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Deploy W&B Platform on GCP

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W&B recommends fully managed deployment options such as W&B Multi-tenant Cloud or W&B Dedicated Cloud deployment types. W&B fully managed services are simple and secure to use, with minimum to no configuration required.

If you've determined to self-managed W&B Server, W&B recommends using the W&B Server GCP Terraform Module to deploy the platform on GCP.

The module documentation is extensive and contains all available options that can be used.

Before you start, W&B recommends that you choose one of the remote backends available for Terraform to store the State File.

The State File is the necessary resource to roll out upgrades or make changes in your deployment without recreating all components.

The Terraform Module will deploy the following mandatory components:

  • VPC
  • Cloud SQL for MySQL
  • Cloud Storage Bucket
  • Google Kubernetes Engine
  • KMS Crypto Key
  • Load Balancer

Other deployment options can also include the following optional components:

  • Memory store for Redis
  • Pub/Sub messages system

Pre-requisite permissions​

The account that will run the terraform need to have the role roles/owner in the GCP project used.

General steps​

The steps on this topic are common for any deployment option covered by this documentation.

  1. Prepare the development environment.

    • Install Terraform
    • We recommend creating a Git repository with the code that will be used, but you can keep your files locally.
    • Create a project in Google Cloud Console
    • Authenticate with GCP (make sure to install gcloud before) gcloud auth application-default login

  2. Create the terraform.tfvars file.

    The tvfars file content can be customized according to the installation type, but the minimum recommended will look like the example below.

    project_id  = "wandb-project"
    region      = "europe-west2"
    zone        = "europe-west2-a"
    namespace   = "wandb"
    license     = "xxxxxxxxxxyyyyyyyyyyyzzzzzzz"
    subdomain   = "wandb-gcp"
    domain_name = "wandb.ml"

    The variables defined here need to be decided before the deployment because. The namespace variable will be a string that will prefix all resources created by Terraform.

    The combination of subdomain and domain will form the FQDN that W&B will be configured. In the example above, the W&B FQDN will be wandb-gcp.wandb.ml

  3. Create the file variables.tf

    For every option configured in the terraform.tfvars Terraform requires a correspondent variable declaration.

    variable "project_id" {
      type        = string
      description = "Project ID"
    }

    variable "region" {
      type        = string
      description = "Google region"
    }

    variable "zone" {
      type        = string
      description = "Google zone"
    }

    variable "namespace" {
      type        = string
      description = "Namespace prefix used for resources"
    }

    variable "domain_name" {
      type        = string
      description = "Domain name for accessing the Weights & Biases UI."
    }

    variable "subdomain" {
      type        = string
      description = "Subdomain for access the Weights & Biases UI."
    }

    variable "license" {
      type        = string
      description = "W&B License"
    }

Deployment - Recommended (~20 mins)​

This is the most straightforward deployment option configuration that will create all Mandatory components and install in the Kubernetes Cluster the latest version of W&B.

  1. Create the main.tf

    In the same directory where you created the files in the General Steps, create a file main.tf with the following content:

    provider "google" {
     project = var.project_id
     region  = var.region
     zone    = var.zone
    }

    provider "google-beta" {
     project = var.project_id
     region  = var.region
     zone    = var.zone
    }

    data "google_client_config" "current" {}

    provider "kubernetes" {
      host                   = "https://${module.wandb.cluster_endpoint}"
      cluster_ca_certificate = base64decode(module.wandb.cluster_ca_certificate)
      token                  = data.google_client_config.current.access_token
    }

    # Spin up all required services
    module "wandb" {
      source  = "wandb/wandb/google"
      version = "~> 5.0"

      namespace   = var.namespace
      license     = var.license
      domain_name = var.domain_name
      subdomain   = var.subdomain
    }

    # You'll want to update your DNS with the provisioned IP address
    output "url" {
      value = module.wandb.url
    }

    output "address" {
      value = module.wandb.address
    }

    output "bucket_name" {
      value = module.wandb.bucket_name
    }

  2. Deploy W&B

    To deploy W&B, execute the following commands:

    terraform init
    terraform apply -var-file=terraform.tfvars

Deployment with REDIS Cache​

Another deployment option uses Redis to cache the SQL queries and speedup the application response when loading the metrics for the experiments.

You need to add the option create_redis = true to the same main.tf file specified in the recommended Deployment option section to enable the cache.

[...]

module "wandb" {
  source  = "wandb/wandb/google"
  version = "~> 1.0"

  namespace    = var.namespace
  license      = var.license
  domain_name  = var.domain_name
  subdomain    = var.subdomain
  allowed_inbound_cidrs = ["*"]
  #Enable Redis
  create_redis = true

}
[...]

Deployment with External Queue​

Deployment option 3 consists of enabling the external message broker. This is optional because the W&B brings embedded a broker. This option doesn't bring a performance improvement.

The GCP resource that provides the message broker is the Pub/Sub, and to enable it, you will need to add the option use_internal_queue = false to the same main.tf specified in the recommended Deployment option section

[...]

module "wandb" {
  source  = "wandb/wandb/google"
  version = "~> 1.0"

  namespace          = var.namespace
  license            = var.license
  domain_name        = var.domain_name
  subdomain          = var.subdomain
  allowed_inbound_cidrs = ["*"]
  #Create and use Pub/Sub
  use_internal_queue = false

}

[...]

Other deployment options​

You can combine all three deployment options adding all configurations to the same file. The Terraform Module provides several options that can be combined along with the standard options and the minimal configuration found in Deployment - Recommended

Manual configuration​

To use a GCP Storage bucket as a file storage backend for W&B, you will need to create a:

Create PubSub Topic and Subscription​

Follow the procedure below to create a PubSub topic and subscription:

  1. Navigate to the Pub/Sub service within the GCP Console
  2. Select Create Topic and provide a name for your topic.
  3. At the bottom of the page, select Create subscription. Ensure Delivery Type is set to Pull.
  4. Click Create.

Make sure the service account or account that your instance is running has the pubsub.admin role on this subscription. For details, see https://cloud.google.com/pubsub/docs/access-control#console.

Create Storage Bucket​

  1. Navigate to the Cloud Storage Buckets page.
  2. Select Create bucket and provide a name for your bucket. Ensure you choose a Standard storage class.

Ensure that the service account or account that your instance is running has both:

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Your instance also needs the iam.serviceAccounts.signBlob permission in GCP to create signed file URLs. Add Service Account Token Creator role to the service account or IAM member that your instance is running as to enable permission.

  1. Enable CORS access. This can only be done using the command line. First, create a JSON file with the following CORS configuration.
cors:
- maxAgeSeconds: 3600
  method:
   - GET
   - PUT
     origin:
   - '<YOUR_W&B_SERVER_HOST>'
     responseHeader:
   - Content-Type

Note that the scheme, host, and port of the values for the origin must match exactly.

  1. Make sure you have gcloud installed, and logged into the correct GCP Project.
  2. Next, run the following:
gcloud storage buckets update gs://<BUCKET_NAME> --cors-file=<CORS_CONFIG_FILE>

Create PubSub Notification​

Follow the procedure below in your command line to create a notification stream from the Storage Bucket to the Pub/Sub topic.

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You must use the CLI to create a notification stream. Ensure you have gcloud installed.

  1. Log into your GCP Project.
  2. Run the following in your terminal:
gcloud pubsub topics list  # list names of topics for reference
gcloud storage ls          # list names of buckets for reference

# create bucket notification
gcloud storage buckets notifications create gs://<BUCKET_NAME> --topic=<TOPIC_NAME>

Further reference is available on the Cloud Storage website.

Configure W&B server​

  1. Finally, navigate to the W&B System Connections page at http(s)://YOUR-W&B-SERVER-HOST/console/settings/system.
  2. Select the provider Google Cloud Storage (gcs),
  3. Provide the name of the GCS bucket

  1. Press Update settings to apply the new settings.

Upgrade W&B Server​

Follow the steps outlined here to update W&B:

  1. Add wandb_version to your configuration in your wandb_app module. Provide the version of W&B you want to upgrade to. For example, the following line specifies W&B version 0.48.1:
module "wandb_app" {
    source  = "wandb/wandb/kubernetes"
    version = "~>5.0"

    license       = var.license
    wandb_version = "0.58.1"
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Alternatively, you can add the wandb_version to the terraform.tfvars and create a variable with the same name and instead of using the literal value, use the var.wandb_version

  1. After you update your configuration, complete the steps described in the Deployment option section.
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