Deploy Locally

Note

Note that running inference in OpenVINO Runtime is the most basic form of deployment. Before moving forward, make sure you know how to create a proper Inference configuration and develop your application properly.

Local Deployment Options

• Set a dependency on the existing prebuilt packages, also called “centralized distribution”:

  • using Debian / RPM packages - a recommended way for Linux operating systems;

  • using PIP package manager on PyPI - the default approach for Python-based applications;

  • using Docker images - if the application should be deployed as a Docker image, use a pre-built OpenVINO™ Runtime Docker image as a base image in the Dockerfile for the application container image. For more information about OpenVINO Docker images, refer to Installing OpenVINO from Docker

    • Furthermore, to customize your OpenVINO Docker image, use the Docker CI Framework to generate a Dockerfile and build the image.

• Grab a necessary functionality of OpenVINO together with your application, also called “local distribution”:

  • using the local distribution approach;

  • using a static version of OpenVINO Runtime linked to the final app.

The table below shows which distribution type can be used for what target operating system:

Distribution type	Operating systems
Debian packages	Ubuntu 18.04, 20.04, 22.04, 24.04 (64-bit)
RPM packages	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, 64-bit
Docker images	Ubuntu 20.04, 22.04, 24.04 (64-bit); Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, 64-bit
PyPI (PIP package manager)	See https://pypi.org/project/openvino
Libraries for Local Distribution	All operating systems
Build OpenVINO statically and link to the final app	All operating systems

Granularity of Major Distribution Types

The granularity of OpenVINO packages may vary for different distribution types. For example, the PyPI distribution of OpenVINO has a single ‘openvino’ package that contains all the runtime libraries and plugins, while a local distribution is a more configurable type providing higher granularity. Below are important details of the set of libraries included in the OpenVINO Runtime package:

• The main library openvino is used by users’ C++ applications to link against with. For C language applications, openvino_c is additionally required for distribution. The library includes OpenVINO API 2.0.

• The “optional” plugin libraries like openvino_intel_cpu_plugin (matching the openvino_.+_plugin pattern) are used to provide inference capabilities on specific devices or additional capabilities like Hetero Execution.

• The “optional” plugin libraries like openvino_ir_frontend (matching openvino_.+_frontend) are used to provide capabilities to read models of different file formats such as OpenVINO IR, TensorFlow, ONNX, and PaddlePaddle.

Here the term “optional” means that if the application does not use the capability enabled by the plugin, the plugin library or a package with the plugin is not needed in the final distribution.

Building a local distribution will require more detailed information, and you will find it in the dedicated Libraries for Local Distribution article.

Note

Depending on your target OpenVINO devices, the following configuration might be needed for deployed machines: Configurations for GPU.