fix(planner): normalize model_name case in KubernetesConnector comparisons

[tedzhouhk]

Summary

Fixes a pair of case-sensitivity bugs in KubernetesConnector.get_model_name() that caused Planner to enter CrashLoopBackOff in active mode when the deployment model name retained original casing (e.g. Qwen/Qwen3-0.6B).

Supersedes #8360 — includes brluo's original fix plus one additional normalization for the sibling prefill/decode comparison.

Root cause

• self.user_provided_model_name is lowercased in __init__ (line 58).
• But model_name retrieved from the DGD at line 227 was compared as-is → spurious UserProvidedModelNameMismatchError.
• The sibling comparison at line 206 (prefill vs decode) had the same case-sensitive pattern, which would bite later if prefill/decode ever reported the same model with different casing (e.g. MDC display_name vs container-arg parsing).

Changes

• Commit 1 (brluo): normalize model_name.lower() before comparing with user_provided_model_name.
• Commit 2: normalize both sides of the prefill/decode comparison.

Test Plan

Validated end-to-end on a single-node Kubernetes cluster (L20 GPU), per brluo's original validation:

• Planner enters Running state (no CrashLoopBackOff) with model_name: "Qwen/Qwen3-0.6B" + scaling_mode: "active"
• Under load, Planner scales VllmDecodeWorker from 1→2
• Advisory mode continues to work unchanged

Closes #8359

Summary by CodeRabbit

Bug Fixes

• Model name validation is now case-insensitive. Validation errors will no longer occur when model names differ solely in capitalization between prefill and decode model configurations, or when comparing user-provided model names against deployment-derived values. This provides greater flexibility and reduces potential errors when managing model configurations across different deployment scenarios.

[coderabbitai]

No actionable comments were generated in the recent review. 🎉

ℹ️ Recent review info

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Run ID: 03f6dd06-5f72-4e5b-ab96-2682d0240baf

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 2618812 and d1466c2.

📒 Files selected for processing (1)

• components/src/dynamo/planner/connectors/kubernetes.py

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Walkthrough

Updated KubernetesConnector.get_model_name() to perform case-insensitive model name comparisons. Added .lower() calls to two equality checks, enabling the method to correctly handle model names with differing capitalization without raising spurious validation errors.

Changes

Cohort / File(s)	Summary
Case-insensitive model name validation components/src/dynamo/planner/connectors/kubernetes.py	Added .lower() calls to two model name equality comparisons in get_model_name(): (1) when comparing prefill_model_name vs decode_model_name, and (2) when comparing deployment-derived model_name vs user_provided_model_name. Aligns comparison logic with the lowercase normalization already applied during initialization.

Estimated code review effort

🎯 1 (Trivial) | ⏱️ ~3 minutes

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check	✅ Passed	The title accurately summarizes the main change: normalizing model_name case in KubernetesConnector comparisons.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description covers all required sections: Summary (root cause), Changes (what was fixed), and Test Plan (validation results). Includes issue reference.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	The PR fully addresses issue #8359: implements case-insensitive comparisons via .lower() on both model_name sources, matching the root cause analysis and required fixes.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	All changes are scoped to KubernetesConnector.get_model_name() case-sensitivity fixes; no unrelated modifications detected.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	Docstring coverage is 100.00% which is sufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%.

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