout — copy-paste runnable for reproducing a single point outside rag-perf.
• --endpoint-type nvidia_rag comes from the bundled plugin at scripts/rag-perf/rag_perf/plugin/nvidia_rag.py. It teaches aiperf about the RAG /v1/generate request shape and parses citations + per-stage metrics out of the SSE stream. If aiperf can't resolve nvidia_rag, rag-perf needs editable installation in the venv — re-run uv sync --project scripts/rag-perf (or uv pip install -e ./scripts/rag-perf).
• Sweep-mode point-name collision. When two points differ only in concurrency (e.g. [1, 4] × single vdb_top_k), the dir name encodes everything: CR:1_ISL:50_OSL:512_VDB-K:20_RERANKER-K:4_Model:.... Cluster / GPU / experiment_name (output.cluster, output.gpu, output.experiment_name) are appended too — useful for diff-friendly artifact paths across machines.
• load.iterations > 1 repeats the entire grid. Each repetition writes to its own iter_<i>/. Aggregate CSV row count = n_points × iterations.

Source of truth

| Piece | Location | |---|---| | Driver | scripts/rag-perf/rag_perf/cli.py (main is the single Click command) | | Schema | scripts/rag-perf/rag_perf/config.py (RunConfig and sub-models) | | Orchestrator | scripts/rag-perf/rag_perf/runner.py (BenchmarkRunner.run, RagProfiler, AiperfRunner) | | aiperf plugin | scripts/rag-perf/rag_perf/plugin/nvidia_rag.py | | User-facing doc | docs/performance-benchmarking.md | | Presets | scripts/rag-perf/configs/{quick_profile,single_run,sweep}.yaml | | Sample queries | scripts/rag-perf/examples/queries.jsonl | | Synthetic prompts | scripts/rag-perf/prompts/default_prompts.yaml | | Config schema details | references/config-schema.md | | Synthetic-query generation | references/synthetic-generation.md | | Output layout & metric semantics | references/output-and-analysis.md |

Agent playbook

1. Sync deps: uv sync --project scripts/rag-perf (one-time per checkout).
2. Pick & customise a preset: copy scripts/rag-perf/configs/<preset>.yaml if you want a variant; always set rag.collection_names to a real collection.
3. Run: uv run --project scripts/rag-perf rag-perf -c <config> from repo root.
4. Read the per-point + aggregate tables on stdout. Bottleneck inference is in the per-point profiling section; comparison across points is the final aggregate table.
5. Parse artifacts under output.dir/run_<ts>/ — see references/output-and-analysis.md. For multi-point runs, results.csv has one row per (point × iteration).
6. Summarise for the user using the playbook in references/output-and-analysis.md#summarising-results-to-the-user — headline table, scaling-efficiency math for sweeps, mandatory flags for zero citations / non-zero errors / suspect llm_ttft_ms / low sample size, and a concrete next-experiment YAML.
7. Tune retrieval / reranker: flip to quick_profile.yaml or aiperf.enabled: false for fast iteration, then return to single_run.yaml / sweep.yaml when characterising under load.
8. Triage failures: see Troubleshooting above and references/output-and-analysis.md for empty-citation / bottleneck=N/A patterns.