High-Performance Computing Clusters for AI on vSphere

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

Creating high-performance computing (HPC) clusters for AI on vSphere enables data scientists and researchers to run compute-intensive AI workloads efficiently. To achieve this with Pulumi, you need to provision the necessary resources on your vSphere infrastructure. The Pulumi vSphere provider offers multiple resources that can be used to set up an HPC cluster, including compute clusters, virtual machines, networking, and storage.

The following program outlines the necessary steps to create an HPC cluster for AI workloads. We will define a compute cluster with specified capabilities, add hosts to the cluster, set up a network, and provision storage. Here's a high-level outline of the Pulumi resources that will be used:

- `vsphere.ComputeCluster`: Represents a cluster of host systems that share resources like CPU, memory, network, and storage. Clustering your hosts allows you to manage resources more efficiently and provides higher availability for your virtual machines.
- `vsphere.Host`: Represents the ESXi hosts that will be part of the compute cluster. These are the physical servers where your virtual machines will run.
- `vsphere.Network`: Defines a virtual network for communication between virtual machines in the cluster.
- `vsphere.Datastore`: Represents a storage location for virtual machine files, such as logs, virtual disks, and configuration files.

In the provided code, replace the placeholder values with the actual values from your vSphere environment. Here's the Pulumi program:

```python
import pulumi
import pulumi_vsphere as vsphere

# Create a new Datacenter
datacenter = vsphere.Datacenter("hpc-datacenter",
    name="dc-hpc")

# Create a new folder for our HPC cluster
folder = vsphere.Folder("hpc-folder",
    path="hpc",
    type="vm",
    datacenter_id=datacenter.id)

# Create a new compute cluster with High Availability (HA) enabled for our AI workloads
compute_cluster = vsphere.ComputeCluster("hpc-cluster",
    name="cluster-hpc-ai",
    datacenter_id=datacenter.id,
    ha_enabled=True,
    folder=folder.path)

# Adding Hosts to the cluster
host1 = vsphere.Host("esxi-host-1",
    hostname="192.168.1.10",
    username="root",
    password="password", # Replace with a secure way to handle passwords, such as using Pulumi secrets
    cluster=compute_cluster.id)

host2 = vsphere.Host("esxi-host-2",
    hostname="192.168.1.11",
    username="root",
    password="password", # Replace with a secure way to handle passwords
    cluster=compute_cluster.id)

# Create a network for the HPC cluster
network = vsphere.Network("hpc-network",
    name="network-hpc",
    datacenter_id=datacenter.id)

# Setting up shared storage for the cluster
datastore = vsphere.Datastore("hpc-datastore",
    name="datastore-hpc",
    datacenter_id=datacenter.id)

# Export the Datacenter, Compute Cluster, Hosts, Network and Datastore names
pulumi.export('hpc_datacenter', datacenter.name)
pulumi.export('hpc_compute_cluster', compute_cluster.name)
pulumi.export('hpc_hosts', pulumi.Output.all(host1.name, host2.name))
pulumi.export('hpc_network', network.name)
pulumi.export('hpc_datastore', datastore.name)
```

This program sets up a foundational HPC cluster infrastructure. Here's what each section does:

1. It creates a new datacenter in vSphere to house all the resources related to the HPC cluster.
2. It establishes a folder within the datacenter to organize the cluster's related virtual machines logically.
3. It defines a compute cluster with HA enabled to ensure that workloads can continue to run even if a host fails.
4. It adds two ESXi hosts to the compute cluster. These hosts will provide the compute resources for running AI workloads. The number of hosts can be adjusted based on the capacity needed for your AI applications.
5. It creates a virtual network that will be used for communication between the virtual machines within the HPC cluster.
6. It configures a shared datastore that provides a centralized storage repository for the virtual machines.

Make sure you handle passwords and other sensitive information securely, such as using Pulumi's secret management. Replace placeholder values like IP addresses and passwords with the actual values from your infrastructure.

Run this program using the Pulumi CLI, and after successful execution, your vSphere environment will be equipped with an HPC cluster ready to run AI workloads. Note that this code provides a basic structure, and further customization may be needed to cater to the specific needs of your AI applications, such as setting up distributed file systems or specialized networking configurations.