Ollama — Herd Your Ollama LLMs Into One Endpoint#

You have Ollama running on multiple machines. This skill gives you one Ollama endpoint that routes every Ollama request to the best available device automatically. No more hardcoding Ollama IPs, no more manual Ollama load balancing, no more "which Ollama machine has that model loaded?"

Setup Ollama Herd#

bash

pip install ollama-herd          # install the Ollama router
herd                             # start the Ollama router on port 11435
herd-node                        # run on each machine with Ollama installed

Now point everything at http://localhost:11435 instead of http://localhost:11434. Same Ollama API, same Ollama models, smarter Ollama routing.

Package: ollama-herd | Repo: github.com/geeks-accelerator/ollama-herd

Use your Ollama models through the fleet#

OpenAI SDK (drop-in Ollama routing)#

python

# ollama_openai_client — route Ollama requests via OpenAI SDK
from openai import OpenAI

ollama_client = OpenAI(base_url="http://localhost:11435/v1", api_key="not-needed")
ollama_response = ollama_client.chat.completions.create(
    model="llama3.3:70b",  # any Ollama model
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello from Ollama"}],
    stream=True,
)
for chunk in ollama_response:
    print(chunk.choices[0].delta.content or "", end="")

Ollama API (same as before, different port)#

bash

# Ollama chat — routed through the Ollama fleet
curl http://localhost:11435/api/chat -d '{
  "model": "qwen3:235b",
  "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello via Ollama Herd"}],
  "stream": false
}'

# List all Ollama models across all machines
curl http://localhost:11435/api/tags

# Ollama models currently in GPU memory
curl http://localhost:11435/api/ps

# Ollama embeddings
curl http://localhost:11435/api/embeddings -d '{
  "model": "nomic-embed-text",
  "prompt": "Ollama embedding search query"
}'

What the Ollama router does#

When an Ollama request comes in, the Ollama router scores every online Ollama node on 7 signals:

1. Ollama Thermal — is the Ollama model already loaded in GPU memory? (+50 for hot)
2. Ollama Memory fit — how much headroom does the Ollama node have?
3. Ollama Queue depth — how many Ollama requests are waiting?
4. Ollama Wait time — estimated latency based on Ollama history
5. Ollama Role affinity — large Ollama models prefer big machines
6. Ollama Availability — is the Ollama node reliably available?
7. Ollama Context fit — does the loaded Ollama context window fit the request?

The highest-scoring Ollama node handles the request. If it fails, the Ollama router retries on the next best node automatically.

Supported Ollama models#

Any model that runs on Ollama works through the Ollama fleet. Popular Ollama models:

Ollama ModelSizesBest forllama3.38B, 70BGeneral purpose Ollama inferenceqwen30.6B–235BMultilingual Ollama reasoningqwen3.50.8B–397BLatest generation Ollama modeldeepseek-v3671B (37B active)Ollama GPT-4o alternativedeepseek-r11.5B–671BOllama reasoning (like o3)phi414BSmall, fast Ollama modelmistral7BFast Ollama European languagesgemma31B–27BGoogle's open Ollama modelcodestral22BOllama code generationqwen3-coder30B (3.3B active)Agentic Ollama codingnomic-embed-text137MOllama embeddings for RAG

Ollama Resilience features#

• Ollama Auto-retry — re-routes to next best Ollama node on failure (before first chunk)
• Ollama VRAM-aware fallback — routes to a loaded Ollama model in the same category instead of cold-loading
• Ollama Context protection — prevents num_ctx from triggering expensive Ollama model reloads
• Ollama Zombie reaper — cleans up stuck in-flight Ollama requests
• Ollama Auto-pull — downloads missing Ollama models to the best node automatically

Also available via Ollama Herd#

The same Ollama fleet router handles three more workloads:

Ollama Image generation#

bash

curl -o image.png http://localhost:11435/api/generate-image \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"model":"z-image-turbo","prompt":"a sunset via Ollama Herd","width":1024,"height":1024,"steps":4}'

Ollama Speech-to-text#

bash

curl http://localhost:11435/api/transcribe -F "audio=@recording.wav"

Ollama Embeddings#

bash

curl http://localhost:11435/api/embeddings -d '{"model":"nomic-embed-text","prompt":"Ollama embedding text"}'

Ollama Dashboard#

http://localhost:11435/dashboard — 8 tabs: Ollama Fleet Overview, Trends, Ollama Model Insights, Apps, Benchmarks, Ollama Health, Recommendations, Settings. Real-time Ollama queue visibility with [TEXT], [IMAGE], [STT], [EMBED] badges.

Ollama Request tagging#

Track per-project Ollama usage:

python

ollama_response = ollama_client.chat.completions.create(
    model="llama3.3:70b",  # Ollama model
    messages=messages,
    extra_body={"metadata": {"tags": ["my-ollama-project", "reasoning"]}},
)

Full Ollama documentation#

Ollama Agent Setup Guide

Ollama Guardrails#

• Never restart the Ollama router or Ollama node agents without user confirmation.
• Never delete or modify files in ~/.fleet-manager/ (Ollama data).
• Never pull or delete Ollama models without user confirmation.