Introduction to Serverless Kubernetes for AI/ML Workloads

, WhiteFiber

Discover how serverless Kubernetes optimizes AI/ML workloads with scalable, low-overhead infrastructure in this introduction to a modern MLOps solution.

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Serverless Kubernetes has emerged as a preferred solution for orchestration and scaling of AI/ML workloads. While Kubernetes has been around since 2014 and the serverless kubernetes model has been gaining traction since 2018, the models capabilities seem purpose built for AI/ML workloads.

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This is the first post in a series of posts about serverless kubernetes. Today we cover an introduction to serverless kubernetes for AI/ML workloads including:

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  • What serverless kubernetes is
  • The evolution of the model
  • Why serverless kubernetes is a good fit for AI/ML workloads
  • Popular serverless kubernetes solutions

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The Evolution of Infrastructure forAI/ML Workloads

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Let’s start by looking at how infrastructure for AI/ML workloads has evolved from traditional on-premises solutions to cloud-based services, and now toward more dynamic, serverless approaches:

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Traditional Infrastructure Approaches

Initially, organizations deployed AI/ML workloads on dedicated hardware, often requiring significant capital expenditure and resulting in low utilization rates outside of peak training periods. This approach created "islands" of computing resources that were difficult to share across teams and projects.

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Container Orchestration with Kubernetes

The adoption of containerization and Kubernetes brought improvements in resource utilization and deployment consistency. Kubernetes provided a platform for orchestrating containerized AI/ML workloads, but still required significant operational expertise and manual scaling decisions.

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The Serverless Paradigm

Serverless computing emerged as a model that abstracts infrastructure management away from developers, automatically scaling resources based on demand and charging only for resources consumed. This approach initially gained traction for web applications but has evolved to address the needs of compute-intensive workloads like AI/ML.

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The Infrastructure Challenge in AI/ML

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As it has evolved, infrastructure for AI/ML workloads present distinct requirements that set them apart from traditional applications:

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Resource IntensitY

Training sophisticated models often requires significant computational resources, particularly GPUs or specialized accelerators, which are expensive and often in limited supply.

Workload Variability

AI/ML workloads typically exhibit irregular patterns—intense resource consumption during training or high-traffic inference periods, followed by periods of minimal activity

Pipeline Complexity

Modern AI/ML workflows involve complex pipelines spanning data preparation, training, validation, deployment, and monitoring, each with different resource profiles.

Operational Overhead

Managing the infrastructure for these workloads traditionally requires specialized expertise, diverting focus from model development and business outcomes.

Scaling Challenges

As models grow in complexity and data volumes increase, infrastructure must scale accordingly without introducing prohibitive costs or management complexity

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What is Serverless Kubernetes?

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Serverless Kubernetes combines the container orchestration capabilities of Kubernetes with the operational model of serverless computing. The underlying infrastructure management is abstracted away from users, allowing them to focus on deploying and running applications rather than managing the Kubernetes control plane or worker nodes.

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At its core, serverless Kubernetes provides:

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  • Infrastructure Abstraction
    The management of the Kubernetes control plane and other components is handled by the platform provider.
  • Automatic Scaling
    Resources scale up based on demand and down to zero during periods of inactivity.
  • Reduced Operational Overhead
    Eliminates the need to manage, patch, and upgrade the Kubernetes cluster.
  • Consumption-Based Billing
    Users pay only for the actual resources consumed by their applications v. paying for resources on stand-by in the event of bursting beyond capacity.

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Key Components of Serverless Kubernetes Architecture

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A serverless Kubernetes architecture typically consists of several key components:

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1. Kubernetes API Server

The API server remains the entry point for all administrative operations, but in serverless Kubernetes, this component is managed by the provider. Users interact with it through standard Kubernetes APIs.

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2. Serverless Compute Layer

This layer dynamically provisions and manages the worker nodes where containers run. It scales nodes up and down based on workload demands, potentially scaling to zero when no workloads are running.

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3. Serverless Frameworks

Several frameworks enable serverless capabilities on Kubernetes:

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  • Knative: An open-source platform that provides components for deploying, running, and managing serverless workloads on Kubernetes.

  • KServe (formerly KFServing): A standardized serverless framework for serving ML models on Kubernetes.

  • OpenFaaS: A framework for building serverless functions with Docker and Kubernetes.
  • Kubeless: A Kubernetes-native serverless framework.


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4. Event Sources and Triggers

Serverless Kubernetes environments often include event sources that can trigger the execution of containerized workloads, such as HTTP requests, message queue events, database changes, scheduled events, and custom events from other systems.

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Conclusion

When comparing the design of Serverless Kubernetes to the challenges posed by AI/ML workloads, it is easy to see how the former is a powerful solution to address the latter. The combination of container orchestration and serverless computing principles, can reduce operational overhead and support the variable compute demands that are inherent in these workloads. Depending on your specific environment serverless Kubernetes might be a critical component in your MLOps strategy.

In the next post, we'll explore how serverless Kubernetes compares to traditional HPC schedulers like Slurm.