Efficient Scheduling of Large Language Model Training Jobs

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

To efficiently schedule and manage large language model training jobs on a cloud provider's infrastructure, you would generally need to interact with a variety of cloud services. Typically, these services include compute resources, such as VMs or container instances to run your training code, storage to maintain datasets and model artifacts, and potentially machine learning-specific tools and services for job orchestration and scheduling.

The training process often involves job scheduling systems that can queue your training tasks, manage resource allocation efficiently, and possibly preempt resources based on priorities or cost-saving measures. You might use services like AWS Batch, Google Cloud AI Platform Jobs, or Azure Machine Learning.

For large language models in particular, training can be resource-intensive and time-consuming. You want to leverage services that can scale out to handle large datasets and distribute the training process across multiple nodes if necessary. Cloud services typically offer specialized types of VMs or instances with optimized hardware for ML workloads, such as GPUs or TPUs.

I'll walk you through a Pulumi program that sets up a hypothetical job scheduling mechanism for training a large language model on Google Cloud Platform using GCP's AI Platform Jobs. The program will provision the necessary resources for the jobs and is designed to be run in a Python environment where Pulumi is installed and configured for GCP.

The main resource we'll use is `google-native.ml/v1.Job`, which will allow us to submit and manage model training jobs on Google's AI Platform.

Here's what you need to know about the resources being used:

- `google-native.ml/v1.Job`: This resource lets us define a machine learning job for training. In the context of language models, you can specify various parameters such as the number of training steps, the scale tier (amount of compute resources), the docker image to be used for training, and the training script or package.

- `google_native.ml%2Fv1.GoogleCloudMlV1__ReplicaConfigArgs`: This optional input is used to configure specifics of the replica instances that run the training job, such as the type and number of accelerators (GPUs or TPUs), which are crucial for training large models efficiently.

Now, let's translate this into a Pulumi Python program:

```python
import pulumi
import pulumi_google_native as google_native

# Create a GCP AI Platform training job for a large language model
training_job = google_native.ml.v1.Job("trainingJob",
    parent="projects/my-gcp-project",
    training_input=google_native.ml.v1.JobTrainingInputArgs(
        args=["--model_dir=gs://my-bucket/models/", "--batch_size=32", "--learning_rate=0.01"],
        region="us-central1",
        job_dir="gs://my-bucket/job-output",
        scale_tier="CUSTOM",
        master_type="complex_model_m",
        worker_type="complex_model_m_worker",
        parameter_server_type="large_model",
        worker_count="9",
        parameter_server_count="3",
        package_uris=["gs://my-bucket/packages/trainer.tar.gz"],
        python_module="trainer.task",
        runtime_version="2.3",  # specify the desired TensorFlow runtime version
        python_version="3.7",
        master_config=google_native.ml.v1.GoogleCloudMlV1_ReplicaConfigArgs(
            accelerator_config=google_native.ml.v1.GoogleCloudMlV1_AcceleratorConfigArgs(
                type="NVIDIA_TESLA_V100",
                count="1",
            )
        )
    ),
)

pulumi.export('training_job_name', training_job.job_id)
```

In this program:

- We create a `Job` instance named `trainingJob` using the `google_native.ml.v1.Job` resource. The job will be submitted under the `my-gcp-project` project in Google Cloud Platform.

- Inside the job definition, we provide a list of arguments needed by our training script like model directory, batch size, and learning rate.

- The `region` and `job_dir` specify where the job will run and where the output will be stored, respectively.

- `scale_tier` is set to `CUSTOM` since large language models require custom machine types and numbers of machines.

- We define the `master_type`, `worker_type`, and `parameter_server_type` to configure the compute resources for distributed training, which is common for training large models efficiently.

- `worker_count` and `parameter_server_count` define the number of worker nodes and parameter servers. These are tuned based on the size of the model and the scale of the dataset.

- We specify the paths to the training package (a tar.gz file) and the training script (`python_module`) stored in Google Cloud Storage.

- Runtime version `2.3` is arbitrarily chosen for this example, and will likely depend on the specific TensorFlow version you want to use.

- We also configure an accelerator (GPU) for the master replica to speed up the training process. Here, we choose the NVIDIA Tesla V100, but you should choose based on availability and budget.

- Finally, we export the `job_id` to get a handle to the created job in the output of the Pulumi stack deployment.

Please replace the placeholder values such as 'my-gcp-project', 'gs://my-bucket/models/', and others with actual values that correspond to your GCP setup.

To execute this program, save the code to a file named `__main__.py` in an empty directory, run `pulumi up`, and Pulumi will handle provisioning the resources as defined. Make sure you have the proper access rights configured for your GCP account.