For those serious about MLOps, mastering Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is essential. IaC allows you to define your machine learning infrastructure in a few files, enabling cloud platforms to build everything automatically. This approach saves time and makes your system more resilient to cloud failures. In this article, we’ll explore four game-changing IaC services that you should consider for your MLOps workflow.
1. AWS CloudFormation
AWS CloudFormation is a powerful IaC service that automates the creation of AWS infrastructure. As the top dog of the group, it’s a great choice if you’re looking to provision niche AWS services, as it offers more options than other IaC offerings.
Key Features of AWS CloudFormation:
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Template-based: Define your infrastructure using JSON or YAML templates.
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Resource management: Automate the creation, update, and deletion of AWS resources.
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Extensibility: Create custom resource types to extend AWS CloudFormation’s capabilities.
2. Terraform
Terraform is an IaC tool that enables you to deploy infrastructure across various platforms. With the ability to write standardized definitions for hundreds of platforms, Terraform is the best choice if your infrastructure is spread across different providers.
Key Features of Terraform:
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Provider-agnostic: Supports multiple cloud providers, including AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, and others.
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Modular: Organize your infrastructure into reusable modules for better maintainability.
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State management: Keep track of your infrastructure’s state to identify and apply changes efficiently.
3. Pulumi
Pulumi is similar to Terraform but supports almost any programming language. This flexibility makes it an excellent option if you need to automatically activate IaC, as you can embed it in your existing system to trigger builds when necessary.
Key Features of Pulumi:
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Language support: Write your IaC in Python, TypeScript, Go, or other popular programming languages.
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Real-time feedback: Get live feedback on infrastructure changes during development.
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Secrets management: Securely store and manage sensitive information, such as API keys and passwords.
4. KServe
Although not precisely an IaC service, KServe is still worth mentioning. KServe is a Model Inference Platform for Kubernetes, providing a standard inference layer across multiple machine learning frameworks. It’s an excellent choice if you’re leveraging serverless infrastructure or hosting your own.
Key Features of KServe:
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Framework-agnostic: Supports multiple ML frameworks, such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, and scikit-learn.
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Auto-scaling: Scales model inference resources based on request volume.
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Rolling updates: Deploy new model versions without downtime.
Conclusion
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is a game-changer for MLOps, offering time savings and increased resiliency. By choosing the right IaC service, such as AWS CloudFormation, Terraform, Pulumi, or KServe, you can streamline your MLOps workflow and make your machine learning infrastructure more robust and reliable.
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The lead image for this article was generated by HackerNoon's AI Image Generator via the prompt "machine learning team".